Besides the usual Cape Town touring (Table Mountain, Robben Island, Cape of Good Hope), I decided to commemorate the end of the Tour D'Afrique by getting a tattoo. It was something I was contemplating from Arusha and was definitely influenced by the numerous people around me on the Tour who had one (or more). Various ideas came to mind (a hippo riding a bicycle - my nickname at school was 'hippo') but the one I finally settled on was something both geeky and unique and unashamedly inspired by the CUCC logo.

The CUCC logo (see any photo of my jersey or look at the website) is a motif consisting of a curvy stick figure riding the letters CUCC like a bicycle. Instead of the letters CUCC, I envisioned a stick figure riding the infinity sign like a bicycle. Jason Becker, a phenomenal artist and fellow EFIer on the Tour, sketched the design and improved it significantly to the point where we could send it to off to Metal Machine, a well established tattoo parlour in Cape Town.

The process itself was brief and reasonably priced (I'm told, compared to Western parlours). A quick double check of the design, a choice of font (I had the distance and the letters EFI added to the bottom of the design) and I was ready to go sit in the chair. The artist who tattooed the design was a man called Milo, outwardly scary (in the way that being covered by tattoos could be) but totally friendly (and once a keen cyclist too).

The actual act took about twenty minutes and hurt in the same way that getting injections at the dentist hurts. Not overly painful but you can definitely feel it. My tattoo was placed on the outside of my right arm which I'm told is less painful than getting it anywhere on the inside. Places where skin touches skin are quite painful because they are very soft and resultingly tender.

After it was done, some basic aftercare instructions were given (no submerging in water, put lotion on it a few times a day, wash with warm water and soap only, don't scratch) and a week later, it's looking good. The only annoying instruction is not being able to expose it to the sun (it'll fade quickly otherwise) for a month.

I'm quite happy with it and most people I've shown it to like the design. Photos in the usual place.

The convoy into Cape Town was a pretty anticlimactic affair. Enjoying the city is always hard to do as you're trying to both maintain a conversation with your neighbour and maintain a safe distance from the rider in front of you. It was short by TDA convoy standards, just an hour to get to the V&A Waterfront where we would be staying (and a large crowd would be present to welcome us). As we rolled thirty kilometres over smooth dual carriageways, past construction (the World Cup is almost here!) with a view of the sea that constantly faded in and out, motorbikes carrying cameras screamed past us multiple times. On many occasions we'd pass cameramen crouching to the ground over a video camera - I presume these were all the same crew (or South Africa has a LOT of television channels interested in filming us...) who had been brought forwards by motorcycles.

Before the convoy and after, upon arriving in Cape Town, I was amused that one or two observers (friends and family of other riders) found it hard to believe I was a rider (who would have thought? A brown person on a bicycle? Gosh. (I jest.)). As we rolled into the V&A Waterfront, a crowd of perhaps a thousand people were there. A lot of these were passers-by who must have been curious what the growing crowd was gathered for but the rest were friends and family of most of the riders. After a frenzied scene of what looked like copious hugging and tears being shed, we assembled behind country flags and marched densely onto a stage in some kind of amphitheatre.

Presented with medals by the Cape Town Deputy Mayor (who looked every bit like the atypical 'Mayor' and very similar to Mayor Quimby from the Simpsons), we received medals for signing up to the tour and paying a few thousand Euros (ok, more for riding the Tour but it's funny that people were rewarded for this) and medals for EFI. Following this there was a presentation of medals to the top three finishers in both races.

A quick shop later (smart jeans were a necessity for the evening's festivities) and I went to check in at the hotel. This was an almost-amusing-but-not-quite mess where we had to tag and check in each bicycle individually with the Protea's security staff. Not accustomed to handling bikes and trying to squeeze them into a room that was only just about big enough, they had stacked the bikes up in a fairly wasteful way and I arrived at a time when they realised at this rate they wouldn't all fit. It took about half an hour of helping them remove bikes and cardboard boxes before there was space for my bike.

Skip forward a couple of hours, a shower and a shave later, and we were all sitting around round banquet room tables and gorging ourselves on a three course meal. Several of the riders who had been carefully nurturing their facial hair for four months had shaven and it was astonishing the difference it made to their appearance. Some faces looked like they now fit perfectly with the voice and personality we had come to know (Rod for one) while others were almost unrecognisable (Dave, James) - it took a long time to get used to hear a familiar voice coming out of an unfamiliar face.

That dinner was the end of the TDA 2010 - if it could really end. I've made some superb friends and experienced collectively what must equate to years worth of two week holidays. When I'm sitting in an air conditioned office tower in a few months time, I'll most likely be thinking of that day in Malawi when it was too hot to move but staying still made you an attractive target for every fly within a 5 metre radius. My bike will be with me for a long while though and like a reliable old car, it'll ride on without a mention of the various hardships of its long and well travelled life.

(All the posts I've made on this blog and this blog itself will stay online for as long as possible. If they ever go offline, I'll have either gone bankrupt or Skynet has sent a Terminator from the future to destroy the world.)