Friends are clambering over each other (well, kind of) to help us achieve our Heart & Sole dream of getting Geoff “Heartman” Brink from Durbs to Cape Town on his unicycle.
Rich McLennan, the Durban 2010 website supremo, can’t do enough to support us. He hurtles around on his mountain bike of a weekend and came up with the tasty challenge of pitting our intrepid unicyclist against the vagaries of the 10km Blue route at The Holla mountain biking trails spot near Ballito on Sunday.
The idea was to get his riding mates to sponsor The Heartman for every kilometre of the track that our man managed to cover. Coolness. And it was cool. Not only cool but rainy, windy and the track was radically wet. Stop. Wait a sec while I push my chest out to Schwarzenegger proportions. Our Heartie unicycled down steep hills on a rutted dirt track, he one-wheeled it up similar inclines. He sploshed his way through small lakes which other people like to call call puddles. He outdid himself. And he finished the course. Ten kilometres of two-wheeled recreational stuff was chewed up his AmaOneTyre. What a boykie!
Check this out…
OK. So some of the hills were seriously tough for a man on one wheel...
... but not tough enough to knock our Heartie off his AmaOneTyre for very long! Above pix: Rich McLennan
Nice work, me Heartie. Tarmac will be a right treat after that muddy little lark! So we will leave from the main car park at Wilson’s Wharf at 9am on Monday (that’s this Monday, be still my palpitative heart!) and we are expecting to be serenaded out by the thumping engines of a good few Harley Davidsons. After that, who knows? We aim to arrive in Cape Town on Valentine’s Day so that Heartman and his “Unveiled Sweetheart” can exchange vows and other romantic gestures on Camps Bay Beach before they get married in May.
Before that, more than 1,700km of unknown adrenaline-fuelled adventure and assorted wildnesses. We are so amped to go, it’s indescribable. Spiritual, babies!
And you will be able to follow the progress of our Heart & Sole Tour at least twice a day on this blog and also on Twitter and facebook, not to mention YouTube and other websites you and me haven’t yet heard about. But more about that later. One more pic, just by way of a big thank-you to our mate Rich for organising 10km of blood, sweat and and a couple of Mickey Mouse plasters for our boy at the weekend…
Bikers in arms... The Heartman and Rich McLennan look grubby but happy at the end of the 10km light training ride at The Holla. Nice one, Rich! And big thanks to Wayne of The Holla for allowing this madness to take place on his property! Pic: Hatman
Check out what’s on offer at the excellent Holla Bike Trails by bombing down this single track and admire Rich McLennan’s work on the official Durban World Cup 2010 website right here.
In the sixth of my weekly interviews with interesting people living in and around the idyllic seaside town of Umdloti on South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal coast, I asked the Big Five questions of Adapt IT internet boffin (and developer of Durban’s official World Cup 2010 website), Richard McLennan…
FH: You are known as the man behind Adapt IT’s development of Durban’s World Cup 2010 website. How did you get started in internet technology and how did you get to here?
RM: Firstly, I have a very good team of people I work with on The Durban Host City Website, I am just one of the cogs in the machine so to speak. In terms of how I got here, it’s a fairly long story so I’ll keep it short and in point form:
· Raised here on the North Coast in the sunny hamlet of Umhlanga Rocks. After school spent 2 years in the SA Navy as a diver.
· Three years crewing on ‘Superyachts’ in the Med and Caribbean, before returning to SA, completed my Dive Instructor as well as Commercial Diver certifications. Taught Commercial Diving for a year at Durban’s PDI, great job, crap money. Moved on to IMMAC shipping for 6 months as Dive Supervisor, good money, crap job
· After a number of close underwater calls decided enough was enough and thought a career in the IT world looked far more promising… honestly, what’s the worst that can happen when you drive a PC for a living? Completed a Diploma in Visual Basic 5 whilst working as a diver
· Early 1999 headed off to Manchester UK to pursue my IT career, gave myself 3 months to get a programmer job with plan B being hitting the North Sea Diver. Blagged my way into a web developer role for a small new media company, quickly taught myself HTML, CSS, JavaScript and in those days Paintshop Pro
* Landed a web developer role for a very funky new media agency in London called Wheel where I ran a Development Team, jumped ship to a customer, the wonderful Marks & Spencer. Had an awesome couple of years at M&S helping build their very successful –ecommerce business.
· Headhunted by Monsoon Accessorise to setup their e-commerce business which I ran for 2 years
· After Sarah and I had son Connor in October 2006, we decided in early 2007 it was time to return to SA, work/life balance had become a lot more important to me…
· Three weeks after arriving back in SA, I joined a secret Old Mutual initiative building a new direct insurance and home loan business. Unfortunately, 12 months later we pulled the plug due to the global credit crisis and recession, a real pity as the products would have been groundbreaking for the SA market
· Approached by Adapt IT in Jan 2009 to programme manage the Durban 2010 web project
FH: OK. Straight into the question everybody wants answered! Adapt IT took a lot of flak for the 2010 website which, some said, did not give value for the amount of Durban ratepayers’ money spent on the project… how would you counter that assertion?
RM: It’s funny, everyone has heard of Adapt IT and the Durban 2010 Website, “oh ja, the R6.5 million website, what’s up with that?”
