You have to hand it to Jan. Today he finished his twentieth Cape Argus Pick n Pay Cycle Tour (not the biggest mouth full I’ve had today, but close), stopping repeatedly en route to interview fellow cyclists, and, despite assuring me that it’d been precisely 364 days since he last rode a bicycle, still managed to finish in a very respectable time of four hours. He even found time to grab a quick boerie with Frans at the designated braaiplek on Suikerbossie. Maybe that’s his secret.
Whatever his training regiment – cardio or carnivorous – the man has mad gees for the braai. With the cycle tour complete, and not content with just the one braai under his belt for the day, we headed up the cableway for a proper Table Mountain send-off and a fantastic sunset meat-fest (there was, admittedly, some rather good salad as well) at the lower station.
Apparently the staff braai spot at the lower cableway is rarely used and I can’t imagine why. With the sun dipping slowly over Lion’s Head and Harry (the Table Mountain Aerial Cableway Company’s head chef) laying ‘AAA’ graded lamb chops over the coals, I found I could quite easily forget that this was already my third braai of the weekend and all my waistline-related misgivings drifted, for a few happy moments, out of my mind.
We never did establish exactly what a lamb chop has to endure to deserve a ‘AAA’ rating, but they certainly tasted worthy of all those As. If this is just the hors d’oeuvres before the main event even gets out of Cape Town – the pre-departure snack, if you like, before 40 days of consecutive braaing – then I am in some serious trouble. There’s just no way I’m going to be able to get stuck into the salads with this sort of quality meat on offer.
I think I’d better go pack some running shoes.
Actually, I think I’d better go buy some running shoes.
Clearly those misgivings are very firmly back.
