A Couple of bike rides my parents would disapprove of

So one of the best parts of our mozambique trip is that I now have a lot of new south african friends, in particular ones who like to hike and bike, perfect i'll get to check out some really cool places around here that aren't in the guidebooks. So one thursday I agreed to go with my friend nick mountain biking, he had a friend who could lend me a bike. we met at school, he had told me he could give me a ride to the trail, I niavely thought he meant that he had a car. we walk through the parking lot to of course... a 1970 motorcycle "ugh nick i'm not riding on the back of this" "com'on of course you are, why wouldn't you??" "ah because I've never ridden a motorbike before and i think they're crazy" "oh don't worry it's easy just keep your wait centered" "what happens if i don't keep my weight centered" "we crash silly" perfect. next thing i know i'm on the back of this thing flying through capetown with an iron grip on nicks shoulders begging to be allowed to walk. we were successful in getting to nicks house where there was of course his car. needless to say i insisted on taking the car after that.
We get to the trail head meet up with Nick's friend Rob, who had the bike for me, he pulls out this aging bike that looks well, rather fragile, but i am so excited to go biking that I hop right on, then the next bit of bad news hits "ugh dude we forgot your helmet, that's okay right" perfect, before i can really contemplate that ridiculous concept, i discover that the brakes are reversed meaning that the brake lever i am instinctively used to gripping in an emergency is no longer the rear brake but the first break. well no big deal we're just going to climb a mountain and then descend, on the way up i won't need brakes or a helmet and on the way down I would just go slow and cautious.
now it has been a while since i've mountain biked, and heading straight up a mountain is probably not the easiest way to "get back into it" but after 1 and a half torturous hours of climbing through the most amazing scenery overlooking cape town we finally made it to the down hill, at this point i could barely feel my legs and i was feeling like I might have sweated out every ounce of liquid out of my body, but i had made it. now the downhill, then i can go and rehydrate. well easier said than done, i guess it is obvious to anyone else that an hour and a half of climbing is not a quick descent. But i was up for the challenge, thinking it would be mainly fire roads, well that was silly, this is Africa after all. I quickly realize that it is a really tight singletrack (just think shoulder to shoulder) and that every fifty meters or so there is a rather large jump or drop. what more could i ask for if i had a helmet and functioning breaks that weren't reversed. my parents would have been rather proud seeing how cautiously I went down the mountain, i even got off and walked to the laughter of the others. But it was amazing can't wait to do it again, perhaps with a helmet though.
Besides that things here in SA have been rather quiet, we went to a jungle themed party which was an excuse to buy some traditional dress shirts, we've been in the middle of some really creepy minibus territory wars including one where our driver hit one of the rival minibus money collectors (they are always leaving the car running around the street trying to get you to go to a area called "wynberg" which I can only imagine what it is like) but instead of apologizing or even just moving on he gets out of the van and runs screaming after him, perhaps the funniest part of this was that as he got out of the drivers seat he dropped his bottle of booze on the ground in front of him. then the other day one of our housemates Perris was almost arrested while in a taxi that turned out to be smuggling drugs. oh and perhaps the best part of the week was when I got ready to make my triumphant return to the Russian empire. I go to the consulate at 2:30 knowing they close at 5 thinking to myself what perfect timing this was. I go up to the consulate and open the door, the receptionist behind the desk looks at me like i just slapped her in the face or something, I try to recover with a smile, "hi I'm here to apply for a visa" "no" "okay why not" "we're closed" of course "what time do you reopen?" naively thinking that it was lunch break "tomorrow" "okay could i just leave my application and everything here?" "no! you come back tomorrow" well that makes sense, should be a fun trip to russia! ellski