The end of the year 2014 draws near, and so the annual blog post is written! Last year, I commented that it had "been a fairly quiet and uneventful year". This year was determined to make sure that 2013 was not the start of any trend!
The year got off to a very good start in February with my 50th birthday. Liz came out from the Isle of Man for that, and we had a very nice celebration with friends and family on the weekend before my birthday with a champagne breakfast at the Fish River Sun (a golf resort hotel on the coast, about 80km/50 miles from Grahamstown). That evening we enjoyed an ABBA tribute concert at the Monument Theatre, by a very talented band from Port Elizabeth. On my birthday itself, we had a quiet family dinner together before Liz and I left for Cape Town the next day.
The plan was for her and I to do some sightseeing in the Western Cape for a week and for me to ride in the Cape Argus Cycle Tour again (it would have been my third Argus). That started off quite well with a lovely weekend spent enjoying some of the sights in and around Simonstown where we were staying with some good friends of mine, Madeleine and Laurence. However, on the Monday we decided to tackle the hike up Lion's Head, which I had done the year before. On our way up I started to experience some discomfort from a hernia I had been living with quite happily for several months. By the time we got down the mountain (and we had turned around about a third of the way up), I was in considerable discomfort. I survived some gentle wandering around Signal Hill, but almost fainted over lunch at the V&A Waterfront, so we cut the day's activities short and headed back to Simonstown. A half hour lying down restored normal service, fortunately, but the experience left me a little concerned about my chances of successfully riding 110km (66 miles) on the following Sunday.
On the Tuesday, we had a very gentle day exploring the Cape Point Nature Reserve (and enjoying a magnificent lunch at the restaurant there), which I managed with no problems. That evening we went into Cape Town and saw
The Sound of Music stage production at the Artscape Opera House with Madeleine and Laurence, which was excellent. On Wednesday, I went for a short training ride (in very windy conditions), which did not go well — the first time I had experienced any trouble from the hernia on the bike. The rest of the day was spent very quietly at home in Simonstown.
On Thursday, we had a fairly busy day, as I had appointments to see two part-time Masters students who are based in Cape Town, we wanted to go up Table Mountain, which had been closed on Monday due to high winds, and I needed to visit the Argus Cycle Expo to pick up my race number and details for the race on the Sunday. We were also due to have dinner with some friends of mine, but by late afternoon I was in a lot of pain, so we cancelled dinner and headed back down to Simonstown. The usual trick of lying down for half an hour didn't work its usual magic, and after several hours we headed into the emergency room where I was diagnosed with an incarcerated (but fortunately, not strangulated) hernia, which would require surgical intervention. I was admitted to a ward, and spent a very uncomfortable night before seeing a surgeon in the morning, and having the operation in the afternoon. My dear sister was left with the tough task of managing all of this in a strange city in a strange country, but did very well with the help of Madeleine and Laurence. I was also very fortunate to have several visitors, including Jan and Hazel from Pretoria (my good friend Theo's parents — Jan was down to ride the Argus), and a pastoral visit from John Broom (the pastor of the church I had attended in Harare as a teenager).
I ended up watching fragments of the Argus on TV from a hospital bed, rather than riding it! I was discharged on the Sunday afternoon, and returned to Simonstown to recuperate. Liz left on the Monday night, on a direct flight from Cape Town to the UK. By the end of the week, I was judged fit enough to travel, but not to drive, so my father flew down to Cape Town and drove me back, with a stop-over in the town of George (almost exactly half-way between Cape Town and Grahamstown). While a rather unexpected and unpleasant turn of events, it did at least force the issue of when to get the hernia repaired, and the recovery thereafter was fairly steady. By early April, I was fit enough to travel up to Pretoria for a few days during the short vacation, and I was starting to ride my bike again by May.
The next big event of the year (and definitely a major highlight) was a trip to the USA in June. The main reason for that was to attend the wedding of Jared, the son of very good friends of mine, Colin and Janet. Having bottle-fed Jared as a baby in Grahamstown, it was rather hard to adjust to the idea that he was now getting married in California to a lovely young American woman, Jessica (who I had met the previous year on a visit to the USA)! At the same time, Erin, Colin and Janet's daughter, was graduating from high school, and Bryn, their other son, was graduating from university, so there were plenty of good reasons to head to California for three weeks. I arrived (at midnight thanks to some chaotic flight scheduling by United Airlines!) just after Erin's actual graduation, but in time for the party. Shortly thereafter we headed down to San Luis Obispo (better known as SLO) for Bryn's grad, where we stayed for several days in a very nice holiday home in Morro Bay (on the coast, near SLO). Bryn had done very well and received several awards at various events and ceremonies during the graduation weekend.
We had a few days back home, before heading up to Lake Tahoe for Jared and Jessica's wedding. Again, we stayed over for several days in a lovely holiday home in the woods alongside Lake Tahoe. One of the first events was the rehearsal, which is traditionally (in the US) followed by a dinner hosted by the groom's parents. Colin and Janet had decided on a USA/SA theme, and so braaied/barbecued boerewors and hamburgers, followed by melktert and apple pie. (Finding good boerewors in the USA isn't too easy, so Colin had been experimenting with making his own, with very successful results by the time of the rehearsal dinner — we had been guinea pigs for several iterations leading up to that!). The wedding itself took place in a State Park on the banks of the lake — a beautiful setting for a lovely celebration.
Shortly thereafter I had to return to South Africa (and a pile of exam marking, as I had been away during most of the June examination period!).
My roles at work have been "interesting" this past year. I had resumed the position of Head of Department in January, rather sooner than expected, due to the early retirement of Richard Foss. He actually retired at the end of April, but is continuing with his research, so is still very involved in the Department (in fact, we eventually had a retirement dinner for him at the end of June, just after my return from the US!). The next twist was the announcement at the end of July that the Dean of Science would be retiring early to take up a post at a new university being established in Mpumulanga (a province in the North-East of South Africa). After some discussion, I stepped into the role of Acting Dean of Science while the Faculty works through the process of electing a new Dean. That has meant stepping out of the Department for a few months and getting involved in much more University and Faculty management than previously. I have found the experience very challenging, but also very rewarding, and running for Dean is probably something I would consider at some future stage of my career. As I write the election process has hit something of a speed-bump (a second-round, run-off election did not produce the required majority for either candidate), but we should have a new Dean in place within the first few months of 2015.
In general, it has been an "interesting" year at work, as there have been several staffing changes at the top levels of the University. Most significantly, the Vice Chancellor resigned in the middle of the year to take up a position at an international philanthropic funding organisation based in New York. The University then embarked on an extensive selection process, which resulted in one of the Deputy Vice Chancellor's, Dr Sizwe Mabizela, being appointed as the new VC (and opening up a vacancy for a new DVC!). Sizwe was previously the Head of the Department of Mathematics before becoming DVC, and is an excellent appointment for the position of VC, a very humble, hard-working, and focused leader.
Getting back to personal matters, having missed the Argus in March, I had lost my preferential seeded starting position for the 2015 Argus. One way to regain that is to ride in one of several other recognised seeding events. After weighing up some of the options, my friend Chris and I entered the Amashova race in Durban in October. We loaded up our bikes on the back of my car and headed up to Durban on a Friday, where we stayed with an old school friend of Chris', Gavin, and his family. On the Saturday morning we had to collect race numbers, etc. from the end point of the race, the Suncoast Casino Hotel on the Durban beachfront. In the afternoon, we got to explore why the Durban suburb of Kloof has that name! It is built around a large kloof (ravine), with a nature reserve and an extensive network of running and walking trails. On the Sunday morning, we were up before dawn to get Gavin and his son to the start of the 60km Amashova race, before his wife dropped Chris and I off in Pietermaritzburg for the start of the full 106km race. The race itself was "interesting"! According to the route map, Pietermaritzburg is at about 600m altitude (about 2000ft) and the end of the race is essentially at sea-level, so the race should mainly be downhill, or so you would think. I have no idea how the route designers managed to find a route that goes from 600m to 0m while managing to be uphill almost all the way! It was a hard ride, and, a little more seriously, involves more climbing than the Argus (which essentially starts and ends at the same level). Anyway, Chris and I finished it, in a reasonably respectable time of 4 hours and 45 minutes, which hopefully will give us a reasonably early start time for the Argus next year.
November and December generally passed in a bit of a blur of exams and meetings, especially with the Dean's responsibilities of approving all the exam results for the Science Faculty (and then dealing with a deluge of questions and appeals from students once the results were published!). That has all ended with a lovely Christmas in Pretoria, with my good friends Theo and Brenda, and their son Caleb. I flew up just before Christmas and so was here for the Christmas Eve and Christmas Day services in Theo's church. After the Christmas Eve service we went to Theo's parents for coffee and Christmas present unwrapping. On Christmas Day we went through to Brenda's family in Johannesburg, along with Theo's parent and his brother and his family. That was a lovely, casual lunch followed by swimming, and more present unwrapping before coffee and Christmas pudding, and Brenda's delicious lemon meringue.
While I have been here, Theo and I have managed to fit in a couple of bike rides, and we've also had a few squash games, so at least there has been some exercise to try to counter the effects of too much good food! It's also been a very good, relaxing end to an otherwise very busy year.
So, as the year draws to an end, I'd like to take this opportunity to wish you and all those you love a very Happy New Year, and may 2015 be a happy and blessed year for you all.
