Cellar Rats Winter Wine Festival 2010 - Hic

This weekend our Frisky Foursome decided it was a good time to visit the Cellar Rats Winter Wine Festival in the Magaliesburg. (It’s right opposite “Happy acres” – now we know how it got its name?)

[[Onwards!!]]

Ursh was brought along to stay sober and drive everyone home, Michelle and Sharon were there to taste the wines, repeatedly if necessary (They are very noble that way), and I was there to… I’m sure there was a good reason…

[[I had to take a pic of this! This is the stamp you get when you aren't drinking, aka got in free. Me? A designated driver? The world trembles!!!]]

The festival itself was a small collection of stalls inviting you to, after paying an entrance fee, sample the many wines on offer. I’m told the Spring Festival is almost three times larger and that must be something, for although this one was small, the booze flowed fast and freely.

[["I'll have this one please!"]]

We set up a nice little picnic spot (Mostly for Jo's to munch at and for everyone else to take a break between wine splurging). Because there was also a rugby game on, there were not that many people there, which made finding a spot easy and the whole thing rather pleasant.

[[Classic Jo food. Mushrooms and Habanero peppers! Num num num, and no, you can't have any! *swots hand away*]]

And then there were the wines! Actual wine, Muskadels, ports, brandies, Sherries, grappa and all sorts of intoxications waiting to be tried! And try them they did! Ursh and I “sampled” liquor via our noses! And before your head fills with silly but interesting images of us snorting up various liquids, no, we mealy sniffed at the wines to give an opinion that ran along the lines of “Oh! That does smell nice!” or “Ugh! No! Get it away!!!” (I always thought it a rip that my eyes weren’t so good but instead of getting supersonic hearing or telekinetics as a make up, I just got a great sense of smell…)

[[Honeybush? Nougat? What a variety, and this is just one table!!]]

I noticed that as the day wore on so the crowds became rather merry! Luckily the people there weren’t the drunken brawling kind and everyone seemed to be having a really good time! (By the way some kept going back to the stalls over and over, it was a really, REALLY good time!)

[[And who can say no, besides me, to an after action cigar?]]

In the end we made quiet a killing and walked off with a vast array of different drinks. If you walked out a bottle store with the amount we bought you’d be labeled an Alkie but at a festival well, you’re just stocking up, right?

[[I can't say how long this lot will last but if it takes us to the next festival then it's done us proud! And please note the bottle of pesto bought! I'm sure that's a sign that we're not total booze hounds?]]

I’m rather keen now to see the Spring Festival! By any chance will I see you there?

^_^

The Ballad of Barry

Ello!

I've moved the some what disturbing, but oddly catchy, rhyming "Ballad of Barry" to my humerous poems blog instead. Because yes, it rhymes, ergo it is a poem, how wonderfully observant! If you'd like to read / reread it, follow this magical link to the wonderful world of mildly demented poetry...

http://notdeepcrap.blogspot.com/

4,3,2,1 CLARENS!!

Bright and Early Saturday Morning and our quirky Quartet were once again on the move to adventure!
We were:-
-4 Fantastic Females (Ursh (Avatar), Me (Sparkyjo), Michelle (Hells belle) and Sharon (Sharon – she’s a nickname in progress) on
-3 Awesome bikes (A Honda CD 200 (Duran), A Honda CBX250 Twister (Trouble) and a Kawasaki Ninja 250(Beast), on our way
-2 just
-1 destination…Clarens! (A small mountainous, arty town in the Free State.)

The ride was both better and worse then we anticipated. Going down we found the long ride to be rather straining on our muscles and definitely noticeable in the rear section, but not too bad as a whole.

Until we hit the R26 that is.
A rather small, narrow road for a main road, the blasted thing had more pits and potholes then the moon (though less American flags) The grand canyon would have felt impressed by some of those holes and the ‘all-but-trees’ growing out of them! At one point Ursh looked a bit like a dancing puppet, sticking this leg out, (to show the other riders the dangers), then that one, then both, then that one, then her third one… O_O


[[This was basically what I saw for most of the trip. A pillion rider doesn't get to see forward though I could strain to the left and right. Mostly though I watched that tag flutter gently in the breeze...]]

The road goes on for kilometer after kilometer after kilometer after kilometer, with helpful signs that say “Potholes for 5km!” that, once you’d driven the 5km, popped up again telling you, “Potholes for 5km!”
We passed nothing but wide open beige fields of dead grass, with so many varieties of cows that if we’d been agricultural students we’d probably have been wetting our knickers in excitement.


[[]This was our view, add or subtract a cow or two]]

We eventually had to stop to rest our weary muscles at the first and only place we could. (A stone taxi shelter littered with booze bottles and fragrant with the smell of vast amount of urine).


[[At the shelter stretching our bits! That blasted backpack, I swear for every ten kilometers it gained half a kilo in weight!]]

But once we hit Bethlehem it was pretty much smooth steering to Clarens, where we picked up our keys to the place and gratefully got off the bikes. (Only to end up walking around everywhere making this the ultimate fitness workout weekend! Who has buns of steel? We have buns of steel!!)


[[The view from our room window, isn't it oooh?!]]

Oh and the place we were staying though!!! It was a full on house! Marvelously yummy and worth every cent of the not exactly expensive price! It even had a fireplace and did that make us purr when the night and the cold set in!


[[I want to live here!!]]

Clarens itself is gorgeous! Everything is a mixture of quaint and arty nestled between the bosoms of some beautiful sandstone mountains. You can buy clothing, paintings by the bushel, arts, crafts and more. And why not stop at the Brewery and try their many different drinks? (and relishes like the cherry and onion marmalade? Horse radish? Or cherry jam?) Speaking of cherries, you can go to the Cherry Company and pick up just about anything you could possibly make from cherries. (And a lot of things you wouldn’t have thought possible!)


[[Some of the relishes they give you with your meal! I can't even begin to remember them all, you'll just have to come with us next time to try them!]]


[[Of course we took Jovvi food! We had to put all my mushrooms in one bag for the trip to lighten the load. Oye don't make faces they were Scrumptious!]]

(Speaking of the Brewery again, they were selling apples at R10 for 3kg and boy did I lust after those red devils! Sadly being on a bike means watching the weight you carry. So we didn’t get them and now EVERYONE who has come in contact with me for more then 5 minutes knows this tale of woe, including you! I got an awesome fluffy hat instead though which was very soothing on my acquisitive soul and already strained back muscles. It left me with some deep warm feelings…mostly in my ears)

Funny enough, though the fire was lovely, the conversation invigorating and the food tasty, we ended up going to bed around 9pm. Riding a bike like that takes it out of you!
[It is here that I should remind folk not to leave your only set of jammies on the floor of the bathroom when you shower. My pants ended up soaking wet and I had to sleep without them, which sounds so deliciously kinky but mostly just made getting out of bed to go to the loo a small form of torment.]


[[More loveliness]]

Next morning Ursh and I bounced out of bed and watched the sun and mist come up over the mountains which is very romantic in a cold, cold, cold sort of way. After a good breakfast we loaded up our bikes and prepared for the ride home. Duran, the CD 200, was a little grouchy from having been forced to sleep outside, but once on the road she recovered her pep and happily kept up with the bigger bikes, bogged down as she was with Ursh, myself and that blooming backpack I carried everywhere! Duran is an awe inspiring little bike with a lot of vooma, she really belongs in our family!


[[Getting ready to go! Ursh patiently waits for me to get on while I take the must have pic! And don't we all love saddlebags?!]]

The ride back felt a lot quicker and a lot more painful. Muscle aches that had lain dormant from the day before started raising their knobby heads and making themselves known.

Once again we hit the dreaded R26 but this time knowing what we were up against! (And if we happened to have a small incident where a grove of fine trees served as an impromptu loo well, what happens on the road stays on the road…and my blog).

I think it was only the last stretch where our rears began to make their presence felt with thunder! You’ve never seen more bum wiggling then in the last few kilometers before home, none of the vixens at teasers could shake it quiet like we did!

All in all in was a wonderful trip though! Hindsight (Or the sight of our hinds?) allows me to write this with an extra warm and rosy glow that can overlook the long hours in the bike saddle. In the end it was 100% worth it! And trust me we will be going back again! For the ride! For the adventure! For those goddamn apples!!


[[Al our bikes glistening in the sunshine and ready for whatever next adventures come calling!]]

Zom-body help!!

I like zombies.

Okay now I don’t mean I like them as in I invite them round for tea and scones or a romantic snuggle or even that I have a secret wish to be born into the Rotting Meat Clan. I just mean that, as horror villains go, I think they have the edge, even more so then Vampires!

Now I bet you’re reading that and going, “Puh-leeze!! Vampires are like so way cooler man!” Well I have two thoughts on that. One is: why are you talking like a 12 year old girl? And the other is that: Exactly!!!
If you’re totally lost now, let me explain.

See the thing is that vampires have become too cool! Every Emo kid worth his black lipstick wants to be a vampire these days. Vampires went from being slinky creatures that fed on virgins, in the dead of night, dressed in natty spats and a suit; lethally allergic to sun, garlic and wooden splinters on to young teen-like kids with tons of power and no weaknesses at all! To top it off now, instead of melting into a satisfying puddle of ash and grease when exposed to a little UV, they end up sparkling like cheap gangsta bling! Vampires are now seen as top of the food chain, cool and swanky (though they never seem to wash their hair, why is that?)

And as far as I’m concerned that’s their fatal flaw as evil villain-villains (The cool part, not the greasy hair bit). How do you see them as fear worthy if you’re wetting your skants wanting to be one?



Now zombies… ah zombies!! They’re dead, (just like vampires – it’s their modus operandi), only unlike vamps they don’t let you forget it. They smell, they rot, they moan like a 40 year old man with tooth ache, they want to eat brains (which I hear are very nutritious) but will settle for gorging on intestines. They’re often mindless, and so slow they put the creep into creepy! Zombies are gross! Zombies are yuck! Zombies don’t get invited to parties!! No one wants to be one. They are scary!!!

I mean at least with a vampire you have the chance that he’s going to fall in love with you and live on animal blood and teach you how to mind control squirrels. Or at the very least he’ll latch onto your neck like an oversized ticked and suck all your blood out before you can gasp, “Breath mint!”

Zombies are not to be reasoned with. The evil little buggers have only one goal and that is to take you down and gobble you up without even a nice dash of mustard. Granted they are a lot less immortal then vampires and a good bullet to the brain is highly effective, but they seem to like to travel in super infectious packs that always seem to out number your ammo, which is really not a good thing if you’re not the hero of the story.



And yes, they are infectious! Once they get whatever little viruses or bugs into your system, through a love nibble that takes off your ear, you will then wake up, not a cool vampire with long hair and a sudden ability to do Ju-Jitsu, but as a mindless beast with terrible body odour, a missing arm and bite marks in embarrassing places. A vampire can meld into society, go to school, buy a deluxe coffin or even get a mortgage. Seriously who’s scared of that?



So now I’m going to go watch ‘Shaun of the dead’ once more. (Cause what goes better with the undead then humour? Vampires aren’t big on cracking smiles; they’re very anal and seldom floss). Anyone not busy reading an Anne Rice novel or swooning over Edward and his mopey bunch, why not grab some popcorn and shotgun and come join me?

^_^