Best 9 hours of the week

My week started with a 9 hour trip down to Upington to deliver a Caravelle bus to Russell Nugent, a super fast Ironman athlete who's also been to Kona before.

Lucky for me DJ joined me on the trip and it was just great as we had so much time to just talk and have fun. At times she would plug in her Ipod but not for long before she sees something next to the road and will ask me or tell me something about it.

She also took the video camera along and I still need to see if any of the odd 25 video clips is blog material.

It was the first time for me and obviously for her that we visited Upington and also drove through that part of our Country and she was just amazed by all the small town she didn't even know exists. DJ really enjoyed the town name, Sannieshof. When she first saw the sign she thought it was a joke and was laughing her but off.

We also had a great laugh at one of the road works stop and go areas. We were the last car and the worker handed me a flag and asked me to just hand it to the worker on the other side a few kilometers further. He will then know the last car has past. DJ had all the joke about the flag, from keeping it and just drive on to playing and waving it.

Some pictures of our road trip:

The initial plan for me was that I would drive down on my own, until Sunday afternoon. After the soccer world cup match we were talking about the week ahead and my trip to Upington on Monday.

Without even thinking DJ said she wants to come along. I explained to her how far it is but apparently the 900 kilometers didn't bother her. We had such a great laugh when she made the following remark: "It's not everyday that one can visit Upington you know"

I said to her if her mother say yes, she can come. Kim agreed and within 10 minutes I booked her a ticket to fly back with me after we delivered the Bus and it was done.

Monday was an early start for us at 3am, and we were on the road at 4am to be in Upington at 1pm.

We arrived 30 minutes later than planned but I was happy as we had a lot of road works to deal with, which slowed us down.

We met Russel and his family and had lunch with them before me and Russell went to his Business (his an optometrist) to do some business while DJ was entertained my Russell's three daughters.

That evening we flew back at 5:30 and was back in Johannesburg at 6:30. The dealership brought me a car to the airport and we only had another hour to drive back to Witbank.

I was really surprised that DJ was awake the entire day but about half an hour before we reached home she just became very silent and when I looked again she was gone.

She was so excited about the whole trip and even told me in the plane when we flew back that she thinks we must move to Upington. I think having three friends to play with the whole afternoon influenced her decision a bit and with school holidays being extra long this year due to the World Cup I think she also misses her school friends.

When we flew back we realized we took all these pictures but forgot to take one of Upington, ah well next time.

Training wise I couldn't train Monday but the rest of the week I am back to normal and the hours are slowly building up again to Ironman level, currently I only manage between 6 and 8 hours a week but all of them are very specific and qualty hours.