Forest wars

Ok not really, not "wars" as such, metaphorical wars about who is bigger. A world wide biggest forest by city pissing competition, held in cyberspace. Yes, that's metaphorical too.

The city of Johannesburg is supposed to have the largest inhabited, man made forest in the world. Have, be, you know what i mean. So of course, because every knows it's true, someone has to come along and prove it wrong, it's how us humans work. We're NOT the largest inhabited, man made forest in the world, they say. We're big, and foresty, and well, we don't inhabit the trees as such, but well, we like them a lot, they'll tell us some more. We just grew a lot of them, really forest, i mean fast, and, it's a mistake, of some sort.

So then came along:

Nechama Brodie argues that while Johannesburg may not be the “largest man-made forest in the world” it can claim to be the “largest man-made urban forest”.

Yes, she know a hell of a lot more about this than i do, in her words:

It just takes a lot more digging, using a Google spade.

My kinda gal.

My Spidey senses, for what they are worth,

Research at it's finest. Anyhow, names and numbers are presented and parsed, and the conclusion is unanimously:

Given that, and given all of the other cities listed and mentioned above, it appears that Johannesburg is the largest man-made urban forest in the world.

Well done Johannesburgers. And Nechama Brodie.

Think Bike

This is a great effort! With all the crash footage around they can run a long way with this theme. And yes, it's the message clearly needs to be put out there to those who are considering riding a motorbike. 

Another suicide laner hit the deck yesterday, and another seperate bike crash (unconfirmed) today. Both on my 30km stretch to work and back. And i hear the same arguments about why people think the suicide lane is safer, against all argument, against all advice from those who have done it before ... 

What gets me the angriest,  is the fact that these guys actually mess up the biker lane, my biker lane to be sure, but the same one that would be safer for them, if they could only see it. The goodwill from cars every day really astonishes me, and in a twisted way, i'm the only person on earth who sees it. 

Blanket run

Be a hero on Sunday 19th May and join the Kids In Dire Straits Blanket Run. H.O.G. Johannesburg in collaboration with Mix FM, Round Table and Brightwater Commons are inviting all Bikers to participate in this charity event to assist children with blankets for the coming winter.

It was a damn fine event. Well done to all.

Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches?

"Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches of other lives-
tried to imagine what the crisp fringes, full of honey,
hanging from the branches of the young locust trees,
in early morning, feel like?

Do you think this world was only an entertainment for you?

Never to enter the sea and notice how the water divides
with perfect courtesy, to let you in!
Never to lie down on the grass, as though you were the grass!
Never to leap to the air as you open your wings over
the dark acorn of your heart!

No wonder we hear, in your mournful voice, the complaint
that something is missing from your life!

Who can open the door who does not reach for the latch?
Who can travel the miles who does not put one foot
in front of the other, all attentive to what presents itself continually?
Who will behold the inner chamber who has not observed
with admiration, even with rapture, the outer stone?

Well, there is time left -
fields everywhere invite you into them.
And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away
from wherever you are, to look for your soul?
Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk!

To put one's foot into the door of the grass,
which is the mystery, which is death as well as life,
and not be afraid!
To set one's foot in the door of death,
and be overcome with amazement!

To sit down in front of the weeds, and imagine
god the ten-fingered, sailing out of his house of straw,
nodding this way and that way, to the flowers of the present hour,
to the song falling out of the mockingbird's pink mouth,
to the tippets of the honeysuckle, that have opened in the night,
To sit down, like a weed among weeds, and rustle in the wind!

Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?

While the soul, after all, is only a window,
and the opening of the window no more difficult
than the wakening from a little sleep.

Only last week I went out among the thorns and said
to the wild roses: deny me not, but suffer my devotion.
Then, all afternoon, I sat among them.
Maybe I even heard a curl or tow of music, damp and rouge red,
hurrying from their stubby buds, from their delicate watery bodies.

For how long will you continue to listen to those dark shouters,
caution and prudence?
Fall in! Fall in!

A woman standing in the weeds.
A small boat flounders in the deep waves,
and what's coming next is coming with its own heave and grace.

Meanwhile, once in a while, I have chanced, among the quick things,
upon the immutable.
What more could one ask?

And I would touch the faces of the daises,
and I would bow down to think about it.

That was then, which hasn't ended yet.

Now the sun begins to swing down. Under the peach-light,
I cross the fields and the dunes, I follow the ocean's edge.
I climb, I backtrack. I float.
I ramble my way home."

~ Mary Oliver,
"West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems"


runningcauseicantfly

Been too long

Hi, just hi.
Been a while since i had anything to post, or maybe it was the time to post, having the opportunity and will, and the same time.
hmmm. In the meanwhile:

www.motogymkhana.co.za

peace and love