When I arrived in Cape
town 4 weeks ago, one of the first things I did was to rent a motorcycle. This
trip would not exist if there wasn’t going to be a bike. Simple as that. Why the
hell would I get a car here? I have noticed lately that whenever I drive a car
in Montreal, or any city, my mood changes for the worst. I get impatient, I get
angry, I get upset from minimal irritants that just wouldn’t chip away at me otherwise. Riding is just the best. I’ve described my feelings about
riding in another blog entry 5 years ago (Live to ride, ride to live) and I
haven’t changed my mind. The experience is just so much more pleasant that the
ride becomes just as important as the destination. All your senses are being
stimulated: you feel the road, you smell your environment, your view is
unhindered from being caged in a metal box, you hear everything from the inner
workings of your machine to the conversations of the passersby… and, sometimes,
you even taste the dust. You are connected. You are part of something greater.
It’s almost a spiritual experience. It certainly is one of the only moments
where the thoughts racing in my head suddenly stop and allow me to just be.
It’s meditation.
And when you meditate,
might as well meditate in style! So I rented a 2003 Honda Africa twin. This
means jack shit to most people. But for those who know… It’s a classic. The
bike gained notoriety thanks to its domination in the Paris-Dakar rallyes in
the late 80’s and because of its striking large bug-eyed double headlights.
It’s a good road/off-road machine with trustworthy engineering. As would any 14
year-old bikes however, the one I got had a few wrinkles and battle scars, but
was nevertheless a sturdy machine that would see me through my adventures.
With the ability to
drive and park anywhere with ease, discovering a city with a bike becomes a lot
of fun especially if that city’s public transit is mediocre. Because of its
Esmeralda qualities, Cape town has plenty of little gems to discover. Mabu
Vinyls is one of them. Like a true cavern of Ali-Baba, it is chock full of
little vinyl marvels which I could have easily spent an entire day sifting
through only a small fraction of them. I will have to visit again with a better
game plan… House of the Machines is a coffee place by day, live music bar by
night, and a biker hangout to boot. Always sweet rides to ogle at while sipping
on your liquid addiction of choice. Dapper is the car version of House of the Machines
although without the bar and live music. It teamed up with Club 9, a detailing
service, which thus allows you to sip your coffee in the company of Ferraris,
Porsches, or classic Mercedes. The Vic, is a bar that serves mean gourmet
pizzas and plays folk and rock vinyls for your enjoyment. And then there are coffee
shops.
Cape town has a strong
coffee culture. Borderline hipster snobbish. But damn that coffee is good! My
personal favorites include Origin, Bean There, Espresso Lab, Haas, Yours Truly, and Truth.
Truth is supposedly one of the, or the,
best coffee places in the world as determined by some completely non-rational
or scientific method. But despite my sarcasm, and the slightly ridiculous
steam-punk theme they have going on, their coffee speaks for itself. Do you
remember that time when you discovered there was an unexpected world of quality
in everyday things you had taken for granted? Seems like people are disconnected with the items or foods they use everyday. That people have no idea how an engine works or how your food got to you plate. Probably an unfortunate side
effect of the pervasive consumerism attitude of buying-new rather than trying
to fix things; or that technology has advanced so much that one simply can’t be
expected to know the inner workings of everything;
or that curiosity has suffered from a society of brats who want everything now.
Not sure. But it does provide some bumbling idiots like me the pleasure
of new discoveries occasionally. It's such a wonderful feeling. It combines intense pleasure and satisfaction while opening the door to a new universe full of those sensations. That first sip of a craft beer when all you
knew was Budweiser/Molson/Labatt? French/Swiss/Quebec artisan cheeses when all
you knew were Kraft singles? Or even as you become a home owner, when something
breaks, and you suddenly realize there is a LOT more that goes into [insert furniture/appliance/decoration/structural
element of choice] than you ever thought? (Yes there is satisfaction from knowledge of your house's inner workings). This was the world of coffee for me
until just recently. Because of my obsessive curiosity (the same one that makes
me spend 3 hours on Wikipedia and wonder how the hell I went from looking up “JFK”
to “Papayas”) I just had to get a
barista class. Because if get into something new, might as well turn myself in
an annoying know-it-all snob that doesn’t actually know much but thinks he
does. That’s how it works right? Looking forward to annoy you when I get home!
In the trauma unit,
patients come in and out. Shot, stabbed, hammered and hammer-ed. I guess there
was a hammer sale somewhere. What was once an obscure science is now becoming
second nature. Lately, I have worked with a South African resident called Soha.
She did her medical school in Johannesburg and worked in the same hospital I
had worked in 5 years ago. We had the same experiences, saw the same tragedies,
worked with the same surgeons and their (lets be politically correct here)
“character traits”. Soha and I hit it off. As more penetrating trauma patients
came in, we developed a second natured synergy and worked to each other’s
strength. Being fairly adept with an ultrasound probe, even one as worn down,
damaged, and basic as the one available here, people quickly dubbed me the “Canadian
ultrasound guy”. With this recognized expertise, I quickly accumulated chest
drain procedures which I eventually started punting over to the med students
(with significant supervision of course).
At the mid point of a
weekend shift, I got thirsty. Thirsty for a little more than just water. So I
headed to the waiting room where several vending machines could be found.
Without much thought, I opted for an orange Fanta drink without much thought. I
took a sip and was immediately hit by a flashback. I remembered doing night
shifts in Johannesburg. The weekends were particularly violent and the trauma bay
was always full of patients. You barely had time to finish taking care of one
that someone in even worse condition would be brought in. It was exhausting. By
5am however, things would start slowing down enough for you to realize you hadn’t
eaten or drank anything since starting. You would sometimes also realize at
that point that you were drenched in sweat. So I developed a routine of
drinking an orange fanta at 5am in Joburg. Olfactory memory (or in this case,
taste) is so powerful. What’s fun about it too is that it can be very
unpredictable. It hits you when you least expect it and floods your mind of a million
memories before you even know what hit you. All that from an orange fanta.
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