Floating zebra alert

Every so often, we go serious on 6000 miles… and we document something in the public interest.
This is one of those days.

Please, please be aware of the dangers of floating zebras. This young lady was fortunate that she was over water when she realised that she was soaring away attached to a floating zebra. Luckily, she was also wearing suitable attire for her escape from this terrifying ordeal.

Hopefully, she had a safe landing.

Recent research by the University of Birmingham suggested that each year, worldwide, up to 48 people are carried away by floating zebras.

These people are never seen again. Never.
And all because they foolishly chose to become involved with a drifting equid.

KNOW THE RISKS. 

Photo credit

Late again

Home from a hectic day at work to a hectic evening at home, mainly involving a jungle gym, a yellow barrel and a golf ball.
Don’t ask.

And then dinner and a few episodes of Big Bang Theory. Yes, it’s American and therefore should be rubbish, but the science angle makes it personally relevant and therefore amusing. It concerns me that I identify with certain traits of some of the characters though. (I’m not saying which traits or characters, since the vast majority of the protagonists are completely socially dysfunctional.)
I was going to add a random photo to this post from the Flickr Explore “last 7 days of interestingness”, but they are all photographs of a certain genre – too “mucked about with” (photoshopped) and unnecessarily arty for my liking. So disappointing.

So instead I searched for something from the Isle of Man groups, where I came across this:

group

which appears to be the least successful attempt at a swingers ad ever.

I also found a misplaced sunset picture (taken in Worcestershire) which would make a lovely quota photo. It was heavily copyrighted though, so appropriate permissions have been sought – hopefully you look out for that another day.

Five years

Yesterday, Mrs 6000 and I celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary and – having survived the meal I cooked for us last night – we headed out to Franschhoek for some real food at Delaire on the Helshoogte Mountain Pass between Stellenbosch and Franschhoek this lunchtime.
And wow. What a treat.

The architecture, the views, the ambiance, the food, the wine, the service all rated as five star. Sure, it was expensive, but we could have paid the same for a meal in one of the Waterfront’s tourist traps and only got three stars for our money (at best). And we really don’t get the chance to do this sort of thing very often: memorably, our first anniversary was spent looking after a five day old baby. Our third was spent with the wife too pregnant to enjoy any sort of celebration. I remember having to drink all the wine that day and I did my best to relive that experience again today.

The journey home along the N2 was punctuated with 130kph photo opportunities, all of which seemed irresistible thanks to the 750ml of Rainbow’s End Cabernet Franc 2007 I had imbibed.

Seriously though, if you’re looking for somewhere a bit special for lunch, I cannot recommend Delaire highly enough. We’ll certainly be returning for a longer visit (involving more food and wine tasting) next time we’re out Franschhoek way.  

More photos from today are on Flickr.