Starting from the Beginning - Arrival Johannesburg Thurs Sept 20, 2012

Finally catching my breath, and starting to catch up. I'll be posting my notes, pictures, links and maps as I get caught up. I'll post most of the pictures to my albums on Facebook, but since they're public if I have the links here anyone can access them. This will save me in captioning things in numerous places. Anyway - I know I posted already about the first couple of days but since I'm trying to organize myself, I'm going to go day by day here... Thanks for tuning in!

Arrival back in Johannesburg - Thursday, Sept 20, 2012

Donna and I were dropped off from our safari at the OR Tambo City Lodge Hotel to a whirlwind of activity - as the only new participant this year, I must admit, I felt a bit out of place at first, but the warm and welcoming South Africans treated me like an old friend. We were assigned rooms and roommates and given a brief time to check into our rooms before our first official group meeting. It was at that meeting that I began to realize the kind of production that I was now a part of. As the crew were introduced - professional photographers, videographers, sound engineers, a public relations consultant, 2 medics with their own ambulance that would be traveling with us, 3 Triumph employees (2 who would ride with us as marshalls/blockers and a third to coordinate activities behind the scenes as well as drive the Triumph van with the trailer) 4 cars plus a gear van, as well as full time coordinators for all of this activity, AND on top of that, the 'talent'. I was absolutely blown away. There were as many crew as there were riders/survivors coming to a grand total of 50 for this entire entourage. An amazing amount of work and planning had been taking place throughout the year that I was totally unaware of. To be honest, I left that initial meeting in a bit of a daze - with packages full of shirts, riding gear, gifts from Revlon and Triumph and others - that I was now having to worry about fitting into my already pretty full bags! To say I was feeling overwhelmed would be putting it very lightly! Thankfully Lee De Jager, a lovely and spirited young (33 yr old) breast cancer survivor was assigned my roommate and as a veteran Cancer.vive participant, was extremely helpful in getting me sorted out and up to speed. We stayed up talking and (re)packing and preparing for the coming days until the wee hours - the first of many late nights and early mornings that came to be the norm for the entire trip! Little wonder there was not a spare moment to write or work with my photos. We were scheduled within an inch of our lives every day. After the meeting it was up to the roof to learn the gumboot dance that we would be performing for the crowds during every show of the week. Poor John was an absolute saint in being so patient with a bunch of us clutzes trying to coordinate our stomping and slapping with various degrees of success! lol.

Some background on the gumboot dancing (which is well known in South Africa, but was completely foreign to me!)

It was conceived by black miners in South Africa as an alternative to drumming—which authorities restricted. The sounds would be codes to say something to another person a short distance away. It was basically used to communicate in the mines as there was strictly no talking. The wearing of the boots was a solution to a problem of often flooded gold mines in which men otherwise stood in knee-deep water at their work stations. Many of the steps and routines are parodies of the officers and guards who controlled the mines and workers' barracks, and the percussive sounds are made by stomping and slapping the boots while performing the dance.

No pictures from this first night or links to anything - just warming up here. Stay tuned...