FOMO
noun
Fear Of Missing Out. A common, dreaded sickness most common amongst students. Often results in horrible hangovers and/or stories worth telling.
Despite only claiming student status when I’m at a golf course in search of cheaper green fees or filling in questionnaires and feeling awkward about being classified as unemployed, my studentship ended last year in October after my postgrad Accounting exams at UCT, the studies of which culminated in a rather tedious and very frustrating January where I had to study for my first set of board exams rather than spend hours in the sun on golf courses and cricket fields after a rather overcast and dreary December.
Despite my recent, against-all-odds graduation, FOMO is still very much part of my life and has proved to be a significant driving factor in my decision to spend the predominant part of the year cycling from Addis Ababa in Ethiopia to Cape Town. The flights are booked for the 19th of March and I will be met by two very good friends of mine, Matt Chennells and Thomas James Marshall Perkins (yip, British), who I got to know in my first year of UCT in Rochester – a medical res where I shattered my personal record and swam 4 lengths to relieve me from female-related frustration. The two will have been on the road for around 8 months having left from Tom’s house near London, cycled the width of Europe and in and around the Middle East, skipping around Syria because of the political and social instability. Given their audacious plans and the apparent lack of any desk time or mental exertion, how could I possibly miss out!? FOMO had struck.
I was supposed to be joined on my flight by another UCT mate, Jimmy Owen, who has since decided he can no longer sit around in Natal and wait for March and has decided to leave for Khartoum, Sudan, in mid-February. The reasons for the sudden surge of ants in his pants are most likely due to the lack of an obstacle such as January exams and the distractions of farmers league cricket - the season culminating in Pineapple Week in Port Alfred, an Eastern Cape extravaganza that is only rivalled by Boat Race in the same town, The Fish River Canoe Marathon in Cradock and, of course, Ox-Braai in Bathurst, all must-do’s in the life of any self-respecting South African. Added to the pre-tour calendar is Rhodes O-week, the possibility of an Eastern Cape golf tour of sorts and the allure of a certain blonde...
PwC, the audit firm with which I am contracted to, have been kind enough to delay the start of my articles to 2013 and, as a result, I am doing bugger-all in Haga Haga while my contemporaries slog away 5 days a week wearing Tiger clothes and counting pencils. It goes without saying that, when I do eventually go to Joburg to count things, it will be with some sense of trepidation as I will be going to a city about which I know little to nothing about filled with a stereotype that I do not like – the Ed Hardy adorned ‘boet’ who cannot help but bump his larger shoulder against yours and say: “what you looking at bru?”, or: “Do you have a problem china?”. I have, however, only heard good things from the brave Eastern Cape people who have blazed a trail north and look forward to the challenge.
When one is embroiled in conversation with another, it is inevitable that the query as to the others plans for the year pops up. When speaking to relative strangers – non Facebook friends – they are often taken off guard that I’m not in the infancy of my University career and surprised that I have been out of school since the middle part of the previous decade. I often get the feeling that the schoolkids who find this out are struck with a touch of bitterness and resentment that, using me as a proxy, they will not look more mature so long after their schooldays are over. Disappointment and surprise aside, I often try to skip over the details of the adventure by writing off the coming year as a ‘gap year’ – unless I’m trying to impress, in which case the brave, adventurous, battle-ready explorer in me milks it for all it’s worth!
Moving swiftly on in the conversation, attention is turned toward the make-up of my training regime for the 9000km excursion through Africa. Having done a 3-week cycle slash camping trip of a similar nature in Greece a few years ago with Matt, Tom and three others with relatively little to no training I am reasonably confident that my fitness will increase to acceptable levels during the early days of slow but steady cycling ‘down’ Africa with no need to get my Lance Armstrong on before boarding my plane to Addis. What I did discover in Greece - partly due to a fatal breakdown in communication that resulted in the absence of cycling shorts – was that an individual’s arse is not designed to occupy such a small, oddly shaped area of padding for such significant lengths of time. Although I have not experienced this first hand, my arse felt like it had spent a not-so-good couple of weeks in Polsmoor and I resorted to strapping an Emirates in-flight pillow to my seat with sellotape to allow for some rest between cycling kilometres at a time standing upright on my bicycle. Lesson learnt, I plan to spend a bit of time on the bike to get my rear accustomed to life on the seat and may have to resort to a quick trip to a bank of sorts in case I come back from the trip rather sterile.
It was just over a week ago that I went for my first ‘proper’ cycle – ‘proper’ because I wore a helmet. If you’re not wearing a helmet then it doesn’t count. Kitted to the nines with my 800 zar Dirty Dog sunglasses – the marketing department who named the eyeware have since been shot -, a Camelback, which proved more difficult to draw water from than if I were licking it from a well, cycling shorts and a First Ascent cycling jacket I set off for a 20km cycle in ominous drizzle. As the drizzle turned to the type of rain that would get even the most dormant of farmers a little excited, It wasn’t long before I realised that the glasses were about as handy as a car windscreen made from a frosted shower door and that the jacket was as waterproof as the 3rd consecutive beach towel my sister got from my Grandmother for Christmas – regardless, a better present than my box of chocolates. It goes without saying that my cycling training has therefore been cut relatively short but I do endeavour to work on that in the weeks that come.
If you are at all interested in the trip, check out Matt and Tom’s outrageously named website: TomAndMattCycle.com. If you’ve managed to read all of this trifle – nice! –you may be interested in reading some of their blog entries but if not their videos and pictures are well worth a bit of time and internet cap! In the event that the website can’t be renamed ‘TomAndMattAndJimmyAndBusterCycle.com’ I will most probably keep sending my writings to this little, faraway corner of the interweb. Apart from taking up the challenge of playing the harmonica – a feat which, if conquered, will sew hope in the hearts of the most musically inept in a way not unlike the success of Rebecca Black’s one hit wonder ‘Friday’ – and reading whatever books tickle my fancy on my newly-gifted Kindle I will spend a significant amount of my non-cycling time that would otherwise be spent watching TV, learning or jolling lank writing in my leather-bound notebook for my own enjoyment more than anything else, most probably with some sort of warm, locally-brewed poison close at hand.
