Joshua International Online: The Airports Company of South Africa, no can do and Bilenky S&S couplers.

It seems to me, from a distance (though emotionally wedded) that the most revolting institutional curse of the apartheid system still blighting the post-apartheid South Africa is the education system. It is the intergenerational pox for which there is no cure. And its symptoms appear manyfold. Most recently I encountered the "let's focus on the problem, try and anchor it, and abandon any attempt at the solution".

The day of my particular frustration, I also heard an advert on the radio which touted a new word - and I'm not sure if I've got it totally right (Radio 5, likely you've heard it) "Afri-can-do" or something like that - perhaps (essentially the post-apartheid version of 'n boer maak 'n plan"). Now on this I want to call partial bullshit. I can appreciate in very real ways that the industrious of South Africa will improvise anything to arrive at a workable solution - I am a huge admirer of that skill. But the newly institutionalized of our country's workfoce, courtesy of the apartheid education system and our failure, for whatever reason, to remedy that in its latest iteration, appear to have very little in the way of Afri-can-do. There seems rather an attitude of Afri-won't-do.

My personal discovery of this was at the hands of the absolute wankers who work for the Airports Company of South Africa. In short, SAA have a published baggage size restriction for bicycles. The ACSA don't give a damn about that, they take one look at a box (nary a tape-measure in sight) and proclaim it "too big". The staff at SAA don't challenge this (with, eventually, two notable exceptions), opting rather to accept it (fuck the customer, even the customer who has looked up the baggage restrictions, can quote them, and has relied on them in good faith in booking a trip), and work hard to find reasons to support the ACSA (instead of demanding service from their foul sub-contractor). Some of the reasons given were outstanding: "Your box is too big. Yes, I can see the regulations say 200cm, but your box is 178cm". Very worrying comment. And "The regulaitons say 200cm, but that is because the bicycle itself can be 200cm, but the box it is in must be smaller". These sorts of statements, for me, are the echoing voice of the apartheid education system - horribly unreformed. A certificate that represents nothing. It's just a certificate. Anyway, I ended up being rescued by a guy about my age called Andries Erwee, who looked at the regulations and said, "If you drill down to the detailed regulations page, you will find that you are right about the 200, so the 178 is fine, but the max height is 100. How big is your box?" "104" I replied. "OK, here is a box cutter and tape, we are going to make your box 100 high and then I am contractually obliged to load it". Sorted. The actual Afri-can-do right there. Anyway, on the way back, back in OR Tambo, trying to get my new box (178 x 98) loaded, I ran into the same problem. I'd been here before: "Can you call Dries Erwee?" "He is day off". And that was that. Without him, despite being there three hours in advance of the flight time, ACSA could not be defeated, and there was suddenly insufficient Afri-can-do. Which left me in the unsatisfactory position of being able to transport my bike and ride in any country other than my own. That depresses me. So it's in storage at the airport (no doubt a facility run by ACSA, gotcha!) and I can enjoy the upside of letting my fingers on my left hand start working again (bruised nerve of some sorts, too many hours on the bike, after too many years on earth) - indeed I am typing this with ten fingers again. Instead I bought some new running shoes and I'm loving lazing through the kilometers in cool climate and clean air. Wooohooo. It's also meant that I've spent quality time with Gr Rose - which would have been difficult if I'd been riding everywhere (though I could have put a pillion pillow on the pannier-rack ;-).

While the bigger issues are a dilemma to solve, for the country, the immediate problem of massive bicycles can be solved by retrofitting S&S Bicycle Torque Couplers. Slightly tough to see in the pic below - but the silver bulges in the top-tube, and just in front of the drive cog on the down-tube.

These are retrofitted, nifty little things that will allow the smiling owner to break a bike down and pack it in a single hard suitcase of approximately the size of a 700C wheel.

I think I will be going down that road for riding capacity in places that I visit (though of course they wouldn't work with anything other than circular routes; what elese could one do with the suitcase (it's definitely not coming along for the ride).