BreidenBlog

On Friday morning, early’o'clock, I went for a swim in the canal at the waterfront with the triathlon club - was a lovely swim, 1.6km in 24 mins in canals that run between apartment blocks, quite fun “city-water-rat” experience

However, when I got up and back in the shower, my thumb started throbbing. Became red and itchy, so put on some calamine lotion, thought  might have burnt myself somehow, but thought nothing of it. Come saturday, it started to blister up, almost looked like a cold sore on my thumb! So I had various theories; 1) sting/burn from something  2) localised shingles on my thumb 3) delayed cold sore from my cold 2 weeks ago, appearing on my thumb instead of lip..? too odd. So have been putting on lots of calamine to keep it calm, even tried some aciclovir cream. But still really sore, nothing like a cold sore ever was. Googled jellyfish in south africa, turns out there’s a few nasty ones:

“Carybdea branchi: Box-jellies, higher than wide, up to 23 cm in height. Generally translucent and bearing a single, opaque tentacle at each lower corner of the bell. Tentacles up to one and one half times as long as maximum bell length. This species is mostly found along the SW coast of South Africa, and is common in Cape Town harbour. Stings are known to be harmful, but not lethal. ”

http://sajellywatch.uwc.ac.za/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=24&Itemid=37

Including nasty box jellyfish… and when looking at an example of their stings

It looks remarkably like the one I have on my thumb:

(good thing I was wearing a wetsuit so I didnt get any more jelly-guu on me.

Conclusion - there are box jellies in the V&A canal. And next time I go I’m gonna get some thin gloves to swim with, and keep a bottle of vinegar in my bag to pour onto stings if they ever happen again. Aaaoch, so painful, and its just getting worse :((

I declare war on jellies. I’ll fill the harbour with VINEGAr! hah, there you go evil creatures.

Very interesting to read about, but even better to watch this nice little video on what the changes will be

Big fan of simplicity!

x

This week seems to be thinking its still winter. By winter I mean..hm..rainy season? Spring?

Yesterday the morning bootcamp was cancelled as it was really wet. Got better after lunch, and I went for a steep run up through the fog to Signal Hill 10.5K, the longest i’ve run in a long time, maybe even ever ;)  Picked up my bike from the bikeshop after a long awaited service, so now the breaks and gears should be perfectly tuned

Today, morning was grey but dry, went to beach training, and then it started raining on my way back. So I”ve been having tea&coffee, banana-muffins that I made last night, reading, writing, adminning, etc. Oh, and regarding coffee… we found this Espresso-shop when we went to the Cape Town version of Borough market, the Old Biscuit Mill market…. So The shop is kindof skandi-inspired, with a Dala-hest sitting on the desk. They call themselves “microroasters”… and, they go to the nordic barista championship, and they like Tim Wendelboe.. so Andrè, if you come to visit, we’ll take you here! So we got some coffee to try at home, and yum. It works.

Read this about the Tea party, interesting take on it, and it does mean my BBC world news mornings could get very entertaining indeed! Gotta love Palin’s ability to sound so stupid that one has no other choice, republican or democrat, than to support Obama. I’m not saying that she was the reason i became an Obama-supporter, but I do think she might scare sensible people away from their policies…