Busy!

My Gomoto GT125 has been neglected a bit this week in more ways than one.

When I set foot back at work after my road trip last week I found myself in a whirlpool of busyness that transformed itself into 17 hour work days on three occasions and the only day that I did not work under 14 hours was last week Saturday: When my door was only knocked on twice by arriving students (one of them at 23:30 in the evening).

The Gomoto stood in the garage waiting for some loving attention, but all it got was an irritable owner who would jump on it and whizz off to a meeting at the High School or to go pick his daughter up from the crèche. This photo was taken by Michelle on her late afternoon walk one afternoon while I was in a meeting at the high school to discuss their development plans for a new dormitory.

On one of the occasional rushed trips (this time to go teach my special Afrikaans class), the back wheel suddenly made a completely unprovoked noise. Somehow a second spoke broke. And that reminded me that I still want to write a rant about the poor service I have been receiving from Scooter World in the Strand, but I will do that later. (I've been struggling to get spare parts for my Gomoto from them for three weeks. They still have not called me to say that the stuff arrived. And I have not had the time to follow it up with them.)

There is a certain exhiliration in working hard. And my job is fortunately quite varied. I am just completing a project in which I installed 25 new network points in the top floor of my dormitory. I did most of the work myself and saved my college several thousands of Rand in the process. And I've learned what a crimping tool was (it is not a tool used on sex offenders for forced castrations!). I had to redo several of my connections and if I was a networking company boss I would have fired myself for my ineptness, but eventually it was very satisfying to watch the green lights on the switch go on as students began to connect their PCs to the network. Then there are the usual challenges of dealing with returning students and security at the College and getting the Gym up and running again. My wife and I have also initiated a project to make our campus more child friendly. Lots of fun and exciting planning involved.

But this exhiliration comes with its trade-offs. Wife and daughter only got a few minutes of my attention every day. Somehow the hard work messed my eating habits up and I ate take aways twice this week. My belt feels tight, as though I have regained some of the weight-losses of previous weeks (dissappointing), and I am beginning to wish for another break.

I think the coldest cold front of this winter is ravaging our section of the world at the moment, so there is little chance of taking the Gomoto for a spin today or tomorrow. I am still a bit unahappy about the broken spoke, but will rant about it on a better day.

If I could choose between the exhiliration of being busy and the exhiliration of driving on a deserted road with my Gomoto, I'd probably choose the latter.