Jacob Rathe is in South Africa

Jacob Rathe made it in one piece to South Africa for Jr. Worlds.  Here's an update he sent our way:

After over 40 hours and 12 thousand miles of airport travel, we finally arrived in Cape Town, South Africa. A gourmet buffet breakfast gave us a warm welcome the next morning in our surprisingly upscale hotel. Food has never tasted so good after almost 2 days of airplane (barely) edibles.

The geography around here is amazing. On one side is the atlantic ocean, and on the other is the wall of cliffs that forms table mountain.This has to be the coolest place I've ever ridden, giant craggy mountains are everywhere with rolling green pastures in between.  See the attached pictures.

There are parts of cape town that are quite upscale, and there are parts that are...not so much. Driving on the left side of road can be confusing and at times hazardous.

I don't race until Sunday, but everybody else is doing the time trial tomorrow, along with the road race on sunday. We saw the time trial course today, but we havent seen the road course. The report is that it has a longe r hill with lesser gradients , but may still be a selective race. The time trial went pretty good for the other guys ( and gals). We got 3rd ( Taylor Phinney) and 11th(Nathan Brown) in the mens time trial and 11th( Jerika Hutchinson) and 20th(Sinead Miller) in the womens time trial. Last week Phinney won the mens pursuit on the track.

As they say here, Good Bye!

Send fast thoughts Jake's way on Sunday!

Oh and he mentions pictures, but his internet connection was so slow, he couldn't actually upload any.