Day 5 – July 22nd – 225km – Durban to Kokstad

Day 5 - July 22nd - Durban to Kokstad - At 170kms and 3000m of climbing our tough recce rider Shanel Munger had to call it a day after feeling a little woozy and tired. To be expected when you have ridden so hard four days on end. You're a legendress Shanel, a true inspiration to all women out there!

The 3 recce riders continued to climb all day long to dizzying heights of over 4200m past 6pm and 1,622m above sea level, half an Everest climb to make up for lost time yesterday from Durban. Brian and Shanel had a blast watching the lads roll out the Kwazulu Natal hills to finish in at 225km for the day.

Tomorrow the recce riders head off to Port St John's against a storm and a half brewing tonight. Strongs!

By 2030, 80,000,000 jobs will be lost because the earth is warming up and conditions will make it impossible to work in some parts of the world. These are the kinds of messages we will carry with us on the Long Ride To Freedom in September. This is why we have to create Decentralised Sustainable Innovation Villages filled with so much technology to see what living in the Fourth Industrial Revolution will be like.

Many of our jobs will become service oriented as more and more robots and automation take over our every day life. The exercise is to become more like computers - hyper optimised - using our consciousness to live minimalist lives and to stop producing plastic realities that literally choke up the eco-system.

At these Innovation Villages we're going to build, the only goal is to learn to optimise. Water will become the most valuable product on our planet as the earth warms up. The pursuit of riches will begin dwindling as Chinese turn lead into gold because we're running out of gold to make our electronic gadgets, Blockchain continues to disrupt the banking industries, we have the ability and bandwidth to do almost anything ourselves and our youth ask more questions about their realities than ever before, seeking authenticity and a return to some form of purpose.

The irony of it all...we never needed any of the digital world to optimise our lives. We just needed to be human and look after our planet and its people in the first place.

Have a look at the great photos from the recce team's ride below.