Sunday 28th February 2010.
What a way to end a month!!
I was priveleged tolead the 2nd group of 14 bikes from the Winelands Engen 1 Stop to the Cedarburg Oasis and home.
Sometimes you have a ride where everything just slots in & ‘clicks’.
This was one of them.
10 of the 14 riders were new to me and we’ve note ridden together before.
Our usual service crew was AWOL – and will be on orders on Monday, but hoofseun managed to get a wonderful service team together – Megan managing the pilot Nolene and her co-pilot Di.
Almost everyone was there >half an hour before departure.
Everyone had the right change and before I could say Botbetikosweti, they had tendered their fare which covered the awesome lunch and the service vehicle.
I discovered I had left my sunbloc behind and there was more than enough sun ahead all day!!,
I had the K-Y gel, but no woman!
I had the bike tool kits but not the medical toolkit!
I found my humour quickly because my blue tooth coms worked first time.
Blue tooth and me are not good mates and I rarely get the right spell for trouble free operation.
I have the first fifteen F$%^&, bl#@y, and D$$s right but not in the correct order.
This time it just switched on and worked. Wish I kenw how.
I think I did eat my Wimpy breakfast, they did put it down in front of me, people were greeting, chatting and passing money over. And when I looked down my plate was clean.
Gee, I just hope I didn’t eat like I do at home or at the City Dodge.
Suddenly the alarm in my head went off and we rallied round for a safety briefing.
Today everyone found themselves at the briefing immediately. Normally getting the crew to the briefing is like herding cats, but today, wow! They were there when called.
We had to get it right.
Because we had 27 direction changes at intersections ahead and somebody please tell me how I briefed you on the hand signals because despite a mixed motley bunch of riders, we all turned off when and where we were supposed to. No lost causes. WELL DONE TEAM!!
We left 10 mins off schedule from a chaotic start point There was a road bike group gathering here, a road bike group gathering there, and a car club group with some 40 cars in another part of the car park.
All briefing or greeting at the roughly same time.
Warren very kindly offered to sweep our back door and this left me very relieved as it removed any stress of that end of the group.
Warren did a great job and his reliable presence and common sense merged with good humour kept the service vehicle and tail enders in close formation.
Okay, we left and made good time, the group sorting out positions, speeds and following gaps in short order.
A cool wind made the start really pleasant.
The route took us into the Sandveld, up and over Kaptein se Kloof, with the buttress of Kaptein se Klip and Kapteins berg on our left. Is it me or are the burnt out shells of the rich white squatters rebuilt and/or removed, because I hardly saw nary a one?
After a particularly hairy stretch of shitty sand I’d slow down to bunch up only to have my well trained pillion tell me quietly in the headset that he could see Warren following Natalie’s ass over the last hill, rubber side still down.
As we approached Het Kruis, Ian called from Group 1, half an hour up ahead, to say Byron’s 1200GS had died from unnatural causes and Frans, his dad would wait with him for the service vehicle.
Actually he just said, “Pick up one of our guys at Eendekuil, het jy my?” and off they went.
We RV’d with Frans & Byron exactly on the button and after trying some troubleshooting tricks loaded his bike onto the trailer.
I elected to skip the old Piekeneerskloof pass (of David Kramer fame) in favour of making up lost time and we chased into Citrusdal for fuel and cold drinks.
After that with the road surface staying all seven kinds of tricky, we made good time to the Cedarberg Oasis.
Travelling on loose sandy gravel is serioulsy dusty business whihc means the 15 bikes (Frans is now with us) get strrung out over 3 kilometres as each rider handles their demons in their own way while keeping out of the dust ahead.
We had klippe, sand patches, sand traps, dry crossings, wash-aways, stony icky bike-hurting stuff and more sand.
We raided the bar and then congregated at the pool to chew the fat with our group 1 kameraden.
Lunch of chicken fillet, rump steak, potato salad, olives, carrot salad and a green salad was enjoyed by all and not much left over.
Frans and Byron had not resolved their bike issues when Geoff left his dust trail for his scurrying group to follow, and in the end Byron’s bike was given the OK and Frans was relegated to the service crew to play Lego with Megan.
We left bang on time and had an incident free ride back to Ceres.
At one point, Marita was concerned over her engine heat but it all went ok.
We had an interesting fuel stop in Ceres and everyone got home safely after a Sunday ride that was incident free and trouble free with each and every rider enjoying the ride without any unforced errors or delays.
Jordan and I had a wonderful bonding ride in the most wonderful area of the Western Cape and I’m really grateful to everyone for making it such a trouble free ride.
Note to Self: “Get my GPS on the same map codes as the hoofseun, because his route had my GPS receiver totally, but TOTALLY confused tat times”
However, I contrived to consult the beauties in the service vehicle and their GPS unit gave me my answers.
I have to give credit to my 1150 GSA It took my 109 kilos and my son’s 110 kilos on two consecutive weekend trips and still want to go off again…!
Annie had done a bunk, her trip switch was close to blowing and she needed time to re-boot do a disc clean and re-install, which she seems to have managed because she seemed genuinely happy to see me, either that or she spent a lot of money or bust something on my RT.
However, it was a great welcome home after a very long day.
Hi Andy
Thanks for an awesome route! I've been in the Cederberg very often, but I have never done as much gravel on my way there :)
Was nice to meet all of you.
PS Andy, thanks for the help in Ceres!
Nico
Rumour has it someone poured diesel into their bike in Ceres? <cough><cough>
<cough><cough><spit><swallow a bit of diesel><spit>
Thanks Jeanne... so much for keeping it quite...
Our bikes are called many derogatory things... plaasimplemente, Ploeg, trekker, Massey Ferguson.... but your'e not supposed to take that literally!!
You really didn't think I was going to sweep this one under the rug did you? Never going to let you live it down!!!
Heeheehee... I've heard of boxer motors running on paraffin, but never a rotax on diesel.
How much diesel? Or what proportion. Rotax = 650 - what model bike was it and did you ride it out or did you drain it from the tank?
I would think that a bit of diesel in the fuel could in theory be burnt off, but in practice it might clog the injectors or carbon up the valves or exhaust.
So, how did you fix it?
See comment above:
<cough><cough><spit><swallow a bit of diesel><spit>
I had put in just under 8 litres of diesel (which I also had to pay for) We then drained the tank with a tube. Got about 99.9% of it out. Filled it up with petrol again and shook the bike around to mix the two. Started her up and everything ran fine. I had not started the bike while the diesel was in the tank. Rode back to Cape Town from Ceres and did not feel any loss of power.
PS. Dakar 2002 model.
Ah, yes, takes me back to my National Circus. Swallowed a lot of petrol during the struggle - we were endeavouring to keep it out of the regime's armoured vehicles by using it ourselves driving to various jols around Durban.
Look, I know petrol is getting expensive, but trying to get your Dakkie to run on diesel is ridiculous.
Looks like another awesome ride organized by the club.
Hats off to everybody involved.
Jeez,
Guywhat happened to - "what happens on the trip, stays on the trip"
Nice report Andy.
You need to get your self Tracks For Africa for that GPS of yours. Last time I did it, which is a while ago, it cost something like R75 to download the T4A routable maps for the Western and Northen Cape. Makes life much easier.