Archive of BMW Motorrad Club Cape (2006 - 2019)

 

 

My Epic adventure – a journey to all emotions!!!

Roundtrip: 16 - 18 June 2016
Home to Oasis to Middelpos and back again
943 kms!

What a roller coaster ride this turned out to be. Some parts I wish to forget, and hence the delay in speaking out about it. I just couldn't get myself to accept that the discipline I've come to love so much, and thought was all sunshine and roses, has brought me back down to earth with a serious thump!

05:10 is a particularly awful time to get up. Except if you know you will be getting on a motorbike...

Everyone met at the Winelands Engen at 06:30. We were a bit late (not my fault - men can take their time as well) and nature called, which meant that I missed the round of introductions. Therefore please excuse me if I label you as "random biker on bike" in a picture. This will be an exercise in "spot yourself."

I  just love April. Aren't all those public holidays great? The first three months of 2012 had been a bit hectic work-wise, so Gavin and I worked out a really great bribe to get my mom to come and look after the dogs for a few days while we headed out of town, looking for great coffee shops in faraway places.

We left Cape Town on Easter Monday, after our by-now-customary "start of trip" coffee at our favourite local coffee shop, Starlings. Over Bain's Kloof to Ceres; the stresses of the past three months falling away with every km on the bike.

Got capital approval from the higher headquarters in my household for a trip.  It was raining on our farm in the Karoo and it became another excuse for a good trip.

“I really have a need for open spaces,” I said to my husband earlier in the week. We had been booked to go on Donford’s Tankwa trip, but that was cancelled when they were short of the required 30 riders.

“Let’s go anyway,” came the laconic reply.

Rony changing a tyre , Boris and Sean looking on Wuperthal: Jean, Gavin, Sean, Harley Wuperthal : Chris H and Sean Wuperthal: The hero of the trip : Shah Shah had hardly any riding experience before this trip. In fact he can hardly hold up his bike or park it by himself, yet he rode the entire route , including Wuperthal , Eselbank, some very tricky sandy bits, mud etc , and even went down Ganagga Pass in the mud and rain, VERY impressive !

DAY ONE : I’m still half asleep when I leave home around 7 am , but soon wake up when I enter into a hefty skid on the corner of Koeberg and Plattekloof Road, after riding straight into a solid mass of fresh black diesel. Now this is not entirely my fault, the car in front of me had been going so slowly that it was practically going backward. What else has a girl to do, except overtake the car in the corner? , but then leaving me no time to see the Diesel Devil before it grabbed me. Luckily Freak had given me a set of tappet protectors last month which saves the day , as the one protector ( with a bit of help from the handlebars) takes the entire weight of the fall .The lurking Tow Truck driver helps me pick up the bike and tries to convinces me that the bike must rest. I laugh and tell him no it’s a BMW, they fall beautifully. I am soon on my merry way, thanking God, Freak and BMW’s for boxer engine design.

BACKGROUND PHASE 1 It all started at Freak’s birthday bash with a comment by Hermanator that a visit to his relatives for lunch at the Docks might be a good idea. Freak immediately rushed off and acquired an attractive pillion candidate from a nearby table and Neil and I agreed that keeping the Sunday breakfast run tradition going would be a good call. PHASE 2 Neil did some debating and philosophising and then came up with a counter proposal to do “a bit of a longer trip” on dirt, and skip the meal that would require increasing the pre-load of his GS for the return trip.

Laas naweek se trippie na Middelpos is voorwaar een van daardie ritte wat ek lank sal onthou. Die groep van 10 bikers was baie eenders in terme van spoed en stoplustigheid. En foto-lustigheid. Opvallend van hierdie rit was dat die voorste ryers by elke afdraai of vurk in die pad gewag het totdat almal weer by is.