Archive of BMW Motorrad Club Cape (2006 - 2019)

On the Ides of March [Saturday 15 March 08] Charles on his Mr. Badger came to play at my house in Gordon’s Bay while his son was on the BMW rider-pillion course at Nelson’s Creek with his squeeze. We wanted to go play in the sand at the Louwrens River circuit by the testing station in Somerset West but council has erected no biking signs and that kaibosched that plan. I tried calling some GSers from nearby but all were engaged elsewhere. Instead we kitted up and headed off via some interesting negotiation of Gordon’s Bay’s terrible back-roads in Mountainside Estate to the horseshoe bend on the N2 - Sir Lowry’s Pass. (Thank you Mr Town Council for the bad state of the roads) There we hooked slap left into the forestry reserve roads. Vehicles have been here, but long ago and someone has been doing some illicit tree felling. But for an hour we traversed the tracks that once were forest roads. Contour roads inter-connected by very rough and very steep link roads. Well tracks really..... Well not really, but they were once tracks and the 2,5metre Black Wattle saplings in all the roads bear testimony to their infrequent use. 4 Relaxing after the steep climb Andy bushed after the steep climb the rough track we climbed single file In fact almost every alien tree known on SA's forbidden list is living blissfully in sin on the slopes of Sir Lowry’s Pass unaware they are not wanted or welcome. Mr Badger is the heavy 1150 GS and Andyman’s mount is the heavier 1150 GSA, but they made short work of the irregular rutted, steep tracks and if Charles wanted some technical skills training he got it and then some!!! The 1150GSA'a short 1st gear makes climbing look easy. Some tracks were blocked by deadfalls – huge ancient pines or just petered out into dense groups of saplings. So there were times we had to drop a bike onto its pots and drag the arse round 180° to get it to point back the way it came. Even on a steep gradient. on the level ready to go again I was able to employ a neat technique I learned on the Nelson’s Creek Mini Skills Challenge in Feb 08. In order to get the bike turned through a tight turn, I held the front brake, leaned her over a tad, gave power to the rear and as she spun, her arse whipped round and lined up neatly. flip her ass round with a bit of throttle and front break There are three dams on the course, one of which is really neat and you can park on the concrete spillway and duck in for a skinny dip to cool off. Plenty of material to make a small fire for a quick chop-en-‘n-dop if you wanna burn some meat. the overgrown vegetation on the mountain parked on the track should have taken the right fork, bushed 9 urgently need to get breath back I guess at some point we realised our Camelbak water was up, we were very bushed and dirty and had had enough fun bashing around the mountain for one day. Really technical stuff and once again it is clear an 1150 gets ± 20 kilos heavier each time you lay it down. An 1150 is not ideal to play mountain man on, d’ruther use a 650 if you are not super strong and super fit. 11 heave her up into verticle and... This is a very technical course and you need to be very good at emergency pull aways – even uphill and on loose gravel. You simply will not get going on a steep uphill, negative camber, loose gravel without total commitment and the balls to 'Nike' (Just do it!) Quite a few times we hit deadfalls across the track and had to go about. On a slope this meant pulling away standing up, leaning forward, powering up the slope and negotiating tight turns, all in very short order. 12 relax by the dam No damage done to the bikes or selves, very hot and lots of loose gravel! Would I do this again? You betcha. Several times we had to say “Stop it! I like it!” and get going again. Lessons learned. - Have faith in the bike it knows what to do. - Take spare camera batteries - Get fit and stay fit. Unfit overweight slobs like me risk getting hurt badly.