Archive of BMW Motorrad Club Cape (2006 - 2019)

Hi Andy,

Please enter Bob Goode for the ride.  

I will have to wait for the Keeper of the Diary who will be back this evening. I hope that its not full by then.

Please put my name down.

Adrian

Please add my name to the list, thanx.

Ek sal die keer alleen wees.

Adie Adendorff

Annine and Martin please

Please ad Sian and myself to the list.

Thanks

Trevor

Thanks all, we have around 15 riders on the list.

I will send out an infomertial to the riders on the list.

Please bring your hydropacks or bottled water so you can hydrate along the way.

This a route you may well want to take note of and do many times with just one or two rider and one I do any time at short notice if you feel like a quick break out into the sticks.

I will have a road-book/pace notes for each rider with the distances, key waypoints & headings.

Pine Pienaar; 1200 GSA with enduro background (many years agao) and since matured would like to come.

Will correspond through us.

Martin and Annine

Martin, he is welcome to join the ride. added to list

Sounds like this will be fun - please include me in.

regards

Charles

With 18 riders, (2 are still 'maybe's') the ride is fully booked.

Thank you for the interest.

Charles, we have new ground to cover, there is new piece - an old road we have not yet done from Ganskraal siding to Hopefield direct on gravel, past the grain silos.

No more last 10k's to Hopefield on tar anymore.

Think its gonna be a great relaxed ride.

Briefing mails will now soon be sent to listed riders.

.

Hi Andy

Please include me. I mailed you yesterday but name not on list.

Tx, Eric

Hi Andy, please add me to the list for Sunday ride. Thanks. Andre' Nel

Andy

I would not be able to do the trip anymore.  Gotta hand over a project on Monday.  Client can not give me one day grace .  Unfortunately we need to work to get fuel to do trips.  I was really looking forward to this one.

Hope there is someone to take the place and make me jealous if I sit and program over the weekend.

Adie

No worries Adie,

place taken already.

Looking over the list of riders you immediately see a really nice mix of the range of DS bikes.

Lookingward to the ride!!!!!!
Call you Saturday, ride through with you in the morning!

Just to make sure you get there old man! ;)
Bwahahahahahahahha 

Thank you thank you thank you to all 20 of you who came along on the ride.

We had an absolutely fantastic day.

17 bikes, then 15, then 14, then 15, then 14.

You try figure that one out.

The Cape Town bikes were back in their stable by 16H35 and the S/west bikes by 17H00.

I guess there then followed a hectic stuggle to get out of wet boots and muddy gear before spraying down the bikes and getting the worst of the mud out the little places, mud tends to get into.

All the best to Dawn who won 3 days leave and 4 weeks in a cast.

Hope that left leg heals up quick.

a special WELL DONE to the pillions, Dawn, Annine and Wendy for coming along and learning so much.

You all did extremely well.

Sorry that one bike took a tumble in a railway crossing and picked up some einas.

Thanks to John G who came out to greet us and speed us on our way with a casserole full of muffins!

And to Abel E who met us at Juffroushoogte and lead us through the reserve.

Thanks too to Transnet- an engineering man came out and opened locked gates before we arrived and we could ride on a verbotten pirce of road- whish was infested with toropises on the march.

Some going L-to-R across our road and others R-to-L.

The weather God's were very kind and smiled down on us all day.

The water crossing God's were also good- they were there in absolute abundance and some had monsters lurking beneath the surface of one or two.

We had five kilos of Sandy road interrupted by hard sections and every bike flaoted through with no mishaps.

Speeds were never above 70Kph in gravel and 13o on the tar.

The wild flowers are out still and it was a bonus to ride amongst such wonderful sprays of multi coloured fields.

Canola Fileds are also bright yellow right now.

It was a great ride.

Thanks for coming along

I am so sorry that I had to miss this ride.  It sounds as if it was a great day.

What a stunning ride, with a bit of everthing.  Thanks to Andy who has once again put together something special.  We have always wanted to do the "railway route" and once actually went looking for it , to no avail.  The conditions were perfect the flowers stunning and the company as always enjoyable.  THANK YOU.

Dawn, we hope you heal quickly so that you and Eric can join us again not in the too distant future.

Martin and Annine

yet another great ride.

A bit of everything indeed - tar, gravel, tricky railway line crossings with loose railroad ballast, tweespoor, a few water crossing, a short (thankfully) sandy section and even a short section on a footpath. And that was only to our lunch destination.

Thoroughly enjoyable day out.

Thanks Andy.

PS please post some photos (I unforunately didn't take any)

Thought you said the GSA handles everything so much easier....Could have sworn you said that so dissappointed about not making it to Jurg se Kaya! :)

The Hopefield ride was a great ride.

The list filled up very quickly.

Inside a day it was full.

I was very happy to see 3 brand new names book on the ride and all very welcome.

Although I made it clear this ride was not for beginners, it seems it would have been clearer to all if I actually made it clear it had technical riding to it, although it was an easy ride.

Studying my GPS tracks log it is clear we rarely went over 70 kph.

But we did have bits of absolutely everything.

I made out two accident reports- more later.

I made it to the Swartland Engen earlyish (07H25) and chose to dig into John G’s casserole dish of muffins instead of a Wimpy breakfast. 3 riders were already eating brekky and more rolled in all the time.

I got two calls from lost bunnies.

Hein was waiting for us at the Winelands Engen N1 and Graham was waiting at the Winelands Engen N2.

Incidentally both are at exit 36 (which is 36 k’s from start of the N in Cpt).

They hid behind dark glasses and flogged their poor bikes to get to Swartland Engen, making it easily.

After a lot of meeting & greeting the briefing got underway.

Some 15 ks on tar and then Gravel to our lunch stop. We set tyre pressure from the start after the usual discussions on what pressure would suite best.

Dawn, Wendy 7 Annine were riding pillion, Sian was the only lady rider.

2 stalwarts- popular and very useful on any ride are Tony, who sweeps just fine, and Hein who rounds up lost bikes better n any collie ever fetched sheep.

These are two people you just gotta have on your ride.

I lead off and its really cool to see 16 headlamps on your ‘six’ all in perfect staggered formation.

Most of them are orange hi-viz which is simply EXTRA cool.

At Kalbaskraal intersection we left the N7 and soon we were on the railway line, on gravel.

Hein was helping me test two different radio coms sets for Bike2Bike, but we gave that up early as we really should have set them up the day before.

The railroad track ride is very popular with adventure bikers and there was clear recent spoor f a group of riders ahead of us.

 RIDING THE TRACKS

You ride on the Transnet service road which crosses over the track so many times you lose count.

All except for Sian who counted three crossing only before her front wheel washed out and dumped her unceremoniously into the ballast. She’s a tough cookie and very game, but hubby Trevor felt her eagerness to stay with the group was not worth the discomfort and her escorted her off the pitch home, discretion being the better part of valor.

Apart from the challenge of crossing the tracks, water crossing abounded, also losing count after No:22 or thereabouts.

Some crossings were mere puddles to be circumvented. Other had to be waded at dead-slow to avoid water ingestion into the air box.

Andre and Wendy were the next to lie down, this time, not on ballast but as unceremoniously into brown muddy water.

The team heft up his bike and man-handled it onto dry ground.

Again discretion dictated that Chris supervises plug removal and venting of chambers to express and vapors that may have been sucked into the combustion chambers.

Andre’s bike was soon good to go, but wanted to be jump started.

warthogs crossing the water

Again, we all relaxed, watching and learning.

The tail caught up and reported that Trevor and Sian had ducked for home.

And so we progressed on the twee spoor dodging around muddy pools or driving through them.

Wading deeper streams one by one.

Sorta half way between Darling and the tar behind us, Eric slipped his front out going slowly around a mud puddle and the pillion peg landed onto Dawn, riding pillion fracturing her left lower leg close to the ankle.

Dawn I pressed us all by her resolve and in situations it is best to let the adrenalin dissipate the nausea of accident shock to pass by.

So by the by, Dawn felt she’d like try get her boot on, but a combination of wet socks/boots and swelling ankle stopped this. Charles took Dawn pillion on Badger to Darling, Eric following worrying about all the implications this new challenge was going to through up. His 800GS not at all affected by the drop.

 And the wild flowers were stunning

The rest re-grouped and followed at a slower pace.

Thanks to Charles for his smooth riding, Dawn was collected by a friend, minutes before the kick-off to the SA-Wales world cup opener.

We all went on and onto the next rail track road.

We stopped to remark on an interesting spoor.

Two experienced Ds bikers (800’s or KTM 990’s) were escorting a bigger bike with a novice.

So there’s these two tracks obviously going hell-for-leather with a very wobbly track meandering over theirs, with many boot prints as the rider paddled along. Then the two tracks stop, cigarette butts abound and the wobbly track catches up and then off the two experienced bikers tear off again.

At some stage Andre realized the conditions made him tired and anxious with Wendy pillion so Wendy transferred to Charles and everyone was much more comfortable after that.

 yet another crossing

I’d contacted an engineer at Transnet in Vredenburg and vraggies, he actually had come out an unlocked the Transnet gates for us on a particular section and we did almost the entire trip on this twee spoor.

The tortoises were out in hordes and those not fully focused on staying upright were enjoying losing count of the many tortoises we came across.

No animals were injured in the execution of this ride.

We did 22 ks on tar between Hopefield and Langebaanweg air base, then back onto a really lekker stretch of tweespoor right passed the West Coast road (R27) and to Juffroushoogte.

Safe parking for the bikes,  friendly service and individual billing.

Abel E came over from Saldanha and joined us for lunch.

We all relaxed, stripped down of rider gear and enjoined the balmy midday sun.

After a relaxed and unhurried lunch, Andre took the R27 direct homewards and to his loss, missed Abel’s guided tour of the West Coast National Park, one of only 2 SANPARKS to allow motorcycles to ride around inside.

The ranger insisted on levying full charge.

Abel took us through the park and then returned home while we took to the R27 and bolted for Cape Town.

Everyone got home safely and my odo showed we’d done 275 kilos for the day.

Most were home by 16H30 to 17h00.

As we neared Cpt we came from sunny balmy warmth to cloudy chill icky-poo weather.

We all had a lot of cleaning to do to both rider gear and bikes to get all the mud off. I smiled as I remembered a time, not to long back when I refused to clean the bike, preferring to ride with the muddy smears as my badge-of-credit to show for a good weekend.

My repaired 1150GSA was such a pleasure to ride, it was awesome!

All in all this was an awesome ride.

Lessons were learned.

I'll add some more photos, if you took on the ide, please add some too.

This was a really enjoyable ride. Beautiful scenery, cool tracks/route, great people. Thanx Andy

X-ray revealed 3 breaks in her left foot. They have operated on her and she should be coming home tomorrow. She's had enough of the hospital now and can't wait to come home and klap a packet of 20's. Fortunately my foot only has a hairline fracture and I can still limp about and drive the car. I should be fine for All the Passes ride (easy option) but Dawn could be a doubtful starter as i'm sure she's not into the pillion thing at the moment, especailly having me as rider :)

Thanks Charles for taking her to Darling for me. I must admit the ride was tougher than I thought and I bit off more than I can chew. If I was on my own maybe a different story but I can't say. Dawn is a very good pillion and quite often I have to put my hand behind to make sure she's still there.

My biggest lesson learnt was to have protective gear for both passenger and bike.

Thanks again for everybody's help.

Eric

Dawn was light as a feather and I had to check she hadn't quietly fallen off a few times.  The ride is quite technical and I was amazed at how far you guys stuck it out.  Now that Dawn is out of action for a while, you can gain experience so that you can handle a pillion in more tricky circumstances.  Also invest in good boots, especially for the slow, technical stuff.

Leon at Country Trax, when teaching about protective gear, has this to say:

• If you don't buy good protective gear, one day you are going to fall and hurt yourself.  The pain will be great, the medical bills will be expensive, the time recuperating will be lost, and afterwards you will buy yourself the protective gear.  So why not just buy the gear in the beginning and save yourself the medical expenses and pain?

On the bright side, while Dawn and I were riding ahead to Darling, we startled an owl right next to the path and it flew for a few seconds right in front of us.  I could have plucked a tail feather it was so close.  Shortly afterwards we flushed three Spur-winged geese in the same way - these birds are enormous!

Get well soon Dawn and Eric and I hope to see you on a ride with us again some time.

Eric, when Dawn is mobile, she'll probably need crutches.  If so you are welcome to borrow mine ... I'm about to move onto two legs unassisted again!

Just be warned ... they create masses of frustration!!!!

Bob Goode parting the waters

Andre and Wendy staying on board !

Drying out at the lunch stop

Thanks Peter but the hospital were quick to sell her a pair. Maybe now that I've got a BM it might be handy having a pair laying around .