Dustdevil
Race Dog
Although anything on two wheels is welcome to join, the classic G/S riders is made up of a group of airhead GS riders.
We try and do at least one 2 day ride a month and the focus is to get on dust as much as possible.
The weekend of the 25 and 26 October was scheduled for a easy ride and a visit to the observatory. This because I met Ockert, one of the technicians for the new telescope, at the GS Challenge in September and he invited me to come visit when I am in the area.
Our choice of routes was to get lost in the absolute starkness of the Tankwa Karoo landscape, the roads in this area is big, wide and really smooth. I can them the Karoo highways because it is like riding the highway, you can easily do speeds of up to 200km/h on these roads.
We also wanted to include two mountain passes, Gannaga on the way to Middlepos and on the way back we will go over Oubergse pass.
Some new members were joining us for this trip and it was important for them that the routes must be easy. Boring I can hear most of you say but when you travel through landscapes like this you have to slow down all the time to have a look around. Sometimes you get the feeling you are driving through a scorched part of earth as there is no vegetation and all the stones are black as if burned. Sometimes you are floating over soft hills with the most amazing desert vegetation making you feel you might be on another planet. Sometimes you get closer to the escarpment and the incredible mountains start to pull you in and you can't stop staring at raw beauty of it.
We met at 7:30am on Saturday morning at the N1 1-Stop on the way to Paarl.
We were 10 riders all together with 7 being older GS's, one 1150Adv, one 1200Adv and one XT500 (the owner of this bike have asked me to strip his G/S to send the frame to HPN for convention)
At the briefing Howard mentioned that his bike stalled on the way there and shortly after we left the 1-Stop his bike stalled again.
We found a loose coil lead but about 3 km down he was having the same problem and after checking the spark which seem to be very week he decided to quit and go home because it looked like a troublesome coil or ignition control unit.
We all felt very bad for his sake has this is the second trip in a row where his brake would brake down and send him home before the excitement really started.
Our route took us over Bainskloof to Ceres where we filled up with petrol as the next stop will be Middlepos about 230km away.
We left town along the R355 to Calvinia and it was not long before we were on the dirt and I was as happy as n pig in mud. Funny I have never owned a road bike and have always been bored out of my scull on tar roads, the moment your tyres hit the dirt and I can feel that looseness of the bike slowly wiggling left and right under me the excitement start to come on.
We agreed to stop at the turn off to Middlepos to make sure nobody miss the turn off. Roadworks made this section of the road a bit more interesting as one mayor obstacle was created when the contractor was in the process of resurfacing some sections. It looked like a ploughed field with big stones everywhere and on top of that they were wetting the soil creating a slippery sludge.
Everyone made it through okay with Marcus and his 1200GS deciding that they should go around, not realising there was no detour and found himself bashing through the bushes on the side of the road.
We try and do at least one 2 day ride a month and the focus is to get on dust as much as possible.
The weekend of the 25 and 26 October was scheduled for a easy ride and a visit to the observatory. This because I met Ockert, one of the technicians for the new telescope, at the GS Challenge in September and he invited me to come visit when I am in the area.
Our choice of routes was to get lost in the absolute starkness of the Tankwa Karoo landscape, the roads in this area is big, wide and really smooth. I can them the Karoo highways because it is like riding the highway, you can easily do speeds of up to 200km/h on these roads.
We also wanted to include two mountain passes, Gannaga on the way to Middlepos and on the way back we will go over Oubergse pass.
Some new members were joining us for this trip and it was important for them that the routes must be easy. Boring I can hear most of you say but when you travel through landscapes like this you have to slow down all the time to have a look around. Sometimes you get the feeling you are driving through a scorched part of earth as there is no vegetation and all the stones are black as if burned. Sometimes you are floating over soft hills with the most amazing desert vegetation making you feel you might be on another planet. Sometimes you get closer to the escarpment and the incredible mountains start to pull you in and you can't stop staring at raw beauty of it.
We met at 7:30am on Saturday morning at the N1 1-Stop on the way to Paarl.
We were 10 riders all together with 7 being older GS's, one 1150Adv, one 1200Adv and one XT500 (the owner of this bike have asked me to strip his G/S to send the frame to HPN for convention)
At the briefing Howard mentioned that his bike stalled on the way there and shortly after we left the 1-Stop his bike stalled again.
We found a loose coil lead but about 3 km down he was having the same problem and after checking the spark which seem to be very week he decided to quit and go home because it looked like a troublesome coil or ignition control unit.
We all felt very bad for his sake has this is the second trip in a row where his brake would brake down and send him home before the excitement really started.
Our route took us over Bainskloof to Ceres where we filled up with petrol as the next stop will be Middlepos about 230km away.
We left town along the R355 to Calvinia and it was not long before we were on the dirt and I was as happy as n pig in mud. Funny I have never owned a road bike and have always been bored out of my scull on tar roads, the moment your tyres hit the dirt and I can feel that looseness of the bike slowly wiggling left and right under me the excitement start to come on.
We agreed to stop at the turn off to Middlepos to make sure nobody miss the turn off. Roadworks made this section of the road a bit more interesting as one mayor obstacle was created when the contractor was in the process of resurfacing some sections. It looked like a ploughed field with big stones everywhere and on top of that they were wetting the soil creating a slippery sludge.
Everyone made it through okay with Marcus and his 1200GS deciding that they should go around, not realising there was no detour and found himself bashing through the bushes on the side of the road.
ot:????????
