Ngola Kingdom: Motorcycle (mis)adventures in south-west Angola
- Thread starter MaxThePanda
- Start date
Excuse me Midge - did I mention im very short...
MaxThePanda
Race Dog
It's been a bit longwinded, so in case you'd forgotten, we had been chased out of the Bicuar National Park, and were skirting down past this big green blob, on what should have been a national arterial route.
Actually, it was more like your local motocross track, which had been attacked by a psychotic midget with deep seated mother issues driving a front end loader, then dumped with a hindenerg-size load of soft sand and left for a few months in the rainy season of the Philippines for grass to grow on it. Superb! We were having the ride of our lives.
I've said that before on this trip, haven't I? But seriously, it was stupendously good riding. I think I spent half the day riding out of dongas on my back wheel - love that little orange thing - and the rest behind Midget, watching him fishtail through soft sand with the panache of Ari Vatanen on his day off. It was warm, the countryside was beautiful and the people friendly.
We got lost occasionally, and even got invited to ride across someone's mielie field
and signs of the still-recent war abounded
Very occasionally, the track would open up to a smooth road, but those moments were far and few between.
At one point I passed this barricaded village:
It was the only village I saw like that on the whole trip. Fear of elephants from the nearby park? I just don't know, but it was some handy woodwork all the same.
And still more motos with their curious packing techniques. I think this one was to soften up the still-alive chickens for dinner:
Late afternoon we then stopped off at a small village for fuel and a beer and Camel amused himself by trying to capture a goat for dinner.
But even though he said 'Do you know who I am?" the goats simply insisted he'd need a tray - which obviously he didn't have DUH! - and wandered off to chew on someone's dinner.
[flash=640,480]https://www.youtube.com/v/Sv5iEK-IEzw[/flash]
Well, it must have been around 4.30 when we set off for our last hour of riding, and I honestly can't remember if someone actually mentioned taking it easy... but if they didn't, it's going to be a mantra for first and last hours on every bike trip I'm involved with from here to Kingdom Come.
Despite the long day in the saddle and the intense riding, I didn't feel tired, and was still loving it. I was bringing up the rear, with Camel out front, when my petrol light came on.
Actually, the petrol light proves I've got things a little mixed up, because we did stop at the goat place for petrol, but I must have done another 200km or so before my light came on... so the goats were probably much earlier. But either way, it seemed to me a good idea at the time to ride up to Mike and warn him about my petrol situation - and probably also suggest we stopped for the night.
I think when I cast my mind back properly, there had been the small LOST incident as well.
I was in front and there was a particularly stylish moto rider giving it welly in front of me. Some of these guys can really ride, despite the abject state of the machinery and the very limited suspension at their disposal. I was having a laugh following him through the tracks, holes and washouts, but when I decided to finally give it some gas and catch him up to show my appreciation. It was then that I realised that we'd just turned off the track and were going through a little village.
I carried on, but now the track was completely different. More like a foot path, swooping around trees and between fields. I could see on the GPS that I was only a couple of km away from the road, and vaguely heading in the same direction, so decided to push on. The problem was that I really didn't know if my amigos had followed me, carried on, or stopped and waited. I gave it some, in the hope of getting back to the road ahead of them, and when I eventually did - 20 minutes later - carefully scanned for tyre tracks in case they were ahead. Couldn't see anything, and the fellow who came walking past seemed to think he hadn't seen any bikes - but such was the state of the linguistic gap between us, that could have meant anything.
I waited, and waited.... and waited. Eventually a KTM rolled into view, and a forlorn looking Camel pulled up. He'd lost the Midget. Well, clearly he'd been at the back so the Midge wasn't behind him, and I'd waited so long I'd obviously been well ahead of them... so the Midge must have followed me. We decided I'd wait and the Camel would retrace my steps in the hope of finding the little fella.
You wouldn't think you could lose each other in the Angolan bush, but at this point I was a little afraid that had happened. Common sense said it was unlikely, but it's amazing how much we take for granted the notion that we can get hold of each other whenever we need to.
No LOST for us today, though, and the Camel dutifully reappeared ten minutes later with a gleeful looking Midget in tow - looking as delighted as I'd been by the magnificent riding served up by our little detour.
So that's right - it puts us a few hours later than I'd thought - or our stop with the goats was actually a few hours earlier.
But anyway, back to the present. I was bringing up the rear and running out of gas. Perhaps it was because of the LOST incident earlier (without the hot actresses or tropical beach, sadly) but my lizzard brain told me I needed to stop the Camel in case I did run out, and I set off in hot pursuit. What a stupid idea.
Maybe this shouldn't be a drawn out tale. I went past Midge and was doing about 80-100kph chasing my brother. That doesn't sound like a lot, and the road surface WAS much better than it had been earlier. On the straights I saw him, and I guess I just decided to gas it and stop him sooner rather than later. Well, the rest, as they say, is history.
I came around a sharpish bend in the road, and in front of me was a sequence of at least three MAN-size (and I mean the truck, not twice-Midget) potholes. The first thought that went through my brain was "oh-oh!" I got through the first one fine, but took a bit of air and hit the middle of the second one with my fork and shock completely compressed.
What happened next was immediately preceeded by my second thought, which was "Oh ****!" and there was no time for a third thought, because the combination of over-compressed 690 suspension, less-than-Coma levels of skill and the lip of the second pothole conspired to high side the bike and send me and the ground racing towards each other at faster than light speed.
Often when thinking about accidents in the abstract, we imagine what might happen, how we might respond and how we can improve our chances - things like tuck and roll, or going limp, or falling left etc. etc. The reality is quite different. It's very, very fast. Faster even than reflexes. I remember my brain thinking, but it was in no connection whatsoever to what my body was doing, or what was happening around me.
I was lucky, very lucky. I slid down the gravel, and my bike slid down the gravel and hit a tree. It's quite amazing how much dust an accident like this makes. You know those pictures of a space shuttle taking off? It felt like that much dust. But when it cleared, I saw my bike lying half in a bush, and my body lying in the middle of the road, with the stuffing knocked out of it.
I seemed to be at least a little ok. I tried to stand up, buckled, and sat down again.
The Midge arrived on the scene, and pulled up, a worried look on his face. He helped me up, and then screwed up his face like a five year old biting on the chilli that their mother warned them not to, at the sight of my leg. My long-serving Richa pants had been ripped open across the thigh, unfortunately just below and behind the padding, and so had my leg.
It's at times like this that one discovers how well thought out one's medical kit is. We had no disinfectant and no dressings. Oops. We did have a LOT, and when I say a LOT, I mean enough for a camel - a real camel - of painkillers, so I immediately swallowed a fistful. We also had fifteen different kinds of antibiotics, many of which I was to experiment with over the coming days.
After ten minutes the Camel returned, took in the state of affairs and decided we should stop for the night. Not an entirely unreasonable assumption. Somehow, and I know not how, my KTM seemed sort of ok. The forks had twisted a little in their clamps, and the luggage rack on my left side had bent out badly and potentially damaged the subframe, but other than that it seemed ok. Those Austrians know a thing or two about building bikes tough. It seems it went down hard on the left and slid down the road, with all the impact and abrasion taken on the left pannier and left hand guard, leaving the rest of the bike almost untouched. Truly amazing.
Hoping we weren't in for a landmine surprise, but not really caring at that point, I hobbled off the road and down the bank, where we set up camp, washed the wound as best we could, bandaged it, and hoped for the best.
Actually, it was more like your local motocross track, which had been attacked by a psychotic midget with deep seated mother issues driving a front end loader, then dumped with a hindenerg-size load of soft sand and left for a few months in the rainy season of the Philippines for grass to grow on it. Superb! We were having the ride of our lives.
I've said that before on this trip, haven't I? But seriously, it was stupendously good riding. I think I spent half the day riding out of dongas on my back wheel - love that little orange thing - and the rest behind Midget, watching him fishtail through soft sand with the panache of Ari Vatanen on his day off. It was warm, the countryside was beautiful and the people friendly.
We got lost occasionally, and even got invited to ride across someone's mielie field
and signs of the still-recent war abounded
Very occasionally, the track would open up to a smooth road, but those moments were far and few between.
At one point I passed this barricaded village:
It was the only village I saw like that on the whole trip. Fear of elephants from the nearby park? I just don't know, but it was some handy woodwork all the same.
And still more motos with their curious packing techniques. I think this one was to soften up the still-alive chickens for dinner:
Late afternoon we then stopped off at a small village for fuel and a beer and Camel amused himself by trying to capture a goat for dinner.
But even though he said 'Do you know who I am?" the goats simply insisted he'd need a tray - which obviously he didn't have DUH! - and wandered off to chew on someone's dinner.
[flash=640,480]https://www.youtube.com/v/Sv5iEK-IEzw[/flash]
Well, it must have been around 4.30 when we set off for our last hour of riding, and I honestly can't remember if someone actually mentioned taking it easy... but if they didn't, it's going to be a mantra for first and last hours on every bike trip I'm involved with from here to Kingdom Come.
Despite the long day in the saddle and the intense riding, I didn't feel tired, and was still loving it. I was bringing up the rear, with Camel out front, when my petrol light came on.
Actually, the petrol light proves I've got things a little mixed up, because we did stop at the goat place for petrol, but I must have done another 200km or so before my light came on... so the goats were probably much earlier. But either way, it seemed to me a good idea at the time to ride up to Mike and warn him about my petrol situation - and probably also suggest we stopped for the night.
I think when I cast my mind back properly, there had been the small LOST incident as well.
I was in front and there was a particularly stylish moto rider giving it welly in front of me. Some of these guys can really ride, despite the abject state of the machinery and the very limited suspension at their disposal. I was having a laugh following him through the tracks, holes and washouts, but when I decided to finally give it some gas and catch him up to show my appreciation. It was then that I realised that we'd just turned off the track and were going through a little village.
I carried on, but now the track was completely different. More like a foot path, swooping around trees and between fields. I could see on the GPS that I was only a couple of km away from the road, and vaguely heading in the same direction, so decided to push on. The problem was that I really didn't know if my amigos had followed me, carried on, or stopped and waited. I gave it some, in the hope of getting back to the road ahead of them, and when I eventually did - 20 minutes later - carefully scanned for tyre tracks in case they were ahead. Couldn't see anything, and the fellow who came walking past seemed to think he hadn't seen any bikes - but such was the state of the linguistic gap between us, that could have meant anything.
I waited, and waited.... and waited. Eventually a KTM rolled into view, and a forlorn looking Camel pulled up. He'd lost the Midget. Well, clearly he'd been at the back so the Midge wasn't behind him, and I'd waited so long I'd obviously been well ahead of them... so the Midge must have followed me. We decided I'd wait and the Camel would retrace my steps in the hope of finding the little fella.
You wouldn't think you could lose each other in the Angolan bush, but at this point I was a little afraid that had happened. Common sense said it was unlikely, but it's amazing how much we take for granted the notion that we can get hold of each other whenever we need to.
No LOST for us today, though, and the Camel dutifully reappeared ten minutes later with a gleeful looking Midget in tow - looking as delighted as I'd been by the magnificent riding served up by our little detour.
So that's right - it puts us a few hours later than I'd thought - or our stop with the goats was actually a few hours earlier.
But anyway, back to the present. I was bringing up the rear and running out of gas. Perhaps it was because of the LOST incident earlier (without the hot actresses or tropical beach, sadly) but my lizzard brain told me I needed to stop the Camel in case I did run out, and I set off in hot pursuit. What a stupid idea.
Maybe this shouldn't be a drawn out tale. I went past Midge and was doing about 80-100kph chasing my brother. That doesn't sound like a lot, and the road surface WAS much better than it had been earlier. On the straights I saw him, and I guess I just decided to gas it and stop him sooner rather than later. Well, the rest, as they say, is history.
I came around a sharpish bend in the road, and in front of me was a sequence of at least three MAN-size (and I mean the truck, not twice-Midget) potholes. The first thought that went through my brain was "oh-oh!" I got through the first one fine, but took a bit of air and hit the middle of the second one with my fork and shock completely compressed.
What happened next was immediately preceeded by my second thought, which was "Oh ****!" and there was no time for a third thought, because the combination of over-compressed 690 suspension, less-than-Coma levels of skill and the lip of the second pothole conspired to high side the bike and send me and the ground racing towards each other at faster than light speed.
Often when thinking about accidents in the abstract, we imagine what might happen, how we might respond and how we can improve our chances - things like tuck and roll, or going limp, or falling left etc. etc. The reality is quite different. It's very, very fast. Faster even than reflexes. I remember my brain thinking, but it was in no connection whatsoever to what my body was doing, or what was happening around me.
I was lucky, very lucky. I slid down the gravel, and my bike slid down the gravel and hit a tree. It's quite amazing how much dust an accident like this makes. You know those pictures of a space shuttle taking off? It felt like that much dust. But when it cleared, I saw my bike lying half in a bush, and my body lying in the middle of the road, with the stuffing knocked out of it.
I seemed to be at least a little ok. I tried to stand up, buckled, and sat down again.
The Midge arrived on the scene, and pulled up, a worried look on his face. He helped me up, and then screwed up his face like a five year old biting on the chilli that their mother warned them not to, at the sight of my leg. My long-serving Richa pants had been ripped open across the thigh, unfortunately just below and behind the padding, and so had my leg.
It's at times like this that one discovers how well thought out one's medical kit is. We had no disinfectant and no dressings. Oops. We did have a LOT, and when I say a LOT, I mean enough for a camel - a real camel - of painkillers, so I immediately swallowed a fistful. We also had fifteen different kinds of antibiotics, many of which I was to experiment with over the coming days.
After ten minutes the Camel returned, took in the state of affairs and decided we should stop for the night. Not an entirely unreasonable assumption. Somehow, and I know not how, my KTM seemed sort of ok. The forks had twisted a little in their clamps, and the luggage rack on my left side had bent out badly and potentially damaged the subframe, but other than that it seemed ok. Those Austrians know a thing or two about building bikes tough. It seems it went down hard on the left and slid down the road, with all the impact and abrasion taken on the left pannier and left hand guard, leaving the rest of the bike almost untouched. Truly amazing.
Hoping we weren't in for a landmine surprise, but not really caring at that point, I hobbled off the road and down the bank, where we set up camp, washed the wound as best we could, bandaged it, and hoped for the best.
Hammerhead
Pack Dog
Ja, ja - en toe??
Pics of the wounded steed?
Brilliant by the way! :thumleft:
Pics of the wounded steed?
Brilliant by the way! :thumleft:
MaxThePanda
Race Dog
Hammerhead said:
How bout some video?
[flash=640,480]https://www.youtube.com/v/0BiAXU06RzM[/flash]
Mark Hardy
Grey Hound
MaxThePanda
Race Dog
Oops. Sautéd.
Mark Hardy
Grey Hound
:thumleft: :thumleft:
Shangali
Pack Dog
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:imaposer: ... :sip: .... :laughing4: ..... :sip: .... :lol8: .... :spitcoffee: ..... :sip: ..... Keep on Coming ....
I can read as long as you can Write .... You Keep me on this thread for Days on ends .... :thumleft: :thumleft:
"Mind-Blowing" .... Super funny and Honest ..... what can I say .. THANKS ...
:ricky: :ricky: :ricky:
I can read as long as you can Write .... You Keep me on this thread for Days on ends .... :thumleft: :thumleft:
"Mind-Blowing" .... Super funny and Honest ..... what can I say .. THANKS ...
:ricky: :ricky: :ricky:
MaxThePanda
Race Dog
We woke up in our roadside campsite in what we hoped was to be our last morning in Angola.
The previous evening's accident had tipped the scales towards the "All good things come to an end!" direction. But first there was some celebrating to. It was this big fella's 38th birthday,
Cake and candles were in short supply, so we redirected our party fervour to the idea of several very cold bottles of champagne in Opuwo Lodge that evening. I was feeling sore, but the horse tranquilisers were doing their job, and I had a look at the state of the bike, wondering how it was going to hold up to the day's riding. Turned out I was in much worse a state than the machine.
A little battle-scarred for sure, but it looked like we wouldn't have to set it on fire and abandon it in a shallow roadside grave in Angola. We packed, I gingerly mounted my steed and set off. It was immediately clear that my right wrist was pretty painful. Now something curious came to pass, which I believe is the subject of one of Hipócrates' laws. Otherwise known as the hammer to the big toe theory. Simply put - you think your wrist is sore? Just pass me my hammer and I'll make you forget all about the pain.
My wrist was broken, and as I sit here typing six weeks after the event, it is clearly the injury that is going to trouble me by far the most going forward. But I swear I forgot about it completely for ten days. The bad roastie on my leg turned out to be a massive 20x20cm haematoma - the skin tissue layer pulled off the muscle - which was only a day away from becoming badly infected. In the resulting fever and operation that followed in South Africa, I forgot all about my wrist until the pain from my leg subsided. How utterly bizarre.
Apparently the 100km of dirt from our rough camp to the town of Xandongo was spellbindingly amazing. Ask the Midget. I remember nothing of it, except for a constant struggle to keep my speed up to 40kph and the ride as smooth as possible.
There are some pictures of baobabs on my camera, but I think I must have taken them the day before because I certainly wasn't stopping for pictures today.
Every corrugation was like a needle spike into my leg, and by the time we hit tar I assured my riding companions that there was no way I was riding any more dirt between here and Opuwo, and any thoughts we'd had of taking the shortcut back through Ruacana could be forgotten.
So Oshikango it was, although as you can see from the map, it was going to be a long day riding in circles to get anywhere near where we were heading.
The terrain opened up again, and there was evidence all around us of the war that had ravaged the countryside.
I regret not having taken loads of pictures, but I was in no state to think of it, and this burnt out troop carrier will have to serve as the sole reminder of the tanks and military vehicles which still frame the main national road to Namibia.
I don't know why they haven't been cleared away. You'd think the scrap would be worth a lot. Maybe it's an important national reminder not to allow the country to descend into war again. Perhaps there's so much bad juju attached to the relics that nobody wants to touch them. I don't know, but it makes for a macabre but bizarre and interesting experience driving past all of them. Sadly we didn't get as far west on this trip as we'd planned, because I believe there are many more closer to Cuito. That will have to remain for another trip.
The road to the border was largely uneventful - a couple hundred km's of flat tar. Unlike Ruacana, a sleepy hamlet with five bored policemen that sees one or two vehicles a day, Oshikango is a bustling border town. We met our first unpleasant Angolans... the pushy money touts who are a feature of just about every main border crossing in Africa. But we got through without too much hitch and on the Namibian side immediately began looking for somewhere to find lunch.
It was 3pm, we were finally out of Angola. But this day was very, very far from over....
The previous evening's accident had tipped the scales towards the "All good things come to an end!" direction. But first there was some celebrating to. It was this big fella's 38th birthday,
Cake and candles were in short supply, so we redirected our party fervour to the idea of several very cold bottles of champagne in Opuwo Lodge that evening. I was feeling sore, but the horse tranquilisers were doing their job, and I had a look at the state of the bike, wondering how it was going to hold up to the day's riding. Turned out I was in much worse a state than the machine.
A little battle-scarred for sure, but it looked like we wouldn't have to set it on fire and abandon it in a shallow roadside grave in Angola. We packed, I gingerly mounted my steed and set off. It was immediately clear that my right wrist was pretty painful. Now something curious came to pass, which I believe is the subject of one of Hipócrates' laws. Otherwise known as the hammer to the big toe theory. Simply put - you think your wrist is sore? Just pass me my hammer and I'll make you forget all about the pain.
My wrist was broken, and as I sit here typing six weeks after the event, it is clearly the injury that is going to trouble me by far the most going forward. But I swear I forgot about it completely for ten days. The bad roastie on my leg turned out to be a massive 20x20cm haematoma - the skin tissue layer pulled off the muscle - which was only a day away from becoming badly infected. In the resulting fever and operation that followed in South Africa, I forgot all about my wrist until the pain from my leg subsided. How utterly bizarre.
Apparently the 100km of dirt from our rough camp to the town of Xandongo was spellbindingly amazing. Ask the Midget. I remember nothing of it, except for a constant struggle to keep my speed up to 40kph and the ride as smooth as possible.
There are some pictures of baobabs on my camera, but I think I must have taken them the day before because I certainly wasn't stopping for pictures today.
Every corrugation was like a needle spike into my leg, and by the time we hit tar I assured my riding companions that there was no way I was riding any more dirt between here and Opuwo, and any thoughts we'd had of taking the shortcut back through Ruacana could be forgotten.
So Oshikango it was, although as you can see from the map, it was going to be a long day riding in circles to get anywhere near where we were heading.
The terrain opened up again, and there was evidence all around us of the war that had ravaged the countryside.
I regret not having taken loads of pictures, but I was in no state to think of it, and this burnt out troop carrier will have to serve as the sole reminder of the tanks and military vehicles which still frame the main national road to Namibia.
I don't know why they haven't been cleared away. You'd think the scrap would be worth a lot. Maybe it's an important national reminder not to allow the country to descend into war again. Perhaps there's so much bad juju attached to the relics that nobody wants to touch them. I don't know, but it makes for a macabre but bizarre and interesting experience driving past all of them. Sadly we didn't get as far west on this trip as we'd planned, because I believe there are many more closer to Cuito. That will have to remain for another trip.
The road to the border was largely uneventful - a couple hundred km's of flat tar. Unlike Ruacana, a sleepy hamlet with five bored policemen that sees one or two vehicles a day, Oshikango is a bustling border town. We met our first unpleasant Angolans... the pushy money touts who are a feature of just about every main border crossing in Africa. But we got through without too much hitch and on the Namibian side immediately began looking for somewhere to find lunch.
It was 3pm, we were finally out of Angola. But this day was very, very far from over....
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Between the video and the description, it looks like you were manning up magnificently though... :thumleft:
Good war-stories to pull the chicks at Café Caprice :ricky:
Good war-stories to pull the chicks at Café Caprice :ricky:
MechanicalCamel
Pack Dog
And then, just like that, we were through that awful border post. It took about a week to get ourselves into Angola , and then in the blink of an eye, we were out again. We were one man short, one short man, one man wounded, and one man hungry, but we were back in Namibia. The fat lady wasn't yodelling however, and the circus was most certainly not yet over.
The thing with border towns is that they're universally ******. In the Wild West, the Frontier Towns had allure and charm and an exciting, dangerous feel to them. Border towns just have a dirty, dangerous feel to them. All the downside with none of the upside - like an ugly bird who’s also a bad lover. We needed money, food, petrol and to high-tail it outta there as fast as we could. But we're not very good at high tailing it outta anywhere very fast so we sat down for a nice big meal to celebrate our grand achievement.
Max located what must be the only place to get a decent bite in that nasty little hovel and we sat down to watch me eat. Which I did with gusto and not just cause it was my birthday right. When you've been eating biltong-chicken and brown onion soup stew out of unwashed pots, it doesn't take much to titillate the taste buds. We then started our last full-blown blither-fest of the trip as we tried to pry ourselves away from food, fill up the bikes, and go find Tom.
We poured over a map and couldn’t find a route other than the dirt road that goes back to Ruacana. You might have picked up that Max had a slight scratch on his left buttock. Despite taking due caution by swabbing it carefully with mercurochrome and applying a Donald Duck plaster, he wasn’t keen to take on corrugated roads. We asked everyone within shouting distance from our table but it didn’t look like there were any alternatives. So that was that, time to fly. Max went to the pharmacy, I went for gas, Midget got lost, Max found a different route, Midget found gas, I got lost, Max found gas, then we lost each other. It was hot, we were tired, Max's pending amputation was causing a bit of stress, and fuses were a little short. We deliberated about the route a bit and then decided to take a chance on a road less travelled that a gypsy had drawn in the dirt with a chicken bone. To top it off, when we found our way out of town we were stuck in rush hour traffic with the sun slap bang in front of us (why does a border post have rush hour?). The Midget, having mastered sand, rocks, bowls and single track, was having a hell of a time (blessed are the Greeks) with this traffic. It's easy to forget that the wee man has only ridden on a car-infested road for a grand total of 4 hours in his extraordinary biking career. He had snow blindness, donkeys, unskilled Namibian drivers and 2 impatient brothers to deal with and was having none of it:
"I'm not going one step further until I get a foot massage…!" he protested (one would thinketh, too much).
"…by a graceful Himba woman", he added, demanding, "I want fruit, baskets of the stuff. Preferably exotic - east coast."
He wasn’t stopping now, "and while you're about it, some local musicians to calm my shattered nerves."
His words sprinkled the air, mixed with diesel fumes and fell many miles from the helmet-encased ears of the Midget-Drivers, who were some kms up the road by now. Resigning himself to death by tar, he closed his eyes and soldiered on until the road was quiet again because it was dark and everyone had gone home. Now I’m sure that every one of you, good readers, knows that it's a bad idea to be on the road after dark in faraway towns in Africa. You’ll also know by now that we’re big fans of bad ideas, so we belted into the magical sunset like the rugged cowboys we aspire to be. It was time to find Tom.
It was fantastic for a while. Gorgeous wide open Namibian scenery flashing by, orange, pink, red, midnight blue sky fading to black, three amigos with a righteous sense of achievement. The levels of contentment were high; this was an amazing way to end an unbelievable trip. I recall thinking “if we make it back alive, this will be the Most Magical Birthday Ever.” It was the alive part that was starting to look a little shaky.
In a fitting tribute to our cavalier approach to navigation, we were trying to get back to Opuwa on a route that we weren't entirely sure existed. Max had met a German gypsy fellow in the pharmacy who assured him there was a new tar road that linked Oshakati with the intersection on the Ruacana road where we had charmed our way through the police stop many pages earlier. If it existed, we were on like Donkey Kong, if it didn’t, we were in for a mighty detour that would definitely have involved running out of petrol. Germans are known to be extremely precise (especially when welding), so, as all hint of daylight exited stage right we spanked all our money on red, and bee-lined for the unknown. Game on!
At about 10pm we stopped on the side of the road to regroup, by which time we were decidedly hysterical. Not in a “wow, Eddie Izzard is soooooo funny” kinda way, more in a “I’m a pig and I love the smell of bacon and here comes the famer with a rifle” kinda way. We had been riding since 6:30am so fatigue levels were off the charts. Fortunately there was no danger of us falling asleep cause that’s not possible when you’re confronted by a breeze with a wind-chill factor of -25C. It was colder than I’ve ever been in my life, and believe you me I’ve inhabited some frigid spaces in my time (relationships aren’t my strong point). We had already stopped once to put warm clothes on but this was now a full-scale assault on frostbite. Max set about cutting holes in the heels of his dirty socks to stick his thumb through so he could wear them like mittens. I was cutting holes in my beanie so I could wear it over my helmet like a safety-conscious bank robber. The Midget wasn’t cutting anything.
He stood some way back, unblinking.
"Zip me up", he said.
"Dood, that's not going to work," I replied.
The Midget had taken his enormous (even for a normal-sized man) sleeping bag, wrapped it around his belly and was trying to contain it inside his bike jacket. It was like Santa trying to get into Chris Froome’s time trail suit.
“I don’t think that’s going to work”, I (foolishly) said again.
"ZIP ME UP!!!" he bellowed, with a downright vicious snarl. The Midget doesn’t give instructions very often but I know better than to argue when he does.
I couldn’t get the 2 sides of the zip close enough so I lay him on his side and then sat on him, squashing the front of the jacket shut. I had trapped his arms underneath me so I had to reach between my legs to zip the jacket up, but my fingers were so numb it was like doing open-heart surgery with braai tongs. I had accidentally placed my boot on the Midget’s head during the compression exercise so all I could hear from him was a muffled warbling. All this while Max was in the background, cackling like a hyena, flashing the Smith & Wesson about like he was holding a puffadder. Things were looking dangerously unhinged and I feared for anyone who stopped to observe.
And still, STILL, we weren’t home….
The thing with border towns is that they're universally ******. In the Wild West, the Frontier Towns had allure and charm and an exciting, dangerous feel to them. Border towns just have a dirty, dangerous feel to them. All the downside with none of the upside - like an ugly bird who’s also a bad lover. We needed money, food, petrol and to high-tail it outta there as fast as we could. But we're not very good at high tailing it outta anywhere very fast so we sat down for a nice big meal to celebrate our grand achievement.
Max located what must be the only place to get a decent bite in that nasty little hovel and we sat down to watch me eat. Which I did with gusto and not just cause it was my birthday right. When you've been eating biltong-chicken and brown onion soup stew out of unwashed pots, it doesn't take much to titillate the taste buds. We then started our last full-blown blither-fest of the trip as we tried to pry ourselves away from food, fill up the bikes, and go find Tom.
We poured over a map and couldn’t find a route other than the dirt road that goes back to Ruacana. You might have picked up that Max had a slight scratch on his left buttock. Despite taking due caution by swabbing it carefully with mercurochrome and applying a Donald Duck plaster, he wasn’t keen to take on corrugated roads. We asked everyone within shouting distance from our table but it didn’t look like there were any alternatives. So that was that, time to fly. Max went to the pharmacy, I went for gas, Midget got lost, Max found a different route, Midget found gas, I got lost, Max found gas, then we lost each other. It was hot, we were tired, Max's pending amputation was causing a bit of stress, and fuses were a little short. We deliberated about the route a bit and then decided to take a chance on a road less travelled that a gypsy had drawn in the dirt with a chicken bone. To top it off, when we found our way out of town we were stuck in rush hour traffic with the sun slap bang in front of us (why does a border post have rush hour?). The Midget, having mastered sand, rocks, bowls and single track, was having a hell of a time (blessed are the Greeks) with this traffic. It's easy to forget that the wee man has only ridden on a car-infested road for a grand total of 4 hours in his extraordinary biking career. He had snow blindness, donkeys, unskilled Namibian drivers and 2 impatient brothers to deal with and was having none of it:
"I'm not going one step further until I get a foot massage…!" he protested (one would thinketh, too much).
"…by a graceful Himba woman", he added, demanding, "I want fruit, baskets of the stuff. Preferably exotic - east coast."
He wasn’t stopping now, "and while you're about it, some local musicians to calm my shattered nerves."
His words sprinkled the air, mixed with diesel fumes and fell many miles from the helmet-encased ears of the Midget-Drivers, who were some kms up the road by now. Resigning himself to death by tar, he closed his eyes and soldiered on until the road was quiet again because it was dark and everyone had gone home. Now I’m sure that every one of you, good readers, knows that it's a bad idea to be on the road after dark in faraway towns in Africa. You’ll also know by now that we’re big fans of bad ideas, so we belted into the magical sunset like the rugged cowboys we aspire to be. It was time to find Tom.
It was fantastic for a while. Gorgeous wide open Namibian scenery flashing by, orange, pink, red, midnight blue sky fading to black, three amigos with a righteous sense of achievement. The levels of contentment were high; this was an amazing way to end an unbelievable trip. I recall thinking “if we make it back alive, this will be the Most Magical Birthday Ever.” It was the alive part that was starting to look a little shaky.
In a fitting tribute to our cavalier approach to navigation, we were trying to get back to Opuwa on a route that we weren't entirely sure existed. Max had met a German gypsy fellow in the pharmacy who assured him there was a new tar road that linked Oshakati with the intersection on the Ruacana road where we had charmed our way through the police stop many pages earlier. If it existed, we were on like Donkey Kong, if it didn’t, we were in for a mighty detour that would definitely have involved running out of petrol. Germans are known to be extremely precise (especially when welding), so, as all hint of daylight exited stage right we spanked all our money on red, and bee-lined for the unknown. Game on!
At about 10pm we stopped on the side of the road to regroup, by which time we were decidedly hysterical. Not in a “wow, Eddie Izzard is soooooo funny” kinda way, more in a “I’m a pig and I love the smell of bacon and here comes the famer with a rifle” kinda way. We had been riding since 6:30am so fatigue levels were off the charts. Fortunately there was no danger of us falling asleep cause that’s not possible when you’re confronted by a breeze with a wind-chill factor of -25C. It was colder than I’ve ever been in my life, and believe you me I’ve inhabited some frigid spaces in my time (relationships aren’t my strong point). We had already stopped once to put warm clothes on but this was now a full-scale assault on frostbite. Max set about cutting holes in the heels of his dirty socks to stick his thumb through so he could wear them like mittens. I was cutting holes in my beanie so I could wear it over my helmet like a safety-conscious bank robber. The Midget wasn’t cutting anything.
He stood some way back, unblinking.
"Zip me up", he said.
"Dood, that's not going to work," I replied.
The Midget had taken his enormous (even for a normal-sized man) sleeping bag, wrapped it around his belly and was trying to contain it inside his bike jacket. It was like Santa trying to get into Chris Froome’s time trail suit.
“I don’t think that’s going to work”, I (foolishly) said again.
"ZIP ME UP!!!" he bellowed, with a downright vicious snarl. The Midget doesn’t give instructions very often but I know better than to argue when he does.
I couldn’t get the 2 sides of the zip close enough so I lay him on his side and then sat on him, squashing the front of the jacket shut. I had trapped his arms underneath me so I had to reach between my legs to zip the jacket up, but my fingers were so numb it was like doing open-heart surgery with braai tongs. I had accidentally placed my boot on the Midget’s head during the compression exercise so all I could hear from him was a muffled warbling. All this while Max was in the background, cackling like a hyena, flashing the Smith & Wesson about like he was holding a puffadder. Things were looking dangerously unhinged and I feared for anyone who stopped to observe.
And still, STILL, we weren’t home….
goingnowherequickly
Pack Dog
- Joined
- Jul 29, 2010
- Messages
- 395
- Reaction score
- 0
- Bike
- KTM 640 Adventure
Are you home yet...??? ;D
Masters of Suspension :biggrin:
loving this RR, what happened next??
Masters of Suspension :biggrin:
loving this RR, what happened next??
This is epic stuff, stuff that deserves to go to to the Roll of Honor Section. :deal:
waaahahahahahaha
:spitcoffee: :laughing4: :imaposer: :laughing4: :snorting:
waaahahahahahaha
:spitcoffee: :laughing4: :imaposer: :laughing4: :snorting:
funky_munky
Pack Dog
This is one epic tale of adventure.
:thumleft:
:thumleft:
lecap
Bachelor Dog
MechanicalCamel said:So, as Max says, were sitting in the middle of this sweet little village, waiting for a short guy on a mule to show up. The spirits were high cause the riding was really, really good.
This is the best riding I have ever done, I exclaimed to Max, for the 10th consecutive day. Id love to be back at Café Caprice so I could celebrate with a cocktail.
After a bit, the Midge came bouncing down the track on a buttercup-coloured pogo stick and then stopped, about 200m away. We looked. We waited. Midge hopped off Buttercup, circled it a few times, scratched his tiny little chin, and then waved for help.
I sauntered over, thinking he needed some assistance tying the tattered remains of his bags together (at this point they looked like an ancient windsock). But things were sadly not so superficial.
Ooooooh sheeeeiiit, said I.
What you mean?, said the Midget, knowing exactly what I meant.
Dood, Im sorry to say this, but I think this is the end of the road for you. Buttercup has finally rolled over. She needs to be shot.
After the previous nights fall the Midget thought his pro-surfing career was over, and now this! It was too much and his bottom lip began to quiver.
The DR was sitting on the ground like a fat Sumo wrestler; back wheel tucked tight up against the wheel arch and bags resting on the ground. The rear shock had snapped and with so little time left there was not much we could do. I imparted all this news with learned, if compassionate tones. What a sad, sad day. A catastrophe, a calamity, a twagedy of biblical proportions.
Buttercup was clearly in pain so I set about creating a screen so we could shoot her with dignity. That horse deserved it. Sadly we didnt have a gun so I readied myself to bludgeon her to death with a tyre iron. Our plans to smuggle high calibre rifles over the border were thwarted by Maxs lady. Had this not been the case, I would have emptied a merciful round into Buttercups guts, then and there. Weaponry absent, I resorted to that which is mightier than the sword, and composed an ode.
ODE TO BUTTERCUP
Oh Buttercup, you trooper
You have been a sensation. Simply super.
Your style and grace is ace.
You have weathered soft sand like a camel (but lets not get carried away).
You have traversed rocks like a dung beetle.
You have followed the single track like a note does a line.
And now your time has come to have your brains beaten out with a tyre iron.
May you rest well in the AfterLife (its horrible stuff).
The cry of a distant vulture broke my trance and I suddenly had the bright idea of inspecting the damage. So we lay the bike down and I looked, and we lay it the other way and I inspected, and bugger me if I couldnt find anything broken. The shock looked fine, the linkage looked fine, the swingarm looked fine. Everything seemed fine except my fatalistic prognosis and the position of that rear wheel. WTF?
By this time, the panda had waddled over. He casually assessed the situation, shooed away the circling vultures and pointed at the rack, about which so much has been said. Now, in the interests of world peace and general civility, let me be clear that I am in no way condemning the (expert-welder and remote-sidestand-switch-fixer) creator of said racks. These racks were, however, very nearly the cause of a very small man not completing a very big adventure. There wasnt enough clearance for the rear wheel and the wheel nut had got caught inside the rack, trapped like a shetland pony under Kobus Wiese. (Dear Lord please tell me hes not on this forum?) A bit of levering with a stick rammed between wheel and rack and PING out popped the wheel.
This was clearly the happiest sound the Midget has heard since his wife said yes (to the bike trip, not marriage). He immediately took off all his clothes and ran around in circles with his hands in the air, squealing with delight. Max narrowly escaped injury in the ensuing stampede (weve mentioned that the Midget is not remotely in proportion).
Now, believe me when I say I havent hammed this story up one little bit.
Restored to her former glory, and having (almost literally) dodged a bullet, Buttercup whinnied over to some nearby shade to be attended to. We dialled in the pre-load (again), maxed out the damping, and removed the rear bumper component on the expertly welded rack. We still had to bend the racks out further away from the wheel so we lay the DR flat on the ground stood on the bottom piece while Midget used his famous snatch technique to rip the top piece further away from the wheel. This was easy for him because he held the national weightlifting record in the snatch discipline in the early 90s (narrowly missing out on the clean and jerk to Stringfellow Hawk).
And with that, we were off again! Right after a drink
My apologies but I clearly slept through the Midget's pre carrier rack design briefing where he stated that he intends to roll the bike across parts of Angola on the carrier rack rather than on the wheels.
It looks as if the relentless series of impacts of our planet against the poor Suzuki eventually bent the rack inwards enough to finally allow it to grab the rear axle nut as it happened to travel past and lock it in a position which must have made the bike resemble a dog with worms dragging its backside on the ground.
A good measure can probably also be blamed on the soft luggage which at this stage was hanging in cable tie and duct tape reinforced tatters and did not fulfil its role as impact softening protective layer between luggage rack and planet any more leaving mother earth scarred and scratched on various occasions.
Now it has to be understood that every commercially available carrier rack would have ended up as an entangled and torn mess of metal scraps in a compulsory "lost bits catcher" drag net towed behind the bike no later than by reaching Iona.
My masterpiece of engineering did not only withstand the repeated impacts of approximately 6000000000000000000000 tons of planet earth, no it even was able to catch and hold the Donkeys hind leg in a near fully compressed state after all this abuse.
Again every commercially available rack would probably not have achieved this feat even whilst still brand new.
All warranty claims on the mentioned carrier rack are refuted based on the following reasons:
The warranty has to be validated by the delivery of at least two cases of appropriately chilled Windhoek Draught to my premises.
The claim has to be submitted by the delivery of at least another two cases of appropriately chilled Windhoek Draught to my premises.
Castle is not acceptable as a substitute due to my ancestry. Luke warm Zamaleks definitely also aren't.
After consideration of all the drinks the claim would have been declined based on:
The rack was rattle can sprayed in a politically correct shade of black.
It did actually not break. According to the fine print of the warranty which can be found in the mouldy file behind the spare toilet cistern in my workshop only actual breakage caused by the impact of a cone of soft serve soft serve side first is covered :evil6:
The slight deformation could have been fixed by simply bending it back into shape by using a car jack. Do Angolans have punctures? Do they use bodybuilders to heave the cars clear of the ground to change tires?
I actually mentioned this and in particular the possibility that the bent carrier might catch the rear axle nut as well as the fixing method of spreading the bent carrier with a car jack in the post carrier rack manufacture briefing but the Midget must have slept through this section
Would have saved him the snatch exercise :lol8:
Even a 600 pound blacksmiths anvil thrown across the Angolan landscape in the same manner as the Suzuki would have been shattered to pieces before the rack bent enough to engage the rear suspension.
The carrier rack probably prevented the Suzuki from simply breaking in half from being thrown around all the time by considerable reinforcing it. I will gladly accept the earlier mentioned two cases of ice cold Windhoek Draught as gratification - to be delivered to my premises :lol8:
MaxThePanda
Race Dog
Haha. Now that's the spirit. I personally advised the Midge to just remove his entire DR subframe and use the rack instead.
I did get a certain satisfaction in seeing the rear wheel spring free, but either way it wasn't a disaster... he could have just used the rack as a sled and the rear wheel as a paddle to keep moving him forward. God knows that with his motorcycling skills he wouldn't have noticed much difference.
Like this:
I did get a certain satisfaction in seeing the rear wheel spring free, but either way it wasn't a disaster... he could have just used the rack as a sled and the rear wheel as a paddle to keep moving him forward. God knows that with his motorcycling skills he wouldn't have noticed much difference.
Like this:
Malibu
Bachelor Dog
- Joined
- Aug 23, 2007
- Messages
- 11,171
- Reaction score
- 64
- Bike
- NER-A-CAR
:thumleft: nice one guys!
