SGB
Race Dog
Safe, long distance riding is the reason for the existence of the Iron Butt Association and as qualified members, we have previously utilized the local benefit of riding west for extended daylight. Starting in Durban with its early sunrise and ending some place west where the sun sets much later makes a lot of sense. Furthermore, our strategic global location facilitates near maximum benefit around 22 December when we have the longest day. Last year in January, we did a ride from Durban to Cape Town in one day, just to show that a Harley is not essential for long distance riding, although it is very popular amongst our American brothers, for which we have forgiven them only because they are American. We don?t have that excuse. See: https://www.bmwmotorrad.co.za/lifestyle/articles/default.asp?Id=413&tier=search
The success of last year?s trip caused the minds to think. There was general consensus that one ?Iron Butt? per year is what?s needed to retain our bragging rights. Piet had some ideas. The equinox at the Tropic of Capricorn, which lies at 23.5 degrees south latitude and runs through Australia, Chile, southern Brazil (Brazil is the only country that passes through both the equator and a tropic), and northern South Africa, is what we have to keep in mind for daylight, and the ride needs to be generally in a Westerly direction. South Africa is fairly convenient we thought, and shipping costs are limited if we ride all the way. Certainly cheaper than shipping the bikes to Brazil or Australia?..so a plan came together. A quality comparison between the hamburgers of the east and west coast was required, and we volunteered for the job. Durban to Alexander Bay was agreed as a route and we started looking for dates. 2007 kicked off at high speed, and the first weekend of March was the first opportunity with no clashes in diaries. Not the best date from a daylight perspective, but still good enough ? I mean, it is not 21 June quite yet?.
The date came closer and the Gauteng bunch added another dimension. A picture at Kosi Bay and a picture at Alexander Bay on the same ride seemed like a good idea. And seeing that the start was in Durban, the detour to Kosi was less than 1000 km, so why not? A further development was that seeing the men were going to be away for a few days, Marlice decided to join the ride to Durbs and spend the weekend with my wife and Bruce?s wife to catch up a bit on the things girls talk about.
Wednesday: Piet, Jaco and Marlice mount their 1200 GSA, 1200 GS and 650 GS respectively and depart from Pretoria at mid day. They ride to Pongola where they stop overnight.
Thursday: The Gauteng team proceeds to Kosi Bay and after some fighting with the sand they take a picture and hit tar to the N2 and to Durban. They have a blistering hot ride along the east coast to Durban on one of the warmest days of the year. Upon arrival, they stop over at Gear-up, Umhlanga Ridge and purchase some additional ability to carry water in the form of larger Camelback units. We all meet at the Oyster Box in Umhlanga to judge the East Coast entry of the Hamburger Competition. A whole bunch of us fill a large table. The riding team, any available family and the Gear-up Briscoes and Kevin and Hilda are all at this merry occasion and some more pictures are taken. The Hamburgers are good, the west coast will have to really pull out all stops to beat this. John announces that he will join in the morning and see us off at Harrismith, great! A good time is had by all and we depart for an early night in preparation of the early start the next morning.
Friday: We meet at the Winston Park BP at 03:00. Piet ? 1200 GSA, Jaco ? 1200 GS, Bruce ? 1200 GS, John ? 1200 GSA, Me ? 990 Adv S.
A brand new pair of Scorpions is not something I see every day, but this ride dictates new rubber and TKC?s just won?t last the planned distance, road rubber it is then.
The BMW?s were fitted with Anakees for the same reason. We head up the N3 towards Mooirivier, the freeway is nice and quiet. A little mist here and there slows us down slightly, but we make decent progress and get to Van Reenen for the first fuel stop.
All good so far and John wishes us a good trip as he returns to Durban solo to open Gear-up for the day?s business and he still has time for breakfast along the way. We continue to Bloemfontein, through the sunrise in Kestell?s vicinity, slowed only by a fuel stop at Senekal and the Verkeerdevlei toll gate. You HAVE to experience at least one sunrise a year, even if you are not a ?morning person?. In Bloemfontein we have breakfast, and chat to my brother who joins us at the Wimpy.
We do some eating and drinking and sitting around and then continue to Kimberley on the Petrusburg road. We ride past De Brug and some old memories fill my helmet.
At the Kimberley fuel stop, we have some of Bruce?s fruit sticks and take some pics of the huge Caltex sign.
The next stretch to Upington ends with a narrow section along the river and some slow tractors and trucks working in the grapevines. Amazing - this green belt along the river in the middle of a semi-desert. We arrive in Upington and find the O? Hagans after filling the bikes.
We re-fill our water packs and remind ourselves that fluid intake needs to be sustained in the hot weather, which we seem to get right having sucked the bags nearly dry up to this point. The road takes us to Keimoes and Kakamas.
There are still quite a few farmers out and about with their tractors carting grapes and the sweet smell of grapes becoming sultanas hangs in the air. The irrigation canal is the umbilical cord of this pretty area. Eventually we turn away from the river towards Pofadder and the roads opens up into a flat straight black line that disappears in the distance ? way further than the eye can see.
The earth must be round I think, as we do some decent covering of ground with the philharmonic symphony produced by the Akras in my ears. And I think that life cannot really be any better than this. I should have remembered that you always have to watch your rear view mirrors as I am somewhat surprised when the E55 AMG silently and graciously glides past with the young lady driver chatting to her passenger with one finger on the steering. This is the right area for cars like this ? I see them in the city too but can never quite work out what for. If you have one, find a customer in Springbok ? then you will be able to get some return on your investment?? The number plate is appropriate?.
Anyway, we fill up at Pofadder and head for Springbok. The 990 needs some assistance from it?s reserve tank, which lives on the 1200GSA.
We take some pics and life is still great. We are slightly ahead of our planned timeline card which Piet had laminated for us to stick into the transparent pocket on our jacket sleeves. Springbok comes and goes, and the sun is getting low. At Steinkopf we turn off towards Port Nolloth and the peak on the Arai comes in handy as we ride into the setting sun, enjoying the twisty pass after the somewhat limited turning of the last 1000 odd km. It is just about dark as we move through Port Nolloth.
The last stretch along the west coast towards Alexander Bay is nice and cool and we putter along at leisurely pace into the dusk to the mine?s main gate. We sign in and find the guest house. The name is appropriate. The mine?s staff is a jovial bunch and the party venue across the road plays loud music and serves high octane refreshments. The staff are off duty and having a good time. A bike is not seen here every day and we have lots of company with opinions, enhanced by the said refreshments, about the speed a bike can do. We listen more than we talk and enjoy the west coast Afrikaans. We settle down and go for the Hamburger we came for and decide that the comparison is somewhat unfair. The facilities at the disposal of the two venues are not matched and after carefully evaluating the handicaps, we decide to call it a draw and think more carefully about the purpose of the ride next time. We head back to the guest house, over the disused rugby field where the automated sprinkler system gives us a little exercise in timing. We tuck in after a brilliant ride of 1800 km for the day. What an incredible experience!
Saturday: We are up just after the ?late? west coast sunrise and once packed we take a ride to the Orange river mouth. We see some beach sand and confirm that the river actually runs into the ocean although a little bit less water than we saw at Upington actually arrives here. We take some pictures and head back to the guest house to settle the bill and commence the return journey.
What follows below is an abridged description compiled mainly from our GPS track logs, authored by Bruce, of the day when one of the highlights of my riding was so very suddenly changed to the biggest lowlight of my riding life.
?After finding the Orange River mouth, we travelled towards Port Nolloth, some 90km away. At Port Nolloth, Stefan discovered a large nail in his back tyre, which required some repair time in the village - the KTM is not tubeless, so the back wheel needed to be removed completely and the tube patched. Once repaired, we proceeded on to Springbok, 137 km away, via a fuel stop at Steinkopf. As we arrived in Springbok, we discovered that the puncture repair had not held. After more repairs, it was early afternoon and we decided to stay where we were for lunch. We had done 227km for the day and really didn?t feel like spending the rest of the afternoon on the tar, so we decided to go on to Pofadder and then do some dirt road to Verneukpan via Kenhardt and VanWyksvlei.
Pofadder was 164km away. We refuelled, reduced our tyre pressures and took some team photos.
The stretch of dirt road to Kenhardt was very good indeed. About 89 km into the stretch, we had a quick stop at a cross-road to regroup. A further 54 km later, there was another regroup and a 6-minute break.
The sequence of riders for the last part of the journey was Stefan, closely followed by myself and then Jaco and Piet, some 2 or 3 minutes behind. The gap between Jaco and Piet increased further after Piet stopped 20 km later to take photos
At the end of the dirt and about 2.3 km after a low level bridge,, I joined Stefan at the T-junction into Kenhardt Stefan took some photos and we talked about how great this last dirt stretch had been. It was 16h29.
Six minutes after my stopping, a farmer arrived in his vehicle to tell us that one of our fellow riders had fallen badly. Stefan and I headed back to the bridge. At this point, a farmer and his wife were already on the scene. (They lived 200m away and had seen Jaco coming past and heard the bike leave the road.) The lady was a nursing sister and had already made her assessment. Stefan saw Jaco between the reeds and approached him. There was no sign of life.?
I had reached the right-hander before the bridge and slowed down to 85km/h and then slowed down further at the left-hander approaching the bridge to 49km/h. Piet would reach the same point at the corner and would slow down to 65km/h. It is unlikely that Jaco?s speeds would have been dissimilar to ours.
?What a tragedy. The fact that death could have been such an extreme outcome for the nature of the accident sits uncomfortably with all of us. It is a beautiful part of the world that is not intimidating at all, yet has created an unbearable sadness in such a short space of time.?
The rest of the day was spent doing what we had to do, letting everyone know and all the other formalities. Not enjoyable at all. What a great bunch of people live in and around the town of Kenhardt. We could not believe the support we received here from everyone. Confused and shattered, we slept over at the Kenhardt hotel.
Sunday: We decide to all ride to Pretoria, the 3 of us together. This part of the ride treated us a little harshly. Very cold in the morning, then a heat wave as the sun rose higher. Rain around Vryburg?.heavy rain for a while. The North West is dry and the mealies are taking huge strain. Then more rain and wind around Ventersdorp. We arrive in Pretoria late afternoon after 900 km.
We left the bikes at Piet?s place and had a shower. Then to Jaco?s house for a short visit to his wife and family. Then Bruce and I were dropped at the airport and took a flight to Durban where we arrived in pouring rain.
It is two weeks later today. The funeral was last Friday. The three of us who went on the ride with Jaco (and a whole lot of others) lost a good friend. But his family lost a father, husband, son and brother. The pain and sadness is just unbelievable and we are all at a loss for words. Here in Durban, 600 km away, we can only keep them in our thoughts and prayers. Their lives will never be the same. And we are all at various levels of the search of that ?inner peace that goes beyond all human comprehension?.
In closing, we dedicate this report to Jaco. A great guy has been removed from our world all too suddenly. It is easy for us to think back, we will cherish the memories until we join him.
Why am I sharing all of this? I am hoping that the story will make us all realize that our time here on earth is just rented space for a limited duration which we cannot control. Remember that every time you depart from your house, leave your office, drop your kids at school, chat to your riding buddies at the roadside or whatever ? there is a real likelihood of you never returning. And the reasons are numerous and irrelevant ? whether your heart gives in, someone else takes you out or you have a lapse in concentration, it could all be over in a wink. The question is?? Is your relationship with those close to you such that it will be easy to remember you? Are YOU ready? Make sure that your stay on planet earth is not merely a visit.
Carpe Diem??and right now would be a good start
The success of last year?s trip caused the minds to think. There was general consensus that one ?Iron Butt? per year is what?s needed to retain our bragging rights. Piet had some ideas. The equinox at the Tropic of Capricorn, which lies at 23.5 degrees south latitude and runs through Australia, Chile, southern Brazil (Brazil is the only country that passes through both the equator and a tropic), and northern South Africa, is what we have to keep in mind for daylight, and the ride needs to be generally in a Westerly direction. South Africa is fairly convenient we thought, and shipping costs are limited if we ride all the way. Certainly cheaper than shipping the bikes to Brazil or Australia?..so a plan came together. A quality comparison between the hamburgers of the east and west coast was required, and we volunteered for the job. Durban to Alexander Bay was agreed as a route and we started looking for dates. 2007 kicked off at high speed, and the first weekend of March was the first opportunity with no clashes in diaries. Not the best date from a daylight perspective, but still good enough ? I mean, it is not 21 June quite yet?.
The date came closer and the Gauteng bunch added another dimension. A picture at Kosi Bay and a picture at Alexander Bay on the same ride seemed like a good idea. And seeing that the start was in Durban, the detour to Kosi was less than 1000 km, so why not? A further development was that seeing the men were going to be away for a few days, Marlice decided to join the ride to Durbs and spend the weekend with my wife and Bruce?s wife to catch up a bit on the things girls talk about.
Wednesday: Piet, Jaco and Marlice mount their 1200 GSA, 1200 GS and 650 GS respectively and depart from Pretoria at mid day. They ride to Pongola where they stop overnight.
Thursday: The Gauteng team proceeds to Kosi Bay and after some fighting with the sand they take a picture and hit tar to the N2 and to Durban. They have a blistering hot ride along the east coast to Durban on one of the warmest days of the year. Upon arrival, they stop over at Gear-up, Umhlanga Ridge and purchase some additional ability to carry water in the form of larger Camelback units. We all meet at the Oyster Box in Umhlanga to judge the East Coast entry of the Hamburger Competition. A whole bunch of us fill a large table. The riding team, any available family and the Gear-up Briscoes and Kevin and Hilda are all at this merry occasion and some more pictures are taken. The Hamburgers are good, the west coast will have to really pull out all stops to beat this. John announces that he will join in the morning and see us off at Harrismith, great! A good time is had by all and we depart for an early night in preparation of the early start the next morning.
Friday: We meet at the Winston Park BP at 03:00. Piet ? 1200 GSA, Jaco ? 1200 GS, Bruce ? 1200 GS, John ? 1200 GSA, Me ? 990 Adv S.
A brand new pair of Scorpions is not something I see every day, but this ride dictates new rubber and TKC?s just won?t last the planned distance, road rubber it is then.
The BMW?s were fitted with Anakees for the same reason. We head up the N3 towards Mooirivier, the freeway is nice and quiet. A little mist here and there slows us down slightly, but we make decent progress and get to Van Reenen for the first fuel stop.
All good so far and John wishes us a good trip as he returns to Durban solo to open Gear-up for the day?s business and he still has time for breakfast along the way. We continue to Bloemfontein, through the sunrise in Kestell?s vicinity, slowed only by a fuel stop at Senekal and the Verkeerdevlei toll gate. You HAVE to experience at least one sunrise a year, even if you are not a ?morning person?. In Bloemfontein we have breakfast, and chat to my brother who joins us at the Wimpy.
We do some eating and drinking and sitting around and then continue to Kimberley on the Petrusburg road. We ride past De Brug and some old memories fill my helmet.
At the Kimberley fuel stop, we have some of Bruce?s fruit sticks and take some pics of the huge Caltex sign.
The next stretch to Upington ends with a narrow section along the river and some slow tractors and trucks working in the grapevines. Amazing - this green belt along the river in the middle of a semi-desert. We arrive in Upington and find the O? Hagans after filling the bikes.
We re-fill our water packs and remind ourselves that fluid intake needs to be sustained in the hot weather, which we seem to get right having sucked the bags nearly dry up to this point. The road takes us to Keimoes and Kakamas.
There are still quite a few farmers out and about with their tractors carting grapes and the sweet smell of grapes becoming sultanas hangs in the air. The irrigation canal is the umbilical cord of this pretty area. Eventually we turn away from the river towards Pofadder and the roads opens up into a flat straight black line that disappears in the distance ? way further than the eye can see.
The earth must be round I think, as we do some decent covering of ground with the philharmonic symphony produced by the Akras in my ears. And I think that life cannot really be any better than this. I should have remembered that you always have to watch your rear view mirrors as I am somewhat surprised when the E55 AMG silently and graciously glides past with the young lady driver chatting to her passenger with one finger on the steering. This is the right area for cars like this ? I see them in the city too but can never quite work out what for. If you have one, find a customer in Springbok ? then you will be able to get some return on your investment?? The number plate is appropriate?.
Anyway, we fill up at Pofadder and head for Springbok. The 990 needs some assistance from it?s reserve tank, which lives on the 1200GSA.
We take some pics and life is still great. We are slightly ahead of our planned timeline card which Piet had laminated for us to stick into the transparent pocket on our jacket sleeves. Springbok comes and goes, and the sun is getting low. At Steinkopf we turn off towards Port Nolloth and the peak on the Arai comes in handy as we ride into the setting sun, enjoying the twisty pass after the somewhat limited turning of the last 1000 odd km. It is just about dark as we move through Port Nolloth.
The last stretch along the west coast towards Alexander Bay is nice and cool and we putter along at leisurely pace into the dusk to the mine?s main gate. We sign in and find the guest house. The name is appropriate. The mine?s staff is a jovial bunch and the party venue across the road plays loud music and serves high octane refreshments. The staff are off duty and having a good time. A bike is not seen here every day and we have lots of company with opinions, enhanced by the said refreshments, about the speed a bike can do. We listen more than we talk and enjoy the west coast Afrikaans. We settle down and go for the Hamburger we came for and decide that the comparison is somewhat unfair. The facilities at the disposal of the two venues are not matched and after carefully evaluating the handicaps, we decide to call it a draw and think more carefully about the purpose of the ride next time. We head back to the guest house, over the disused rugby field where the automated sprinkler system gives us a little exercise in timing. We tuck in after a brilliant ride of 1800 km for the day. What an incredible experience!
Saturday: We are up just after the ?late? west coast sunrise and once packed we take a ride to the Orange river mouth. We see some beach sand and confirm that the river actually runs into the ocean although a little bit less water than we saw at Upington actually arrives here. We take some pictures and head back to the guest house to settle the bill and commence the return journey.
What follows below is an abridged description compiled mainly from our GPS track logs, authored by Bruce, of the day when one of the highlights of my riding was so very suddenly changed to the biggest lowlight of my riding life.
?After finding the Orange River mouth, we travelled towards Port Nolloth, some 90km away. At Port Nolloth, Stefan discovered a large nail in his back tyre, which required some repair time in the village - the KTM is not tubeless, so the back wheel needed to be removed completely and the tube patched. Once repaired, we proceeded on to Springbok, 137 km away, via a fuel stop at Steinkopf. As we arrived in Springbok, we discovered that the puncture repair had not held. After more repairs, it was early afternoon and we decided to stay where we were for lunch. We had done 227km for the day and really didn?t feel like spending the rest of the afternoon on the tar, so we decided to go on to Pofadder and then do some dirt road to Verneukpan via Kenhardt and VanWyksvlei.
Pofadder was 164km away. We refuelled, reduced our tyre pressures and took some team photos.
The stretch of dirt road to Kenhardt was very good indeed. About 89 km into the stretch, we had a quick stop at a cross-road to regroup. A further 54 km later, there was another regroup and a 6-minute break.
The sequence of riders for the last part of the journey was Stefan, closely followed by myself and then Jaco and Piet, some 2 or 3 minutes behind. The gap between Jaco and Piet increased further after Piet stopped 20 km later to take photos
At the end of the dirt and about 2.3 km after a low level bridge,, I joined Stefan at the T-junction into Kenhardt Stefan took some photos and we talked about how great this last dirt stretch had been. It was 16h29.
Six minutes after my stopping, a farmer arrived in his vehicle to tell us that one of our fellow riders had fallen badly. Stefan and I headed back to the bridge. At this point, a farmer and his wife were already on the scene. (They lived 200m away and had seen Jaco coming past and heard the bike leave the road.) The lady was a nursing sister and had already made her assessment. Stefan saw Jaco between the reeds and approached him. There was no sign of life.?
I had reached the right-hander before the bridge and slowed down to 85km/h and then slowed down further at the left-hander approaching the bridge to 49km/h. Piet would reach the same point at the corner and would slow down to 65km/h. It is unlikely that Jaco?s speeds would have been dissimilar to ours.
?What a tragedy. The fact that death could have been such an extreme outcome for the nature of the accident sits uncomfortably with all of us. It is a beautiful part of the world that is not intimidating at all, yet has created an unbearable sadness in such a short space of time.?
The rest of the day was spent doing what we had to do, letting everyone know and all the other formalities. Not enjoyable at all. What a great bunch of people live in and around the town of Kenhardt. We could not believe the support we received here from everyone. Confused and shattered, we slept over at the Kenhardt hotel.
Sunday: We decide to all ride to Pretoria, the 3 of us together. This part of the ride treated us a little harshly. Very cold in the morning, then a heat wave as the sun rose higher. Rain around Vryburg?.heavy rain for a while. The North West is dry and the mealies are taking huge strain. Then more rain and wind around Ventersdorp. We arrive in Pretoria late afternoon after 900 km.
We left the bikes at Piet?s place and had a shower. Then to Jaco?s house for a short visit to his wife and family. Then Bruce and I were dropped at the airport and took a flight to Durban where we arrived in pouring rain.
It is two weeks later today. The funeral was last Friday. The three of us who went on the ride with Jaco (and a whole lot of others) lost a good friend. But his family lost a father, husband, son and brother. The pain and sadness is just unbelievable and we are all at a loss for words. Here in Durban, 600 km away, we can only keep them in our thoughts and prayers. Their lives will never be the same. And we are all at various levels of the search of that ?inner peace that goes beyond all human comprehension?.
In closing, we dedicate this report to Jaco. A great guy has been removed from our world all too suddenly. It is easy for us to think back, we will cherish the memories until we join him.
Why am I sharing all of this? I am hoping that the story will make us all realize that our time here on earth is just rented space for a limited duration which we cannot control. Remember that every time you depart from your house, leave your office, drop your kids at school, chat to your riding buddies at the roadside or whatever ? there is a real likelihood of you never returning. And the reasons are numerous and irrelevant ? whether your heart gives in, someone else takes you out or you have a lapse in concentration, it could all be over in a wink. The question is?? Is your relationship with those close to you such that it will be easy to remember you? Are YOU ready? Make sure that your stay on planet earth is not merely a visit.
Carpe Diem??and right now would be a good start
