Rain in the Bushveld !

[shark_za]

What a day to be out in the North West province on a bike.
The weather barely held and we had a great time riding over some of the best terrain you can find.

I only arrived at the meeting place at 08H00, the little TW200 does hold you up a bit but I had a really nice relaxed cruise to the dam.
Beat the usual late rush.

Only 4 of us braved the weather and were rewarded with some great riding.

The mud monster and his friend the skid demon were playing in the roads, it was great fun.
I saw confident riding from Voodoo till he went into a 2 wheel sidewards slide on the one section that brought the caution back to the party.

I didnt take a camera again! and struggled to get the cell phone into the right mode when I stopped to take some pics.

But here we go, you meet the nicest people out there, this can goto Nardus's thread too.
This friendly chap was out walking with his trusty .22 over his shoulder. No danged birds were going to eat his mielies , or whatever it is that he grows up there.

Then we found the above mentioned fellas (mud and skid), they had layed out a playground for us to enjoy.
In a light drizzle we got to slip slide through some great mud. I dont want to know what that section that caught us out a few years ago was like if this easy bit looked like today.

Voodoo coming through.

pgpatrick and Stofstreep playing in the slime.

Absolutely no stoff was seen throughout the whole day!

We then crossed over to the De Wildt side of the canal, riding up through Letlabile on some nice dirt track and easy dirt roads.
Less mud, but wash aways were all over the place.

Me and Voodoo are right close to each other and we see these little calves playing on the side of the track, not wanting to spook them we slow down and trundle past.
Then to the left I see this pissed off Bull thinking that we are going to cause kak and he decided he wants to take me out.
Voodoo winds it open, stays the same speed as its just wheelspin, my KLR powerthuds as I didnt downshift in time, all this while the damn bull is dropping his head and aiming right at me!!!
We get going and all I can think of is Stoff and pgp coming up behind, we made it bye and I thought they were going to be toast.
Luckily the bull spotted the two bikes and not liking the shape of the new KLR decided to turn and run instead!
I wonder why those bullfighters things are red !?

We then hit the twisties and tried to join up with the paths next to the 3-fences riverbed. As we got to the riverbed we found it filled with water!
I was trying to ride along the bank and the ass of the KLR slid out, then gripped and I dropped it over in the mud.
I'm sure there will be photos of this as nobody wanted to help till there was evidence.

Stoff helped me right the bike, and as I rode to the top of the bank, I hit the rear brake hard!
Huh, whats wrong , oh, no right side footpeg.
It broke off in the fall.
Well it seems the one bolt was loose, so bad it has stripped, and the other bolt snapped in the fall. End result, no right footpeg and we so wanted to ride the riverbed today.
You meet the nicest people in De Wildt, we bumped into Rexc-w just as the footpeg broke and again at the shabeen.
He was out testing his new YZ, sweet bike that it.

At the shabeen we realised that the KLR was not going to make the riverbed, and had a beer or two.
We then also noticed my front wheel was pap!
Luckily a tyre weld was pumped in and help. I dunno, seems solid now. I'll change the tube tomorrow to be sure.

pgpatrick wanted to go check out the 3 fences riverbed as we heard from other riders that it was smooth and flatter that is had ever been in the last 2 years.

When he came back he generously let me take the little TW200 for a jaunt down the riverbed to the first fence and back.
Voodoo joined me and managed to take a little video clip of me riding the TW.

The little bike working down the river with my big ass on it.


Its so cool, it does get on top of the sand well and can be thrown around to get it pointed where you want to go.

Voodoo on 3-fences

We then went back to the shabeen, made a temporary plan with a piece of steel to fashion a sort of footpeg and hit the tar back to the meeting point.

Thanks Stoffstreep, pgpatrick and Voodoo for a lekka ride, sorry it didnt quite go as planned but I'm sure you were being honest when you said you had a lekka time anyway, I did !!!

 

[JourneyMan]

Any time at De Wildt and a wet Canals is a good time!

Edit: Bad on you for not taking a camera. Mortal sin going through wet Canals and De Wildt. :mrgreen:

 

[michnus]

Mud maniacs!!  Not a wasted Saturday, what will you be doing to fix the footpeg?

 

[shark_za]

I need to get the broken bit out, that should be fine with a new bolt.
The other one I will try tap with a tap and die set, maybe go bigger bolt.

Should be able to make a plan.

 

[Welsh]

I need to get the broken bit out, that should be fine with a new bolt.
The other one I will try tap with a tap and die set, maybe go bigger bolt.

Should be able to make a plan.

I have "EASY OUTS" if you want?

 

[shark_za]

I will be looking at adding the TW200, that is actually the cousin of the BWS100 scooter, to the family stable.
Such a non intimidating bike that just spells fun!

 

[michnus]

Great, give some report and your impressions on the scooter and the TW.

 

[sidetrack]

Sorry I did not make it. Long week and when I woke at 6am it was raining, went back to sleep. Nice ride, looks like you guys had a ball.

 

[Stofstreep]

Heheheheh!
That bull must have had Mad cow or something.
Very nice writing Shark. ;D

 

[pgpatrick]

So a wedding filled with hot bridesmaids, the odd lesbian  ;D and just generally good looking women meant I only got to sleep at around 3am... So when my alarm clock went off I wasn't keen particularly keen to drag myself out of bed. Then uncle bob sms'ed that he couldn't make it, which would usually put me back into bed, but it was too late, I was too awake to fall asleep again. A quick sms to shark meant I knew where to meet him and so I was on my way.

Slightly late, so I skipped a fuel stop, my TW does 30 km/l and I was on 150kms with shark saying we'd be at a garage in 50kms time. I should have 10 to spare so off we went.

At 170kms I thought felt the bike hiccup and thought I was probably running low due to some imaginary headwind,  so I spent the rest of the way there hugging the tank and using the bare minimum throttle. It was all unnecessary, I still had a liter left when we arrived.

So we started off with some mild dirt, I was being left behind so I opened up to try catch up.

Voodoo going through one of the easy sections:


Lesson 1, when it rains the soil next to the canal doesn't turn to mud, it turns into the devil. Hitting that at 70 means you are going to fall and eat earth in large quantities. Somehow I escaped though, it took a graceful dab of the left foot, then a huge plunk of the right, and the left again, and right. left, right, left, left, right, LEFT RIGHT RIGHT argh, just dig both feet in and ski...

And on we go at an easier pace, voodoo or shark in the front (to far ahead for me to tell who was who) followed by stofstreep on the new klr and myself playing sweeper/chicken.

That new KLR is a sexy bike, she knows it too, could hardly travel 300m before she would start shaking that ass in front of my tw. Even went as far as lying down to get some attention, but stofstreep was very protective and had her up and behaving again soon.

Boy was that mud sticky, after 3m my tyres were slicks and I was all over the show. Decided to be a man and paddle my way through, but with every step I just got taller and taller. This also meant the when I stood up, my feet became glued to the pegs and so i nearly fell over while standing still.

Time to bail out and head for dewildt, trying to find a way over the amazon, shark did this

Which meant his footpeg became a handpeg

No matter how hard you push you can't fuse metal with your mind

Anyway without being able to stand we decided to head back to 3 fences, following a narrow path at really high speed. It was like that scene from star wars on those flying bikes in the forest, just with thorns.

Had a relaxing time waiting for the rain to end

Met a hungry git, I mean goat

And gave the klr some braces

Had a quick dash in the riverbed, though it wasn't really sand, more like slush puppy.

This riding in the rain is for the dogs, we enjoyed it thoroughly!

 

[Plothond]

Now that's real snotty stuff

There are certain places in De-Wildt you just avoid when it's wet - especially on two wheels

There appear to be some real brave peeps on this forum  ;D

 

[lecap]

I need to get the broken bit out, that should be fine with a new bolt.
The other one I will try tap with a tap and die set, maybe go bigger bolt.

Should be able to make a plan.

Find someone who does M8 Time Sert repairs in GP. I have done a few KLR footpeg threads with them and they work very well.
Besides that torque to 25Nm only and replace the bolts after every fall with hard footpeg ground contact (they ALWAYS stretch and snap the next time)

Bigger bolts would be the ideal solution but very difficult to achieve as there's not much space to cut a larger diameter thread and less space for the tap drill to go.
More drastic is drilling all the way through the frame and welding an insert through the frame with a decent thread size like M10x1.25 or M 12x1.25.

Or you get yourself a DR with fat bolts and rubber mounts ;D

 

[shark_za]

I would guess its best to leave the bolts as soft as possible?
Rather save the threads on the mount points?

 

[Stofstreep]

First off, I want to apologize for the amount of photos, but I had my hands full.

We met at the Wimpy at Hartbeespoort dam and had a quick breakfast.
Only 4 of us pitched, the other must have been afraid they might melt  >
Voodoo, Shark, Pgpatrick and I, then set off on, what turned out, to be a brilliant ride.
The first part of the canal road to Brits was lovely, only some puddles pretty hard packed.
Here is pgpatrick on his TW200, handled everything in his stride.

Then we went along the railway line, for what felt like 10km, but must have been only 1km
Here the rain and traffic have made a mud bath extraordinare.


Then a short stint on some tar and back onto the canal road.

This was one of the worse, most exiting, awesome mud I have ever done  ;D
I went quite a long way, but promptly dropped the bike when I got sucked into a unseen rut.
Just as I picked up the bike pgpatrick arrived, very disappointed. He wanted to get a photo of the sleepy bike  :-[
Funny thing is I almost dropped it for him, but luckily I came to my senses, cause there is no way I'm picking that bike up again in that conditions. ;D

A couple of times the back end would come out and try its absolute best to try and overtake which almoust ended with me and the bike in a full, fast flowing canal. :-X
Further along we came across a lekker puddle which we had to cross.
Shark promptly stopped for some pics.
Here is a couple of VooDoo Dooing his thing ;D

These are, unfortunately, the only photos of the actual ride from me. (see first line for explanation)  ;D

From here we proceded into De Wild proper, and man what an experience.
Shark knows this place so well 8)
We crossed the Three fences river, but the rain has made it a bit though for the bike bikes.
The twisties was such a lekker ride, as you constantly changes direction and have to watch out for low hanging branches.

At some stage we would have had to cross the river again to follow a road to the shabeen. There was quite a lot of water in the river and in the effort to look for the best way to cross, Shark lost a foot-peg on his bike.
We then headed to the shabeen via an alternative, and easier(phew) route.

Here we parked off for some time talking about all things great, which means we mostly talked about bikes.  ;D
After a quick fix to Shark's bike, we headed back to civilization :'(

This is one of the best rides I have ever been on, period.
Thanks to Shark for organizing it, and all who participated. I had a Blast.

 

[Grootseun]

Nice one guys.

I am really disapointed that i missed this ride. My son's cricket rained out after about an hour..

would rather have been on my bike thinking about my dry home.. than in my dry home thinking about my bike.

Next time.

well done again.

 

[shark_za]

Met a hungry git, I mean goat

Butch or the 4 legged one?

 

[Welsh]

I would guess its best to leave the bolts as soft as possible?
Rather save the threads on the mount points?

ICM found somebody to do Timeserts, try him.

Welsh

 

[VooDoo]

Shark, stofstreep and pgpatrick, thanks for an absolutely amazing ride!

Was probably the best ride I've ever had on the 640, conditions were perfect!
It's always a laugh to see the looks on peoples faces when they see you hitting dewildt on the DS bikes thinking how hard the ride must be, but in reality it's the best way to spend a weekend!

 

[Trailrider]

Nice ride! That TW is a lekka trailbike  ;D

 

[JourneyMan]

Nice one guys.

I am really disapointed that i missed this ride. My son's cricket rained out after about an hour..

would rather have been on my bike thinking about my dry home.. than in my dry home thinking about my bike.

Next time.

well done again.

We'll go again. For sure.


Nice ride there guys! Well done!