THE IRON BUTT RUN

PART 1 by Beetlejuice, PART 2 by Axel

The digital speedo is going 270,271,270,271….
The throttle is to the stop.
I can feel the vibrations through my jacket into the pit of my stomach as I lay flat on the tank.
The engine sounds like a spitfire engine as the plane dives earthwards after having it’s guts shot out by some luftwaffe puke.
Awesome sound.

I didn’t pick this straight, but it was there and besides on the previous straight I was blitzed by a red misted maniac on his b’stard FZR. Leaving me wallowing in his wake and cursing inside my helmet as he executed a text book manoeuvre without me noticing him before I almost got blown off the bike. The challenge was laid down and it was time to respond.

The R62 between Barrydale and Oudtshoorn is awesome, deserted and well maintained. Tearing along are man and machine in perfect harmony and all that. Machine lapping it up, screaming the mechanical equivalent of “yeeeeeehaaaaaa”. Man cr6pping himself, frozen in terror, hands like vice grips, somehow unable to release his death grip and close the throttle because it’s soooo good.

Soon however, I realise the straight is too short, there will be no time for my revenge and I’ll be unable to get the desired effect as I pass him because we’re both going so damned fast. Blitzing is more fun the bigger the difference in speeds and the smaller the gap between the bikes. Neither of us is strangers to this adolescent game and we’ve been playing it since the day, years ago, when I blitzed him in an unlit (with both us wearing sunglasses), pothole riddled tunnel on the Du Toitskloof pass, nearly wiping both of us and Gill out. What followed was not the a tongue lashing I expected but years and years of blitzing…

Now, we’re approaching a car crawling along and Axel rolls off, effectively ruining my revenge. He’s undoubtedly grinning in his helmet, relishing the thought. I know it but I’m plssed-off because my moment was taken from me in such a cruel manner. I close up and squeeze in next to him, pushing him towards the shoulder of the road. Then, waiting, waiting to see if the road is clear so we can pass the car as we get to the top of the hill. Road’s clear. Pull out to pass. Nail it. FZR showing me a front wheel to my right, then inching forward and coming past on my outside. Oi, what’s this? Get down on the tank, throttle to the stop. We storm up the hill, abreast, so close I can touch the FZR. I’m eager to get ahead but me gaining, if any, is painfully slow. I’m on the inside, closest to the shoulder. Mister is aware of me but I realise he has no intention of letting me get in front as he’s slowly pushing me closer to the gravel as he tries to get back into the lane because we’re going up another blind hill again. I roll off and the FZR moves in front of me as he is still in the oncoming lane and I’m not going to spoil my revenge by allowing Axel to embed himself into an oncoming 18 wheeler, an option he’d probably prefer as opposed to being passed.

We clear the rise and the road is open. Another straight opens up and we storm it.

Seconds later we see a sign indicating Oudtshoorn 10km (time to slow down) and a car parked on the other side of the road.

Axel brakes hard as the car moves onto the tarmac, I get a feeling something bad is about to happen but I have my hands full trying not to ram into his back because I thought we were still locked in mortal combat, and I can’t see what the car is doing because it’s obscured by the FZR. The car stops and we fly past. For a second it appeared it was going to make a U-turn right in front of us. That would have left some marks.

Over the next hill we see two cops cars parked next to the road. We slow down, pass them and ride through Oudthoorn on our best behaviour.

And that was the highlight of the weekend. To me anyway. The rest was long, boring roads that needed to be ridden to get to somewhere else so you can stretch your legs and get petrol so you can ride more long boring roads to get to a place where you must collect a petrol slip. Axel will tell you more about that later.

According to my odo which was judged wildly inaccurate by my companions and proven so
by Axels fancy bl00dy GPS or whatever that thing is called, we covered 1743 km, not including between 50 and 150 to and from our respective homes. Being the only one that religiously kept log of times and distances at fuel stops while they were goofing off or getting annoyed with me being slow, I now have detailed records,hehehe.

I’d also like to, respectfully, point out that my prediction was that we’ll get to Colesberg at 9 (my petrol slip says 21:01) and back in Cape Town at 11 (my petrol slip says 11:06). Hows that! I used 112 L of fuel at an average consumption of 15.48 km/l. Because theres some cloud of doubt hanging over my odo, it influences my fuel consumption.We wasted around 185 minutes (3 hours!) on stops giving us an average speed of about 100km/h over the trip if I have to guess.

And I have to guess because I didn’t log the stops. Axel blamed us smokers and we smokers blamed the health conscious mealie pip and canary seed munching Axel for the delays.

We rode until 9 o’clock Saturday night, covering 958 km’s in 9 hours. The last 2 hours were in the dark. Then went drinking and raising hell in Colesberg, going back to the hotel at around 12 o’clock. Adjusting and lube-ing chains, checking oil and talking nonsense until 01:30. Woke up again at 3 and left at 3:30. Suitably refreshed, ahem. The 1 and a half hours sleep was by choice. We should have tried to sleep more if we were responsible adults.

Our speeds were actually pretty conservative, usually cruising at around 160 with 200 showing as we went through the deserted karoo. I had a couple of frightening moments. One involved a tumble weed only I didn’t see and was frightening although probably harmless, two others involved buck standing on the yellow line eyeballing us doing 160 in the pitch dark as we went through the karoo in the early hours of Sunday morning. No-one else saw the animals but I’m not imagining things. They were probably fast asleep. I almost fell as I slipped on some diesel in Colesberg and again as I tried to get in front of a truck at Leeu Gamka (George - articulated truck,Axel - 18 wheeler,BeetleJuice - fooking big truck).

That was fun because the bike just spun and spun as I tried to get away on the wet road with the truck closing.

We reached the end point with about an hour to spare, which was good going.

All the bikes behaved impeccably. One tail light bulb was the only casualty. Axels rear tyre was finished by the time we got back.

We left a trail of dead birds and collected every single insect along the route.

Thanks to Axel and Indi, great companions and both proper tough b’stards.

Also thanks to Effast Africa for sponsoring the first class accommodation.

Beetlejuice

Part 2 by Axel

Pierre, Bobby, Rina, Mitch, and Di were there to wave us off as we left the Winelands One-stop at exactly 12:00pm and brought the bikes up to a cruising speed of around 160 until we got to the Hugenot Toll Tunnel through the Du Toits Kloof Mountain. This tunnel is kilometers long and the contruction joints flash by at a hypnotic speed. The first time I went through on a bike I thought I was going to go into a trance like state and fall off.

I think it has to do with the view from a helmet as I don’t get the same effect in a car (also can’t fall off I suppose) The alternative is over the mountain pass but there is a shorter tunnel near the top and it is totally unlit. If you go fast enough and aim for the light at the end you should come out ok through this tunnel but you get the feeling that you could be drifting towards the walls as you cannot see the road or anything except a bright light at the end.

This is the tunnel where Beetlejuice first Blitzed me on his Marauder and we were both wearing pi55-pots and dark glasses which only made it worse. Still the sound of the straight through cruiser pipes in that old tunnel was something else and I have had my revenge since then but I digress.

Montague was our first stop, around 150 km’s and Beetlejuice was having trouble with his steering and thought his front tyre pressure may have been the problem. I shoved the airhose onto his valve and the pressure dropped from 2 bar to 1 bar. No air. We had to detour into town to find another garage that had a working compressor. Needless to say we cursed the pump attendant who watched us try pump the tire without saying a word.

Then on to refuel in Ladismith and then through Oudtshoorn to De Rust for our next fuel stop on some great roads which Beetlejuice described earlier. We had a lot of fun here as we were still fresh and raring to go. After De Rust we turned towards Willowmore where the fuel break seemed to take just a little bit longer. We knew it would be getting dark sooner than we were used too as we were heading eastwards and I was a little concerned about the fact that both my taillights had blown on the fast stretch to Willowmore.

Beetlejuice said he had noticed it go. I replace bulbs on a fairly regular basis (every 3 days) and buy them in packs of ten at a time. I have had the bike checked over by Krogs Bike Shop but they say it is not a short but high frequency vibrations at high revs that kill the bulbs. After shopping around it was recommended that I use Stanley bulbs or Osram as they can handle rougher conditions but needless to say I didn’t find any before I left and hadn’t stocked up by the time we left. I tried to buy some from the car spares place in Willowmore and they said they don’t stock any taillight bulbs. Hard to believe but it was not Cape Town so anything goes I suppose. After Willowmore we stopped at Graaf Reinet and Beetlejuice rode behind me as it was now dark and I think I scared him a few times with brake lights flaring out of nowhere and when we realised that it was unlikely that many cars were going to sneak up on us at that speed he stopped riding backstop and buggered off past me and Indi to irritate the oncoming traffic with his exceptionally bright lights. One car did come past and I lightly held my breaks to keep a light showing until he was past and then we tucked in behind him and he dragged us into Middleburg.

After this it was only 95kms to Colesburg and we made good time on the last stretch. I think we went through a mountain pass that would have been great during daylight and then our last fuel stop for the day in Colesburg. Our bikes attracted the usual amount of attention and Beetlejuice once again bumped into people he knew. This time it was a guy who had grown up near him and was family friends in their childhood.

The Merino Inn (@#$%^&* yeah) Motel told us that the kitchen had closed when we arrived and we would have to go to town to get supper. Indi was pissed off as he had specifically phoned and confirmed that they would be serving dinner at that time. Beetlejuice immediately got his revenge and left a beautiful 3 meter long dark black stripe on their porch tiles outside reception. They could see we were hungry. Town had some places still open and we settled in for a relaxed evening. We met another biker there who was heading down from Johannesburg to Cape Town on his Honda Bros 400. He was carrying a spare tin of fuel and was doing better than us on average overall including stops as he was only stopping on the side of the road long enough to refill. He was keen to sign up with IUB and hopefully he remembers the URL as he made a mental note of it over a beer or two. After a few beers and a decent steak we went back to our accommodation and oiled and adjusted chains, checked over the bikes and finally went to bed around 1:30am.

We left Colesburg at 03:30. The N1 was great going even in the dark and we managed to maintain a good speed until the first of the road repair stop and go’s. We went through about 6 in total each one with a 10 minute waiting period. Only one allowed us to go soon after we stopped, the others all made us wait long enough for a smoke break.

Our first stop was Richmond. This is where Beetlejuice apparently saw the pink buck on the side of the road. It was early, dark and not too long after the beers from the night before remember, now who are you going to believe?

As the light improved we went a little faster, stopping for fuel at Beaufort West and soon after there were a few spots of rain. Indi took off like a scalded cat and the next we saw was him standing in the shelter of the next garage in Leeu Gamka, already filled up and paying for his fuel. He donned his balaclava and started making suggestions about us holding the garage up but seeing as we had all already been filmed on the CCTV we declined politely.

When we pulled out it was still raining quite heavily and the road looked like it was covered in a white foam. This looked like a mixture of diesel and water whipped up and it was quite scary for me on my smooth almost trashed back tyre. Indi pulled out in front of a truck, taking a bit of a chance as the truck was thundering down the N1 at high speed and there Beetlejuice decides he’d like to try that too. He spun his rear up in the first two gears and I was waiting for the gentle squishing sound of a 18 wheeler popping him like a grape when he must have got some traction and he disappeared in front of the truck. I was having none of that thank you and I pulled out behind only to almost be taken out by a bus who decided that he would ride next to me as opposed to behind me. I was suitably infuriated and overtook them all on a solid double line gave them the biker farewell, some road spray and a taillight disappearing over the horizon. – I also had to catch up with those other two maniacs so I gave it some stick and followed behind them till Laingsburg. I was still nursing my back tyre as I was sure it was going to be running on canvas before too long and it was still a long way to Cape Town. Things started looking up when we realised it was only another stop in Worcester and that was already over our 1609km requirement and close to home.

The B’stard FZR used 153L of fuel at an average consumption of 10,72km/L and shredded another rear tyre and blew two taillight bulbs. It also clocked over the 50,000 km mark on the odo on this trip. My average speed including all fuel/rest stops except Colesburg was 114km/hr.

Thanks as well to Indi and Beetlejuice for great company, the accommodation and good riding companions. I enjoyed every minute (OK so some of the pain has eased and the memories are fading) and look forward to follow Kevin’s attempt at loftier goals -

but maybe only next year.

Axel

Tags: Iron Butt, Trip reports