Wolseley - Cape

It was a dark stormy night, the wind was howling and the trees were heaving and sighing like old men looking for their bedpans, the birds were strangely quiet, the air was laden with anticipation, you know that moment just before the lead crystal glass break at the Nelson Mandela Children’s fund, black tie dinner, that sort of sphincter losing moment, come Saturday morning and the sun is shining.

It was quite obvious that something involving a lot of scoots, bikes and other two wheeled apparatus was happening when Jackie and I arrived at the N1 one stop, the one on the road going to Paarl, there were bike standing all around the place, all colours, shapes and sizes.

The wimpy was quite busy, however it was not difficult to spot the IUB crowd, seeing as they decided to take the centre stage and leave no space for anybody else, well Jackie and I had to squeeze our way to their mids, boy it took a lot of squeezing.

Let me do the roll call now, present and accounted for was the following people with their various pieces of hardware Dave aka Brutus on his FJ1200, Chris aka Beetlejuice with his TL1000R, George aka Indy with his Shadow 11000, shit, I forgot his name on a Yamaha Roadstar, Oh jeez I cannot remember the other gentleman he had a goldwing, see I was not making mental notes, thinking the whole time that Beetlejuice would do the honors with the trip report.

Breakfast started to arrive, well I just have to comment that some people has got weird taste as far as breakfast goes, but then again one man’s cheese cake is the breakfast of a champion for another.

Their were some lengthy discussions about what route to follow, maybe they were heated as well, I do not know, I was not really paying much attention, thought let the “ou manne” decide and the “roofie” will just tag along.

Some interesting bike were in the parking lot, there was a fella with a huge 13000 kawasaki, this thing had six gezorst and all, the owner had a pair of boots that look like they were stolen from an Elf or a fairy, I am glad a did not ask him, he was huge.

It seemed that the “ou manne” came to an agreement that we will travel to Wolsely via Bainskloof, I thought I will play sweeper as per Rools of the Road on the web site, however I had the new toy, and wanted to ride a bit faster than the goldwings.

Just outside the next dorp Chris started to do all these funny tricks with his legs, and I was thinking he might be singing that song about, “first you put your left foot out, then you put it back, then you put your right foot out, etc.”, Then he put both feet out, now myself having watched the Starboyz video, though he’s gonna start doing some serious stunts on that TL, so I slapped Jackie’s leg, to try and draw her attention to the big mono Chris gonna pull, boy was I surprised when he put his indicator on and pulled up to the kerb, bloody fancy stunt!.

Seems the riding position of the TL is not all that familiar to Chris’s body and his legs started to cramp, somebody offered Chris R200 bucks for the bike, he looked very tempted at that point. My advice is to skip the breakfast of champions next time and go for something with a bit of salt in it, Salt it helps for dem cramps.

Bainskloof was quite a pleasure to ride, with beautiful scenery, the bikes less adept at corners were left behind, and Chris, George and myself tackled the corners, I was a bit puzzled that Chris come close and fall back the whole time, maybe his throttle hand might be cramping I thought, at the next pit stop he kakked me out for shooting up stones and damaging his beautifull blue and white paint work.

Arrived at the rally site, and duly went to pay for entrance, a full R50.00 a person, this excluded a badge or anything, just a ink smear on left wrist, that’s all you get for a lousy fifty bucks, I was very disappointed with the way the marshals handled a scenario, some of the local people came from the train station with their weekly shopping and they were walking along the road in front of the rally site, the marshal promptly told them they are not allowed to walk there cause they had not paid R10,000 to rent the site, jeez Louise, these people were not going to the rally site, they were going home!

This incident really bothered me, and I think it was at the root of me not really enjoying it. We had a stroll around the camp site, had a look at the bikes, stalls, people and bikes, we found ourselves a nice spot with a bit of shade to watch the drags, mainly lighty’s with their souped up 125’s and 400’s, Had a very philosophical moment about club colours etc, decided to leave before things got any sillier.