Dreaming on a dreamy ride ... about a naked bike
I dream upon a dream.
The weekend’s ride was East London to Doringkloof in the Baviaanskloof and back.
Four days, 1,205km — 481km in on Thursday and Friday, 82km messing about on Saturday and 642km home on Sunday and Monday.
Jissie, those figures look like the credits to The Matrix. All-time flick.
Close on 20 hours in the saddle. Lots of time to think, you’d think?
Nah. So much of it was spent mind glued to the dirt and tar. Slums, Gatstad, galeforce city — blows way harder than all the farts of the ellies of Addo.
Hankie en Patensie and the long and grinding road through the Baviaanskloof, Heaven in my helmet.
Today there is no wind, no rain, just the blues man! Actually Alice Phoebe Lou’s searing Only When ... is my earworm. Tube it. It is incredible, and made by a Seffrican.
The Pootlers, we three, are headed to the East Cape Wild Dogs Thumper Bash, once a gathering of riders with single-cylinder bikes, the cheap old reliable thumper type. Today, out of 60 or so bikes, I’d guess that more than half are expensive, modern race honds, KTMs, GSs, Honda Twins, Huskies, Yamaha Teneres with owners who drop our old faithfuls in the dust.
The new-tech bikes, with all their outrageously complex and expensive electronics, come in at a third-hand price of R80,000 and way over R200,000 brand new. The quintessential old thumper is a Delores Koan Kawasaki KLR 650 costing R30,000 to R35,000 in good nick.
When we arrive in camp the manne and a few hard-core women riders are here, and Delores is the only KLR.
It gets dark. Heyta! Here comes the familiar sound of the Lister pomp. Yeah, a lonely KLR. Gqeberha dude climbs off, shouldercut grey hair, tie-dye Tee. I rush to greet this stranger like a long-lost friend. What happened? He points to his foot peg — gone. It fell off. Then he shows me the passenger foot peg he was using which is two feet away from the gear lever. How the hell did he do it? “With great difficulty and concentration.”
I am reminded of my late father-in-law John Stannard’s ditty: “Without concentration, we will not build a nation.” And he was not talking about politics ne?
Earlier in the day, the rider of the third KLR I saw at the bash, Wilde Seun, a switched on muso from east of Slums sends out an SOS. Translated with the swearwords edited out, he shouts: “My exhaust exploded and my bike is on fire!”
There is a gaping gat in the pipe. The force was so extreme it set a can of oil in a nearby pannier (a luggage bag on a rack) ablaze, he says, while kicking the smoking pannier into the grass near Nanaga.
But Wilde Seun is a man of great resourcefulness. Like a true KLR owner, he fettles and fusses his way back to safety, finds an awesome bike shop in JBay and makes camp by dark with a new zorst bolted on.
I had looked at his video closely. He and I know that his rear brake caliper — imagine a metal hand bolted over the brake disc waiting to clamp down — well, it is mine. I loaned it to him at the last minute after his gave trouble. I look in the vid to see if he is OK, then peer closely to see if my caliper is all toasted and in sy moer in. All is good, and we had a great time, until he left camp and posted a pic of his bike buried up to its rear swing arm in beach sand with my caliper somewhere down in the salty grit.
Not to worry, we share the same bike wizard, Vence of Grim Cycles, who with his specialist electrician mechanic wife Vicky, will shu-shu the dune bits out of the part using all manner of magical potions. And seun had such a good time, and why not?
The bash is run by local farmers. There are rusks and koffee 24-7, bakkies of food for R45, a spit braai done to perfection on Saturday night, a bar, lekka musiek, and a fire that burnt big logs in a bigger fireplace.
A group has gathered around the pegless KLR and the bike Prof and I wander over. There, seated before the godhead KLR is Keith P, a Cape guru of bikes, rides and tech, dutifully turning a bolt in to restore the aberrant peg. He has a needle-nose vice grip on it and is slowly turning an Allen key a quarter turn at a time. Keith rides a KTM 390 — the bike that covers all bases in adventure riding. Light, with grunt, can do tar, but also a foot path, and expensive. But here he is, paying homage to those thumper legends, safe in the knowledge that it can be repaired and does not have to fall foul of an expensive part which might have to be sent from far.
And if the bolt does not fit, well, there is always bloudraat!
The Poots lit out early on Sunday morning. Saturday’s scattered showers have left red, muddy patches between gritty Cape sandstone dirt. It looks tricky and there are puddles to crash through, but it feels forgiving.
And Delores has a lithe, growly feel. I pass the mates and open up thinking they will soon overtake me. They don’t and later say that they were not catching up. I was getting “loose” says the Prof. This is high praise, and far from my other mate who rides a KLR, who once told us with sincerity recently: “Okes, it was a privilege eating your dust for four days.”
I glow. They pass me and I ride at the back all the way home.
In the hours that pass I look at the bulbous plastic covers around the front of Delores. Once a spunky Japanese designer’s fantasy, but not here on the dirt byways of Africa. It is a sufferance.
And, in this dreamy state I have another dream — where Delores gets naked. The naked bike style in motorcycling means we strip off those covers and replace them with a skimpy screen and a Mad Max LED headlight with a shape inspired by the old bike headlights.
This computer-game inspired plastic cloud needs to be blown away, leaving just the bare bones of the beautiful beast. Sorry about all those ‘b’s’ but I am dreaming on my dream ride of a raked back, knobbly-wheeled machine that proves how versatile and phenomenal our sages were when they made the multipurpose, genius KLR.
And it will cost a few thousand, not hundreds of thousands. So take that you rich #$%^!