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Welcome to my blog, these are the ramblings and musings of an (upper) middle aged biker and if you enjoy braais, (barbeques) beers and motorbikes then hopefully you will enjoy what Janet and I do; we do lots of braais, we drink lots of beer and we tour South Africa on our motorbike, which at the moment is a BMW R1200RT. Join us, read about what we do and please leave us your comments.



Sunday, August 19, 2012

Bad Weather, no riding for a while.

Since the Polar Bear run the weather has been absolutely horrendous. There haven't been any decent opportunities to go riding except for yesterday, it was calm sunny day but because of previous commitments I could not go out. I told Janet, quite confidently that we would go for a ride and look at the flowers the next day, Sunday. So what happens? It was a cold grey, overcast day and the flowers were all clenched!
Seriously though we have had some really bad weather, recently for the first time it snowed in all nine provinces on the same day! It snowed in places that last had snow in the early eighties, the Ellis Park rugby stadium was covered with a thick, white blanket and people were throwing snowballs in the City streets!
Then just last week we had a huge storm that caused gale force winds and huge waves, this picture is of the famous Brass Bell restaurant in Kalk Bay. That storm caused quite a lot of damage on the mussel farm too. We all know that gale force winds do not make for nice rides.
I was determined to get the big red machine out of the garage, so today we just went for a bit of a local blast just to get the cobwebs out of the zorst pipe, I had just washed the bike yesterday morning so I didn't really want it to get wet and dirty straight away but I had to have a ride.
Can you see how clean she looks? We ended up riding down into the harbour to the Slipway Restaurant, it is definitely one of my favourites and we eat there often. As we walk in the kitchen staff see us and start my favourite starter; mussel and bacon bites - I don't even have to order them;
 mussels (from our farm) wrapped in bacon and then fried in a crispy coating, delicious and we got halfway through before I even thought of taking a photograph! We always share this, there are five bites on the plate but Janet usually only has one of them so I get to eat the other four.  Bianca or Nicole always bring us our favourite bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, also without us having to order.
We consulted the menu after that but on the specials board they advertised a "Hot Fish Pie" which Janet decided to try and the "Yellowtail" was good enough for me;
Janet declared her pie to be delicious and my Yellowtail was succulent, we both really enjoyed our meals and the bill came to a very reasonable R280 including the tip for a starter, two mains and a bottle of wine, excellent value in my book.
Give them a visit and try for yourself, call Heather on 0227144235 and tell her I sent you, you wont be disappointed.
I was going to ride for a while after lunch but the wind had come up and it was pretty cold so we went home, the big red machine is now covered up in the garage. Our next scheduled ride is at the end of the month, I have booked for Frank and Janet to join us overnight at the West Coast Hacienda so we hope for good weather and I'll tell you all about it. Stay safe, keep the shiny side up.

2 comments:

Canajun said...

Crappy weather is the bane of motorcyclists everywhere. I've decided I'm too old and rickety to be splashing about in rain and high winds, so I can relate. But snow? In South Africa? really?

the rider said...

Hi Canajun thanks for visiting Bro., there are many parts of South Africa that regularly get snow in the winter, particularly the mountainous regions. We often get snow in the central western and northern cape but that much over such a large area was unprecedented.