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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.



Tuesday, November 17, 2015

West Coast Motorcycle Association Teddy bear run 2015

Another very successful event organised by the relatively new W.M.A, this was a feel-good event and an extremely enjoyable day; a toy run for under privileged children and an auction to raise funds for Eiland Huis which takes care of children with special needs.
This took place on Sunday 15th November and we started off with a breakfast of champions because we knew that it might be a while before we ate anything;
Egg and bacon "butty" washed down with our favourite beverage and we were ready to go!
We saddled up under a pale blue sky, it was a bit fresh but with the promise of a lovely day and I had been looking forward to this for a while. We took a gentle cruise through to Vredenburg and met up with an already large crowd of our favourite kind of people.
Gerrie got going early to take photos from various vantage points and he took some great photos, many of which I will use here. I'm pretty much going to let the photos speak for themselves and if you want to see any of them full size, just click on them.
At 09h00 it was kick stands up and we had an escort of traffic police who blocked all of the intersections so that we didn't have to break up the mass ride.
Out of Vredenburg and down towards Saldanha, the road all to ourselves.
In this great picture by Gerhard Pieterse you see Anton and Ginette on his lovely custom Kawasaki, me and Janet on our lovely big red machine and Alex and Mercia on their cruiser heading into Saldanha. We did a loop through the town, attracting a lot of attention and then headed back to Vredenburg.
The Traffic cops, who did a great job definitely seemed to be enjoying them selves;
they blocked intersection and then rushed past us with lights flashing and sirens blaring to block the intersections ahead of us, it was great we didn't have to stop at all.
This great photo by Gerhard Pieterse shows a traffic cop on a motorbike that I didn't even know we had in this area, leading the mob into Vredenburg.
 If you see a photo of yourself amongst these great shots by Gerhard Pieterse just click on them to see them full size.
The ride ended up at the Phoenix bar which must have made Anna and Eduardo happy, by the middle of the day we counted somewhere around sixty bikes!
It turned out to be a great party, good dancing music by Enrico, cheap drinks and lots of happy people. By the time everyone had thrown their toys into the bakkie it made quite a pile, there would be lots of happy children this Christmas.
We stayed for a couple of hours and even Frank arrived to get much love from the bikers and their ladies, particularly the ladies!
Here's Monika, Gerrie, Johlene, Louis and Frank enjoying the party. The afternoon ended with an auction and a collection which raised over R3,000 for Eiland Huis. This is going to be an annual event and the West Coast Motorcycle Association were very pleased with the way this inaugural event turned out. We had a great time and we will definitely be taking part next year, well done to those who sponsored prizes and to those generous bikers who dug into their pockets to make sure this was a successful day.
Bikers are good people!
 
 

2 comments:

Trobairitz said...

Very cool, and for such a good cause too.

the rider said...

Brandy the SA Biking community is seriously charity orientated, more so than any other local organisation that I can think of and most of our organised runs revolve around raising money or product for those in need. Next weekend, the end of November is the Annual toy run which takes place nation wide in which bikers donate toys to needy children, we have taken part in sixteen consecutive runs (I missed last year because of an eye operation)and we will be on the run this year, I will write it up.