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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, June 5, 2016

Second annual Westcoast Motorcycle Association dayjol

I haven't done anything here for a while now and by way of explanation I am now in my last month on the mussel farm and my boat skipper has taken three weeks leave, this leaves me with all of the boat driving and whilst this is a pleasant task it can be a long day, consequently I arrive home late and have not had the inclination to sit in front of the computer. My apologies to the few of you who read my stuff and have been waiting in anticipation of an update, herewith;
Last week Saturday was the selected date for the second annual W.M.A. dayjol and a lot of planning and preparation went into its success, although the numbers were down on last year it was a great day.
Dick and Janet (our friend) came up from Capetown to attend and spent the weekend with us. As Janet (my wife) and I were involved in gate duties and had to be there early we decided to line our stomachs with a hearty breakfast at the local Captain's Cabin restaurant.
The weather was perfect, it's the start of winter here on the west coast but we are blessed with wonderful riding days in between the bad ones and this was one of them.
We went out to the rally site to start our duties and our friends went for a ride and came to the site in the early afternoon.
Janet and Johlene were scheduled for the first gate duty from 11h00 but it would be a while before the gate actually got busy.
Between 13h00 and 14h00 the crowds started arriving and the gate was a hive of activity,
 Thanks to good planning by the committee and by Divi., the Meeulanders President and V.P of the W.M.A things went relatively smoothly and our ladies are a sterling bunch! We soon had a festive crowd.
 Everybody's "Uncle Frank" arrived and apparently it took him almost an hour to get from the gate to the bar because they all wanted to chat to him.
 Daan and Bev were there, look how much their hair and his beard has grown since the "Shavathon"! I'm sure that will be the next time that Daan gets a haircut.
 Time for the biker games, expertly overseen by Etienne, the slow race. (Photo by Elsje Stramrood)
Photo by Gerrie Pieterse
 Expert wheelie demonstrations. (Photo by Elsje Stramrood)
 An excellent (or should that be egg-cellent?) egg and spoon race. (Photo by Elsje Stramrood)
 The tyre throw and just look at this excellent action shot by Gerrie Pieterse! That's a bloody big tyre!
 Here in the ladies competition, also by Gerrie Pieterse, is one of my favourite biker ladies; Mercia the First Lady of the Mohicans, she takes part in all of the competitions, she rides her own bike and is a party lady of note!
 The usual burn-outs, lots of tyre smoke in this picture by Gerrie Pieterse.
There was plenty of good food available from hamburgers and "jaffles" to potjies, it's good to keep the stomach lined with food and the hamburger caravan did a roaring trade.
 Things I tend to stay away from these days; the "Down-down" competitions took place inside and there were some thirsty guys and gals I can tell you!
 My time on the gate was from !7h00 to 18h00 and it was a pretty easy shift, by then most of the people were already in, I was visited by a pretty young girl administering healthy injections of a delicious creamy liqueur which went down really well, what a sweetheart!
 By then it was our time to leave but these lovely biker ladies had other ideas; time to dance! We eventually managed to extricate ourselves - this party would carry on into the night, but without us. It had been a great day and we rode home through the dusk happy, another really enjoyable biking day spent with real people - bikers.
There are lots more pictures to see on the W.M.A facebook site if you are interested and if you want to see any of these full size just click on them.
Dick and Janet rode home the next morning, actually not a very pleasant ride because there was a thick fog all the way to Capetown but that's the way it goes. Biking memories.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Andrew

Glad to see Frank out and about with his brothers. Hope he's doing well.
Please give him my regards.

the rider said...

Thanks Kat., I certainly will. Good to hear from you.

Anonymous said...

Was a great day. Thanks for your assistance at the gate - probably the most boring job of all :)

the rider said...

Actually Gerrie it wasn't so bad, great place to interact with the bikers and I had a really bad attack of gout that day so it was good to sit down!

Anonymous said...

We had great fun - good music, dop and cameraderie
Cheers and thanks
Dick and Jan

the rider said...

Glad you guys made it for the jol Dick and Jan, we'll make it an annual get together!