Welcome!

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.



Monday, June 2, 2008

What it's all about

If you are bikers you guys know what it's all about; biking gets into your blood. Once you've been out on the road, either on your own or with someone special on you pillion, that's it! Those who don't ride motorbikes don't know about it; that amazing feeling, the tar flashing by inches beneath your feet, the road unwinding in front of you and unexplored destinations beckoning. You control your ride with delicate movements of your hand and wrist, dipping into long sweeping corners looking through them and negotiating the apex, pouring the power on and accelerating out.
You can feel the road through your butt, your hands and your feet and there's nothing like a sudden surge of power to get you quickly past a long line of cars held up behind a slow moving truck on an uphill gradient. You don't need as much overtaking space as they do and you grin as you imagine their frustrated comments whilst watching you disappear into the distance.
How great is it to be caught in a sudden downpour? You stop to pull on your rain gear and head off into the wet shouting "Bring it on!" into your helmet, knowing that you would not rather be in a car.
We are going to talk about those times, the wonderful and memorable times spent out on the open road. South Africa is a fantastic place for bikers, the Western Cape is glorious with something like nine mountain passes in our riding area and we have ridden around the whole country so I can talk about it with some authority.
On one memorable month on the road we did 8760kms, in a loop around the whole country without booking a single night's accommodation. When we felt that we had ridden far enough for the day, which was usually indicated by a sore bum we looked for a bottle store, a butchery and a place to sleep - usually in that order. I am going to discuss that holiday later, share those memories with you.
In the meantime let me leave you with this thought;
Bikers make better motorists (when they have to drive a car) because they learn to anticipate potential road hazards far sooner than non bikers, they have to to stay alive. They learn to watch out for the stupid moves that motorists are going to make.
Keep the rubber side down Brothers and stay safe, and when you are out on the open road and you pass a brother on a bike, wave for f**k's sake.

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