Women like bikers, don't misunderstand me here; they like bikers not bikes, unless they ride themselves or on a pillion. If you want to impress a chick don't buy a bike, you'll have to buy a fancy car for that. You will see it for yourself, you're sitting in a pub with all of your buds and the bikes are lined up outside a guy and his women walk past and he will stop to admire the bikes, she will not have seen them and will start pulling at him to carry on; "Over my dead body!" she's saying.

"That can be arranged." he's thinking, picturing himself sitting astride the bike wearing old denim with rock and roll music in his helmet.

Frank and I were on our way to the Slangkop Rally one sunny Friday afternoon, we cruised into the outskirts of Capetown and came up behind "Piggie's Party Bus" driving slowly along in the inside lane, there was a party in full swing and I could see the barmaid behind the bar at the rear of the bus dishing out beers to the revellers.

I pulled in close behind the bus and blew my hooter, the lovely young lady turned around and I raised my visor and shouted "One Castle please!", more as a joke than anything else, by then Frank was wondering what the hell I was up to. The barmaid signalled me in closer, my front wheel was by then only inches from the bumper and she carefully tossed me a can of beer which I managed to catch with my left hand. She then signalled Frank to come in and tossed one to him as well.

I have no idea what the nearby motorists must have thought! We accelerated past the bus, pulled off the road and cracked our beers and saluted everyone on the bus as it chugged past. That sort of thing can only happen to a biker and it was a wonderful start to a rally weekend. Now that was a woman who liked bikers!

That was a good rally, it's a very small one but it is growing quickly. I love going to rallies, I take my tent and inflatable mattress and my sleeping bag and get away for the weekend. Janet prefers not to go unless we can stay in a B&B or a hotel, she prefers her comforts and dislikes the usually inadequate ablution facilities that guys can put up with for a couple of days. So I get to go off and act like a biker scum with my friends - cool.

We arrived on Friday mid afternoon and started to party, usually the party goes on right through the Friday night and we gave it a good go, I don't remember what time I turned in but at least I did manage to inflate my mattress - Frank just fell into his tent and slept on the ground still in his leathers. Saturday starts off a bit slow, but a lot of people arrived during the day and started their own party!

At 2am on Sunday the wind started up and it can blow there. I got up to take a leak and it was only when I returned to the tent that I realised that I had been holding it down, luckily my panniers were also inside otherwise it would have blown away completely, as it was it had blown over onto Frank's tent and woken him up, he scrambled out and was calling me thinking that I was still inside. What a mess! We managed to get my tent packed and then started on his and then it started to rain! Man did it rain! There was nothing for it but to pack up and go, by then it was 0345 and as Frank is usually the last one to leave a rally site, his is literally the last tent still on site, he was bitching at just about everything.

That was a memorable ride home, riding over "Ou Kaapse Weg" in the pouring rain, the wind pumping in pitch dark was not fun. I repeatedly told myself "Trust your tires, they're good!" as I dropped into a tight and unfamiliar corner. It rained hard the whole way home, 150kms and we were good and wet by the time we pulled into the Wimpy at the Engen One-stop for breakfast. We weren't as badly off as some of the guys who pulled in after us, we have fairings and windscreens but most were on naked bikes and they were dripping wet.

In spite of the miserable conditions I wouldn't have rather been in a car and it makes for good conversation in the pub afterwards. Bikers rule!