Long weekend riding

It has been an interesting weekend, ok Saturday was a bit of a drag because I spent most of the day cleaning and sorting my garage out. It was a chore that I had been putting off for ages and it got to the stage that there was almost no space for my motorbike! It took me and a helper six hours and I was wrecked afterwards but it was worth it, now I can get to my workbench and I find that I actually want to start doing stuff again!

Sunday we started the day off with the bottle of bubbly in the spa bath which was fantastic and then sort of took it easy. We eventually decided on a short ride to Yzerfontein ( say A-zer fon tane ) for lunch, on a previous visit we had popped into "Die Stal" pub for a beer and their lunch menu had looked quite interesting.It was a lovely, calm, slightly overcast day as we set off and I had decided to just cruise quietly and enjoy the ride. I held the bike at 130kmh, just a bit faster than most of the traffic but not fast enough to incur any fines and it was pleasant for a while. I moved over twice to let faster cars past me, something that does not normally happen, but I was feeling mellow.

We were about half way to the turn off when we became part of a convoy of cages, all getting impatient with each other trying to overtake and I thought "No, stuff this!" We came to a hill and the convoy all stayed in line because they did not have enough power to pass each other before the rise, I did! I kicked it down two clicks and grabbed a handful and we blasted past the line of cages up and over the hill, as we crested the rise Janet's hand came over my left shoulder with the index finger flicking forwards "Go, go, go!" That was all the encouragement I needed and I wound it on, soon we were speeding along at 200kmh and we stayed like that for the ten minutes that it took to get to the Yzerfontein turn-off, leaving the impatient motorists far behind, it was an incredibly good feeling and I was happy and energised by the time we pulled into the parking area of "Die Stal" (The Stall).

The sign above the rail says "Tie the horse here", I thought that was a good place for our steed to rest. Inside the pub the beers were cold and we ordered the speciality starter, deep fried cheesy Jalapenos;

The Jalapenos were nice and hot, stuffed with cheese but unfortunately there was way too much oily, fried batter. They would have been far better done in a egg-white batter or something lighter, we enjoyed the chillies but left most of the batter.

There was this very interesting Springbok dispenser for Brandy and Whiskey above the bar, the tails were levers and the liquid apparently dispensed through the spout just below the tail!

The meal, we both had crumbed pork chops, was very ordinary but I suppose it was just pub grub and the price was reasonable but I don't think I will hurry back there. The ride home was very enjoyable and with the prospect of an extra day off the next day, we started thinking about what we were going to do.Over some nice wet biltong (for my American friends this is similar I think to your beef jerky) and a glass or two of red wine we decided that it would be a ride somewhere for lunch, Frank had returned safely from the Buffalo rally and was interested in meeting with us.

We met at 11h00 and decided on just a short ride to Driftwoods Restaurant in Langebaan, it looked like it was going to be quite windy so we kept it local. We took the long way around just for a little bit of a ride and then were lucky enough to find a table on the already pretty crowded veranda at the very popular beach restaurant.

I had a very enjoyable, fresh fillet of "Geelbek" (Yellow Mouth), euphemistically called "Cape Salmon" in local restaurants, it is actually Atractoscion aequidens should you wish to know that.

We ended off a wonderful weekend at the Phoenix bar with the other bikers. Roll on the Swallows rally next weekend!