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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.



Monday, March 28, 2011

The ride home

It has become accepted by my biker friends that I pack up and leave early on a Sunday, I want to get home to Janet so I don't wait for anyone and this day was no exception. I was awakened at about 05h30 by the sounds of chatter and of people packing up to leave.

It was just barely daylight, still over an hour to sunrise when I started packing my gear, the tent and flysheet were both wet from dew as I stuffed them into the bag, I would have to air them out at home. By the time I had all my gear stowed and the bike engine idling to warm up I was sweating profusely, it was going to be a hot day. The others were still wandering around and would be packing in the sunlight!

I rode out of the gate at 07h15, refuelled at the one-stop just outside of the town and headed off down the N2. The air was slightly chilly, refreshing and I soon cooled down as I accelerated away from Mosselbay. There was nowhere near as much traffic on the road at that time on a Sunday, and not many bikes yet either and I was soon doing 160kmh.

It is about 90km to Riversdale where I pulled into the Wimpy and had a good breakfast, there were already a lot of bikers there and the breakfast went down singing hymns!

After about a half an hour break I again took the lovely R323 some 70kms through the lovely Klein Karoo scrubland and the Garcia Pass to join the R62. There was virtually no traffic on the road and I was able to enjoy myself at an illegal cruising speed.

I passed through Barrydale without stopping, along the lovely R62 at speed to Montagu and then through to Robertson, by then I was feeling a bit tired and butt-sore so I stopped for a cup of coffee at the local Dros, that did wonders and I carried on from there much refreshed.

I had another fuel stop along the way and by the time I got to Riebeek I was desparately in need of a cold beer.

The whole trip was 570kms and it took me exactly 6 hours which included a breakfast stop, two fuel stops, a coffee and a beer so as you can see I was keeping up a good average speed. I had a thoroughly enjoyable morning on the bike in perfect weather, what more could one want?

This coming weekend we are going to the Gypsy Jokers fun day at the hotel in Saint Helena Bay which is only about 45kms away, we have booked a room in the hotel so that we don't have to worry about travelling. We paid R280 each which includes a lamb on the spit braai, the room and breakfast on Sunday morning, definitely a bargain and it promises to be a good jol - I'll let you know what it's like, stay safe!

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