Last Saturday we rode down to Capetown to spend the evening with Joe and Annie, it was a lovely day, if a little windy, and a thoroughly enjoyable ride along the old familiar R27. We had a good seafood lunch together with Dave and Nicky at Cafe Orca in Melkbos after which Joe and I went out for a couple of games of pool. A really good day and a nice evening, comfortable conversation with good old friends.
It was raining on Sunday morning! Really raining hard and we had decided to leave early because there were things to do back home, I'm not a huge fan of riding in the rain but we've done it so many times before, hell if you love biking like we do you're bound to get caught in the rain. I thought about hanging around for a while to see if it was going to lighten up, but eventually it was Janet who said; "Come on you legend, let's get going." I'm not sure if those were her exact words but it was something similar, I mean just look at me!
For the first ten or so kilometres out of the Blouberg area past Melkbos it was raining stingingly hard and obviously visibility was quite seriously restricted. The west coast road was busy with cagers returning early from their flower viewing weekend and now we come to the ranting part of the story, I was seriously dismayed by the behaviour of the large number of cagers who were easily divided into two categories; fools and idiots.
Fools are those who speed through bad weather, seriously reduced visibility with only their park lights on, you only see them at the very last minute! Do they not realise that those park are as dim as their brains?
Idiots are those who speed along happily through those conditions with no lights at all!
These people contribute in their stupidity to the already hazardous conditions, I hope but doubt that some of them are reading this.
The rain had stopped by the time we got home, close to Saldanha the roads were dry and we were able to enjoy the last part of the ride, it was easy to forget about the dimwits still struggling their way towards Capetown.
Part two of the rant is that in their wisdom the Western Cape Provincial Government wants to reduce the speed limit! They claim this will help to reduce road deaths, they propose reducing the open road limit from 120kmh to 110kmh! This stupidity really bothers me, the majority of road deaths in South Africa are pedestrians, are they less likely to be killed by a car travelling at 110kmh? Come on for fuck's sake, (I don't often swear in this blog but here I think it is warranted.)
We bikers don't often stick to the limit anyway but at least if I am doing my usual 140 to 160kmh I am only 30 to 40 kmh over the limit, if they reduce it I am going to be 40 to 50kmh over, what happens if the points demerit system is eventually introduced? I may have to sell my bike and buy a Harley - I don't think so!
Apparently the speed limit in school zones is going to be reduced to 30kmh, now while I think this may be a good idea for cars there is a serious danger that more kids are going to be killed by bikers wobbling down the road trying to ride that slowly!
I hope that Helen Zille is reading this - do you want me to go and live in another province? No, of course not, so come right! Can we not elect a biker to the advisory committee?
4 comments:
Snazzy rain suits!! I heartily agree about the cage categorization. Need to add fog to the mix. Having people drive like a bat out of hell through fog with no regard what may be in front of them.
Hi Lori, yes really high visibility suits aren't they? You are right about the fog too, we get a lot of it along the coast here and have to contend with the same fools and idiots in those conditions!
Most cagers are pro bikers. Very few bikers are pro cagers.
An interesting observation though I'm not totally in agreement, I must admit that most cagers move over when I come up behind them but I wouldn't call them "pro-bikers", maybe they just put up with us. Thanks for the comment.
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