A newbies first DS trip...What an experience!

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Charlie Brown

Pack Dog
Joined
May 28, 2013
Messages
260
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Location
Western Cape
Bike
Kawasaki KLR 650
During 2012, a friend of mine managed to persuade me to try out this DS riding lark.

I mean, who in their right frame of mind, would really want to go and ride on deserted gravel roads, full of dips, whoops, water crossings, pot holes, mud monsters, sand monsters, thorns, rocks, wild animals with no road sense at all, in the middle of nowhere, places where your office can't reach you on your cell phone, you need a map or a GPS to find your way out of there, or if you really want to get lost, believe everything that your GPS tells you...............er me, me, me, yes me "the old fart in a twat suit", oh, and I have not yet been declared sane or of sound mind, so I guess I qualify!

So, arrangements and bookings are made with Meteldog, WD member, and I hire one of his KLR's for this trip into the vast untamed, brown splogde on the Western Cape Map, called The Tankwa Karoo!! Not only had I never been on a gravel road through the Tankwa Karoo, or anywhere for that mater, I had never even heard of it or have any idea where it was.....oh, I had heard of a KLR, but never ridden one and had absolutely no idea what to expect. This sounded like fun! I had a slight sense of what Dr Livingston felt when he went exploring Africa.

Day 1...Into the Roggeveld, just outside Ceres.



It was just before or after this pic, that I got my first real skrik!! We rode onto a very wide, flat dusty area, where the tallest thing around me was my own shadow..........and the wind was BLOWING, ..I did say blowing,......Ah, so this is where they made that movie "The Mummy" with Arnold Vosloo???? There was a moerse lot of dust clouds, sand, middle mannetjies, voorwiel grypers, heavy cross winds..........and kiepie here, had absolutely no idea what the hell to do,.... and I still don't know who the hell was grabbing the back of the bike and shaking it around enough to make me almost need to change my boxer shorts! Maybe Arnold sent those black, people eating, goggas to try and catch me. I kept expecting to see something large and unfriendly come looming out of the dust clouds, a farm tractor, bakkie or maybe even some kind of bokkie. After a short, but scare the crap out of me, section, the wind suddenly dropped and I could really start enjoying the trip.






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