Crazy.. Amageza with Team Zama Zama

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GG

Race Dog
Joined
Jan 18, 2007
Messages
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Location
Gauteng
Bike
KTM 1290 Adventure R
The first line on the Amageza Rallye should have warned me that this was silly!  

Amageza’ is the local Southern African (Xhosa) word for ‘crazy’ – a vital ingredient you’ll need to brave this gruelling rallye challenge and win through for a coveted Finisher’s Medal.​



“Awudeli ukuhlupeka” – you never get enough of suffering – said my friend Billy Chaka whose watched me head off many times shaking his head, as he sips on a whiskey and the comforts of new hot babe.  

I guess our choice of rides are different, this time the ride I was planning was one of the hardest events of my life .. again the website should have warned me!

Facing long marathon stages, competitors traverse ‘liaison’ & ‘special’ race sections, in the rallye adventure style similar to the Dakar Rallye events from the 80s & 90s.  First run in 2011, the Amageza Rallye is Southern Africa’s only multi-day, multi-stage rallye, with a daily moving bivouac that crosses a breath-taking, diverse variety of terrain: mountain ranges, dense African bush, giant salt pans, Karoo semi-desert, the world-renown Namib-Kalahari Desert, and the unforgiving Skeleton Coast.​

The Amageza Rallye follows the format of a Cross-Country Rally. The objective of each rider is to follow the roadbook as sole navigation source, with a GPS to track the riders stage and provide directional (compass heading) information.  

The roadbook, the fucking roadbook… a large roll of directions like a roll of toilet paper which you follow with clues and hints but which drives you crazy with frustration as you try and follow the hieroglyphics, plus at the same time follow the distance cues on your ICO ( distance measuring tool) and make sure your turn is the right heading on your compass or GPS set on heading mode.  All this while trying to speed across the most inhospitable terrain the organiser ALex could find.



“The Amageza is a war of attrition, which survives body or machine” said one survivor, and in 2013, 17 out of 44 riders finished.  

So we trained to survive, getting fitter than we had in years, riding for thousands of kilometres across harsh terrain and kitting, readying and hammering our bikes to get them as ready as our old bodies!  We?

We are Team Zama Zama, meaning to try, to attempt, to keep at it.. although maybe Amageeza’s may have been more appropriate given our ages.


Gavin, Kieron, GG, James

Me, GG, I started riding a motorbike for the first time in 2006 and since got hooked on touring bikes, large cross country battleships with panniers and big screens and comfy seats. I’ve never entered a bike race, and now here I am on a KTM 500, a seat like an ironing board, a tiny fairing, huge petrol tank and a wild power that lifts the front wheel completely involuntarily with every twist of the throttle.  My heart rate is at a perpetually race competing with the peaky revs and my grin in the helmet wider than the Tugela.

Gavin Morton, he’s been riding for years, before I was born I think, he rides with a fluid fast effortless style of a true expert, but patient and helpful he’s always goading and helping us crash test dummies.  Gavin is the wheelie king and is perpetually on the rear wheel seemingly able to wheelie forever.  Without Gavin’s help I would never have made it, years of riding, a friendly wisdom along with Gavins passion for bikes are priceless.

James Cunningham, surfer trapped in a toppies body, can't work out whether he is a surfer, mountain biker or motorcyclist, also done lots of racing in his time. James is on his KTM 500, a competent off road rider but he can't follow a GPS let alone a roadbook. Navigation is James nightmare inducing Achilles heal.

Kieron Murray, the bull.. wrestles a large 990 like its a 500, including training rides on wild sand and riverbed outdoing the little bikes!  His bike a KTM 660 Rallye - truly a beautiful Dakar racing machine.  Famous for claiming that he had this roadbook waxed, then leading us straight into lost, Kieron has yet to unwax himself.. now he says nothing & just rides!

Johnny Everest and Kyle finish off our team, we have decided to be supported and Kyle is our competent and energetic mechanic and Johnny logistics man, refuelling, racing ahead and putting up camp, only drawing a line at massaging our sore bottoms!



I think the last time I trained so hard for anything was for the Camel Trophy SA selections and that was when I was barely 30!  Running, cycling, gym, press-ups (flip never remembered them being so flipping hard), riding offroad for miles and miles.  Offroad means like looking at a rocky mountain, pointing the bike up to the top and riding over kilometres of what looks like my mother’s rockery.  We rode the Pongola 500 – 500 km’s of sand along the SA Moz border fence and around Kozi bay and Lake Sibaya, riverbeds at De Wildt the enduro bike training ground and the mean black route at Dakar legend Alfie Cox’s bike festival.  I bought my KTM on the 10th of August and when I left for the Amageza at the end of October I had done almost 4000km’s .. offroad!

Judgement Day arrives, we head off for Upington, excited, nervous, ready to race.



Staying overnight at the Red Sands Lodge we partied into the night with the best kudu steak around, late night Captain Morgan and a stumble to our rooms. We awoke ready for the first day of Amageza only to find we had been burgled in the night.  Locals, probably watching us drink and be merry knowing we would sleep deeply, broke in and carted off our cameras, phones, cash and even a helmet!  It’s not the first time and the lodge kind of shook their heads and shrugged and called the police. Disgusting and irresponsible, they could have at least warned us.. but we had our bikes and we could still race, unlike our neighbour a professional photographer who lost more than R 150 000 worth of equipment en route to the Kalahari and would have to turn around and go home.  

Scrutineering & Prologue: Upington; 2 November

In rallye events such as the Amageza and Dakar, the event is of such an extreme nature that if the bike can’t make it, you don’t have enough fuel or water, your emergency equipment is inadequate, you can realistically die out in the desert. For this reason these events do a rigorous scrutineering, every bit of the bike is inspected, emergency equipment laid out, radios tested, water and fuel quantities checked.. a long list ticked before you can race.  We pass scrutineering, we are in and ready!  





A short 2.5km race around a motocross track sets our starting times, Gavin and Kieron up front in the 20’s, James and I 41 and 42. James is desperately happy, he can let me navigate.





We get our roadbooks .. no turning back now, our hearts in our mouth as we mark the roadbooks, each colour a warning, information, a clue or hieroglyphics….





I guess before I start with the real action I must thank our sponsors...
RAD - thanks for the spares, the passion and the support,  Hydr8 for the water, in the desert its like gold, Motorex for all the oil, lube and that kind of stuff to keep our bikes going, Mitas for some awesome hiking gear and Bike SA & Offroad & Adventure SA mags. As you'll read we needed the support!



UPINGTON TO ASKHAM

3 November 2014
273km - Team Supported Race Stage
Liaison: 94km
Special: 179km

Day 1 of the race dawns!  This is what we came here for, a last check of the bike, nervous handshakes and we ride off, the liaison an easy gravel road for 80km’s … flat sandy scrub stretching around us, teasing us, pretending this will be easy, the red dunes and sand monsters hiding just out of our visors sight.



The start, James and I line up, we’ll take it easy, James will follow my lead.  The countdown like I’ve seen on the Dakar, the officials hand counting down 5,4, 3, 2 ,1 and I blast out of the start.  The sand is soft but straight, the roadbook promises the first turn in about 10km’s. I stand, a surge of adrenaline pumps through me and the 500 screams in delight … soon I’m flying over the sand between 100 and 130 km’s an hour, bikes appear as a dust cloud, a dim shape and then I blast past ignoring the rear kicking about like a bucking horse, keeping the handlebars loose and watching the tweespoor flick around ahead of me like a video game.  



Apart from an endless number of farm gates which we must open and close its easy riding, thick sand but straight flat tracks.  The gates are the worst, stop, try and get your side stand to not sink in the sand, run to the gate, open it, push your bike through the gate and thick sand, run back to the gate, bike falls over, curse, close gate, pick up bike, jump on trying to stay on as you fishtail away in the soft sand and previous bikes tracks.  I don’t know where James is but I soon catch up with Kieron. He opens a gate for me, I disappear ahead of him. He catches me throwing his big Dakar bike around like a 250 mx bike.  



We meet at the first dunes, the start of planet dune… little tracks crossing over at first small dunes, then more and more, bigger and bigger, sand looser and looser. The worse is that for some reason as you cross the dunes the track twists left or right straight afterwards… “deliberate” I curse as my front dives and twists and I land fucking hard on my head metres from my bike. “Keep on the power” shouts Kieron, he’s right but when you brain is screaming slow down, stop, it’s hard to do the opposite!



I scream up one particularly high dune, “stay on the power, stay on the power”, then I see the Landcruiser full of farmer’s kids and local farmers, all with cameras held out. Too late I crest the dune and space opens up below me… fuck I’m dead I breathe but hold onto the throttle and land at full power the power keeping me going and upright.  Soon the sign of a bukkie says “watch it” cheering happy locals cameras ready at some death-trap!





I stop to take pictures; there is a local with a horse at the top of a dune. He looks like a bushman but waves and greets me in Afrikaans as I stop. I take a pic of him, he walks up and I ask him to take a picture of me. “Ja meneer”, he draws out the eeer almost like a snarl.  I explain how to take the photo with my phone. “Juslaaik it meneeeer I know how to use a cell phone”, he scolds me. Sorry ! I thought out here he would have a poisoned arrow and an ostrich egg full of water, but he takes better pics than I!





I lose Kieron while doing selfies with the San in the Sand…. And start overtaking people who have run out of fuel, I’m on reserve, I can’t help. I’m getting tired and start falling, as I come over one dune I see a video camera, I stare at him and crash down next to him, he grins and apologises! Fuck how much more of this is there … then suddenly it’s the last dune with a warning on the roadbook, I do two attempts and I make it, it’s the end of the special. Gavin roared through an hour ahead of me, in the top 10, I am 20th … Kieron gets lost and then his bike runs out of fuel and James… he arrives hours later, cursing me!




 
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