Facing the Fear and Finding Friends (now with video)

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Zanie

Race Dog
WD Supporter
Joined
Jul 19, 2014
Messages
702
Reaction score
137
Location
Table View, Cape Town
Bike
Honda CRF-250 Rally
Trip video can be found in Reply #6

Monsters

Over the past couple of months I have been lying low; keeping mostly to tar, whilst the idea of dirt roads became a monster in my head. It has been almost a year and my foot still doesn’t feel quite right, but at least it is functional now.

While I was down-and-out I noticed Ilse on the forums in a similar predicament (she had torn her Achilles tendon also through an off-road accident) and made contact. Thanks to Wild Dog Forum for a new friend. We went on a ride together as pillions on our respective boyfriends’ bikes.

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The four of us went on another ride about 4 months after my accident. This time we girls were on our own bikes. Standing was painful and I was nervous. All of us also went to one of the legendary Cederberg Oasis spit-braai events. Ilse went by car, because she was sick. On one stretch of dirt I was almost in tears from nerves. After that, I stuck to 40km/h. My previous off overshadowed everything. I couldn’t get it out of my head.

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An off-road ride? Eek!

Monsters must be tamed, which is why I decided to put my name down for yet another beginners’ off-road course (I have already attended 2).Then one day Lance and I received an e-mail from Ilse and Gerhard, asking whether we would like to join them on a 4-day off-road ride. The planned route from Cape Town would be via Tankwa Karoo, Sutherland and Ladismith, with notable points of interest being Katbakkies Pass, Ouberg Pass and Anysberg.

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I am a strange creature in that my instant knee-jerk reaction to almost anything scary is “no,” but it invariably turns into a “yes.” The next day I put in leave for the 15th June.

Ilse and I are both newbie bikers. I had only recently clocked 10,000 km on my first/only bike (650GS) and was finally feeling relaxed with it on tar, even in the corners. Ilse recently exchanged her Honda CFR250L for a 650GS and was not yet comfortable with the big bike.

I twisted Ilse’s rubber arm to come along on the training course. The course helped immeasurably in building confidence. The fact that I had two “side-stand incidents” without breaking myself or the bike decreased my fear of falling. I had more aggressive tyres installed on my bike just before the training. It made a massive difference to the bike’s handling on gravel.

Knobblies:
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We met Jean at the training. We would bump into him on our trip, but more on that later.

We watched the weather forecast with angst as the long weekend approached. It did not look pretty on the Tuesday.

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Nonetheless it was all systems go.

The cast

Lance (LanC) on a BMW 800GSA
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Zanie (Zanie) on a BMW 650GS (Rooikat)
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Gerhard (SandStar) on a Triumph Tiger 800XC
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Ilse (Bosking27) on a BMW 650GS (Sylvester)
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Jean (Snoekie) on a BMW 650GS Dakar (Blikkies)
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A few bumps in the road

Lance was still recovering from a broken wrist. This is what he did to it in February:

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He had tried gravel and his wrist appeared fine with the up-and-down motion from riding on rougher roads. Unfortunately the back-and-forth jerk experienced from a simple stall in a driveway one day before our trip gave him a bit of a set-back. There were rumours (which I welcomed at that point, due to fear) that we may have to stick mainly to gravel highway (read: R355) and take the long way round on our second day rather than following the back roads through Tankwa National Park to Sutherland. In hindsight I am soooo glad Lance’s wrist felt better the day we departed.

Ilse had a stomach bug that started the day before the trip. She had a sleepless night before the trip and was drugged up as best as possible the next morning. Gerhard had loads of work to finish and I think he only got to bed at some unholy hour of the morning before the trip.
 
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