GG
Race Dog
This is a story of our craziness, a story of a challenge overcoming rational adult thinking. James Cunningham, Gavin Morton and I GG Alcock, Team Zama Zama, we must be mad, no maybe stupid, you have to be crazy to ride hard every weekend, run, cycle, gym every day for the best part of a year! The race for madmen, The Amageza, meaning crazy in Xhosa. A Dakar style navigation and off-road racing event which will test endurance, brains and skill.. oh yes and madness!
My KTM Umshini Wami saying "we going where???"
The route, Kimberly, into the Kalahari into Botswana and then back to South Africa. 5000+ Km's, per day the longest rally in the world after the Dakar. A daily race of 600 to 750 km's across the most arid, unforgiving terrain in Southern Africa, the Botswana daisies (thorn trees) plucking at your arms, the sand sucking in your tyres and your last reserves of energy, the navigation like a web of lies luring you down a maze of dusty red sand footpaths!
Gav at full tilt
My trusty team did it last year, an easy by comparison 5 day event... Gavin Morton roaring to 7th overall, James Cunningham who found the navigation a challenge, and I coming 20th, my first ever race. Jonathan Everest is driving support, driving crazy distances across the desert with water, fuel, tents and the odd hug we hope.
James, Gavin, Johnny, Me
Were' on 500cc KTM's home built by ourselves as rally machines with big fairings, soft rally seats, big tanks, mouse tyres, roadbook, ICO, GPS .. Yes it was Greek to me before I discovered that rally racing is about navigation without a GPS, trying to ride over crazy terrain at insane speeds while keeping your eyes on the road, on the navigation kit and survive all at once... for 8 to 12 hours at a time! Many of the bikes we will race against are purpose built 450 and 690 Rally Replica rally machines with 35 or 40 litres of fuel against our 20 and huge power for those open sand roads. Would we compete, would our bikes and our bodies survive?
Scrutineering in Kimberly is a serious affair, bikes are inspected in serious detail, checking for roadworthy, 2 litres of water on a fitted container on the bike, even a check that you have all the right riding gear.
Marking our roadbooks on day 0, this is our navigation tool!
Day 1
The day arrives, Johnny our support driver WhatsApp’s our fan club “All 3 rider's out of the Parc Ferme and their way. Focused, nervous and determined. A gentle rain fell as they left, a true African blessing. “
Day 1 & 2 are a marathon stage, meaning that there is no support, we sleep at a mystery location and have to maintain and fix our bikes over the 1500km’s of unforgiving terrain that follows. Fifty meters from the start and Gavin crashes into a pavement in the dark smashing down bruising his ego and body but more importantly his ICO, a key navigation device stops working. I catch up with him and we ride together. At the second fuel stop 450km’s in we get a WhatsApp from James “My fuel pump has expired. With Jonny.” As we get to the start of the special, the racing section, my roadbook breaks off the fairing mount, it’s the rally equivalent of a roll of toilet paper with squiggles, distances and degree headings on it, and without it I’m stuffed. Not a good start for team Zama Zama!
The racing section start
Gav starting fast
Gavin and I start the 300km special, the actual race section, it’s a taste of what’s to come, a soft sandy river bed, seems easy enough we have trained for months on sand, except the locals have dug the equivalent of the western fronts trenches and tank traps mining sand and digging for water. I scream in my helmet as I come around a corner, choose a less ridden line and see five holes all six foot deep and the size of a grave, all they will have to do is close the hole with me inside! I’m flying and just power up and manage to fly over, the bike hopping over the holes, my heart in my mouth.
Me on the river bed
What follows is just about every kind of terrain in Africa, open gravel highways where we get some serious speed, flat open pans with tracks heading off into a distant haze, soft sandy twee spoor and long sandy fence lines with thorn scrub which rips and tears at us, our jackets and tops are ripped even riding boots! An error on the roadbook has everyone riding in circles in the sandy bush causing much swearing at Alex’s (Amageza founder and organiser) expense! At the end of the special we have an unexpected last 115km’s to Camp, what happened to the distance Alex? A sting in the tail!
Gav through the Botswana daisies at pace.. like always
Our beds that night are the Van Zyl’s Rus hostel, a bunch of rickety beds and threadbare blankets in one large room! The biggest challenge is sleeping through the snoring, the room shakes to the sounds, like machine guns and grenades on the western front!
Me at the finish, Day 1
Amageza Day 2 to Kang in Botswana.
Me entering Botswana
40 k's Liaison, 533 kms racing stage. We expect sand monsters, we find sand monsters. We get so lost, again there is lots of riding around in circles, trying to work out where the roadbook turn is. I’m flipping short on fuel today for these distances and here I am going around in circles. I stop at a little shack, an old woman stands in the yard, her face looks like a raisin, this place takes its toll. I ask her what the track does up ahead trying to decipher the roadbook. She asks me where I am going, I say I don’t know but does the road branch off up ahead in a Y shape. She shakes her head, there must be 300 Y branches, but where am I going. I thank her, and ride off, she gazes at me her raisin face crumples up in more creases, she shakes her head. She’s right, Amageza, mad.
I’m so lost but keep stopping to take pictures, lovely red dunes and deadly Botswana daisies... The thorn scrub. Springbok leaping past and ostrich running alongside. Hard to believe there is so much nothing and unpopulated barren places. Lots of wild horses and cattle... Scores of donkey carts. What do they live on...? Dust? It's beautiful if you riding by, but then living here must be terribly harsh.
A group of us emerge from the sand maze, red dunes rise up ahead of us around a village which looks like a set from Mad Max. Where is that Theron chick? All I see are raisin faces and then wait Gavin…I’d prefer Charlize but the rest of the field are there, the race is stopped, the rescue helicopter is stuck in SA.
We must do a 500 km detour by road to Kang via some spot called Tshabong. We’re all desperately low on fuel, Dave Griffin, Gavin and I are riding when Gavin’s mouse goes, his bike hops around like a frog, we call Johnny to come fetch Gavin. Dave and I ride on slower and slower until he runs out of fuel. I tow Dave and his 690 for 55 k’s then I run out and Alex in his jeep tows us the last 5 k to fuel. Dave and I ride in the dark, cattle and donkeys fill the sides of the road, we share lights a dim tunnel through the wilderness. Its 8pm when we ride into bivouac. Flip that was a long ride..815 km’s!
I'm so fast I'm a blur
Day 3 Kang to Ghanzi. Good news for the day, a shortened stage. After a somewhat confusing riders briefing where road books and GPS co-ords had to be adjusted and waypoints re- entered a few times its good bye to the thorns and thick sand of the Kang Bivouac, a really crappy uncomfortable camp site. Gavin starts in second, I'm 20th, and James sets off last having missed two days due to his fuel pump.
The start
It’s a fast very sandy start for 60 odd kilometres, the twee spoor track is straight as an arrow, the sand is thick but you get your bike up on top of it and get some proper speed. No-one can get lost today I think when suddenly a village and crowd of cheering locals appear, nothing on my roadbook! Seems strange but I ride on for a few kilometres until I find Gavin and all the top guys having a conference. Lots of swearing, lots of riding up and down, every little path into the bush gets explored by a hopeful rally rider. I make a good guess as to where the track goes and get lucky, leapfrogging lots of lost riders. This is a world of donkey carts and horse men herding great herds of cattle. A crisscrossing maze of sandy tracks with mysterious ends.
Me blending with the Kalahari sand
It’s another day of fuel shortage. I have a hundred km’s to go with fifty km’s of range when I come to a village. I stop at a little spaza shop I ask for fuel. I get a blank look and a shaking head. I find out later, everyone else asked and got those blank African looks. I switch to my best (not so good) Tswana and knowledge of rural people, I greet, I ask the child playing in the dust her name, I apologise for my Tswana, its Gauteng style. The gogo smiles at me, reaches into her blouse and shifting her breast from one side to another pulls out her cell phone. “OK I’ll send him” she says, directing me to 5 litres of precious fuel. I fill up and race off, blitzing past fuel starved riders including Gavin at high speeds. Gavin runs out with 5km’s to go, I return with fuel for him, he nearly kisses me but his helmet gets in the way!
James comes in late, exhausted and dispirited. The rider in front of him hit a kudu, the kudu drops dead, luckily the rider flies over it and lands, shoulder broken and bruised but otherwise alive. The ride has taken its toll emotionally rather than physically on James, he decides to withdraw. He’s not the only one. Johnny’s WhatsApp group post that night. “Estimate about 52 riders left. The morning bivouac looks like a refugee site with forlorn bikes all broken and strewn around the site. Sleep is an issue with service teams working through the night up until start each morning trying to keep riders in the race.” We are not even halfway through yet!
Gav in typical high speed sand slicing
