A Gelande strasse and a (cheating) piece of flat dirt

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oo7

Race Dog
Joined
Aug 14, 2007
Messages
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Location
Los Angeles, USA
Bike
BMW R1200GS Adventure
Day 1 of 2

Well, after a very brief ten year absence from die goeie ou Kaap, this boy managed to pull a couple of strings and got himself a job in the Mother of all cities.

Having lived in Joburg for basically half of that 10 years (and the rest abroad), I honestly do not have one bad thing to say about living in Johannesburg. The place treated me very fairly. I haven't been affected by crime, the work experience gained was awesome, and definitely the best thing about the place, in my opinion, is the weather. Summer climate is just superb as itâ??s not too hot and winter is even better as itâ??s not too cold. Of all the places that I have lived in here and abroad, Jozie, without a doubt, has got the best climate in the world. And of course its got the Butcher Shop & Grill. And then I havenâ??t even gone off about the awesome people living here (The only bad thing that I can say, perhaps, is that it is maybe a tad too close to Petoorsdorp.   >:D.

In fact I feel so strongly about Joburg being an awesome place that I am thinking about starting a new thread where Joburg people should post good things about Joburg â?? it will be interesting to see the different things that protrude.

However, having said all of this, the Cape has got the mountain, the sea, kayakable rivers, the wine lands and still my heart. And nothing can beat that, I guess â?¦

Getting the job on the one hand was one thing, but that was where the fun and games stopped and the logistical nightmare started. Without boring you with the details, part of the logistics issue was how to get my cage and my bike down to Cape Town when I have no leave and with the long haired chief of staff still working over da seas, I decided, yet again, to obtain the services of my trusted wingman, (now fellow) petrolhead, and just plain good old friend, the Brakenator! He, after all, was instrumental in the collection of the GSA from Vryheid a month or so ago.

The Brakenjan-mobiel posing in my favourite piccie of him, in front of the Spitzkoppe last year in Nam on his ex orange beast:
1Dawidvoorspitz.jpg


To cut a long story short, I asked him if he would be keen to help me to take the cage and the bike down to Le Cap during this last weekend, suggesting we make a bit of an adventure of it.

What was I thinking? Of course he was!

So we yet again had the (by now usual) 5am sharp start and headed out to the Paris of the Freestate.  We planned to take turns on the GS and I vowed to head butt the cold with the first stretch. The first bit of excitement came when we struck a very thick bank of fog, just outside Joburg on the N1 south, basically just before you get the first Engen 1-Stop shop/petrol thingy just after the Potch turnoff. It was extremely weird, as you couldnâ??t see the road surface in the dark, so extremely thick was the fog. I could barely even spot the yellow line which I was frantically trying to follow, all the while trying to hold my balance and keeping an eye on the Hiluxâ?? hazards. For some reason it felt the whole time while riding in that fog as if I was about to fall over and that something was wrong with my balance. After a while it was so bad I was contemplating stopping, but then I wiped my goggles and would you know it, suddenly half of the â??mistâ?? was gone!! Stupid frieken idiot!

We blasted (as far as a 2.5 diesel Hilux can â??blastâ??) through Parys, past Vredefort and Viljoenskroon, hoping for a Wimpy brekkie in Hoopstad. By now the sun was starting to rise and we decided to stop for a leak at this crossing just outside Viljoenskroon. It certainly wasnâ??t the most beautiful place to stop (note the smoggy township air, burned grass, power cables, jagged edge of the almost defunct road, etc and yet, it still was a magic sight to see the sun rise â?? I guess thatâ??s how people manage to live in places like this â?? you ignore the ugly and (try to) take the beauty out of it?
2Uglysunrise.jpg


My monster in front of Brakenjanâ??s monster  :biggrin:
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Note the state of the back TKC 80 â?? Does that look like a tyre that has done 7500kmâ??s?

On the opposite side of the sunrise the moon was still high in the sky â?? this pic does unfortunately no justice to how nice it really was (the moon is the one to the right of the big banana):
4-MOON.jpg


So far I havenâ??t been cold at all (the GSâ?? temperature gauge hovered between 0 and 5 degrees), but since the sun came up, it was frieken freezing  - does anyone have an explanation for why it is always the coldest JUST after sunrise?

Just had to stop for another pic of the rising sun â?? this time above a co-opâ??s impressive grain silos
5-Risingsunsilos.jpg


Upon entering Hoopstad I spotted this â??welcomeâ?? sign and remembered having seen a similar picture flashing on top on the WD site as part of a photo bannerâ?? so hereâ??s version two: (But I think itâ??s a lie â?? I didnâ??t even spot one Afrikaner and certainly no beeste in town. I was also without any hoop when we were told that the nearest place where we can get a brekkie at 08h30 on a Saturday morning was in Bloemhof â?? belaglik! Who can live in a place like this!! Btw â?? Amanda Coetzer, former SA tennis star hails from Hoopstad)
6-Hoopstadsign.jpg


At one stage we both remarked on how much maize we saw next to the road. I know it is in the heart of the so called maize triangle, but it remains impressive. Here is an already harvested land, which I certainly thought was big. But I also read somewhere that South Africa is only Africaâ??s third largest producer of grain (wheat & maize) after Egypt and Morocco. To me that must be a load of snot - I have been fortunate to have travelled extensively through both Morocco and Egypt and nowhere can I recall seeing anything on the scale you see in South Africa.
7-MAIZETRIANGLE.jpg


So we left the place with no hope, no Afrikaner and no beeste and with a stomach remaining empty, we had no alternative but to set our sights on the mighty metropolis of Bothaville for a decent cup of Wimpy coffee.

No luck. No Wimpy.

Next stop Hertzogville.

Another sad place.

But at least the local petrol jockey directed us to an establishment where we could sit down, have a wonderful cup of Frisco instant dry-freezed molasses type substance with half of Hulletsâ?? turnover added to palate the taste. My goodness. It must have been the worse cup of coffee I have ever drunk. And Iâ??m not a fussy bliksem. As you probably have noted by now I basically donâ??t particularly mind what I eat. But this stuff . . . yo yo yo. The accompanying breakfast was also in a similar sort of class â?? we still donâ??t know what type of sausage we left behind on our plates. And the restaurant itself was basically in a stoor (warehouse) with no décor and just bare bricks for walls, corrugated iron roof with no ceiling and a friendly omie with a big boep and a khaki shirt serving us.

Anyway. At least we were entertained by a farmer boy arriving in this thing for his breakfast. Reminded me of that one Top Gear episode where the Hamster had to go and fetch lunch in a similar sort of tractor in a small English village with roads half the width of these roads:
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The omie with the big boep gave us directions via the shorter dirt road to Boshof, which was a good choice, as the tarred road was by now becoming boring and was looking like this the whole time:
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Boshof came and went. I remember passing through the place a year ago on the KLR â?? stopped at the Bosof Hotel at around 14h00, on a normal Wednesday afternoon for a quick cold one and to my surprise was delighted to see a couple of old timers skoffeling around on the â??danceâ? floor in the pub. Another fine establishment.

From Boshof the GPS told us the shortest route to Orania is via Kimberley, Modderrivier and then before Hopetown you kap a left off the N12 on a short cut to this (in)famous Afrikaner hideout â?? something we both have wanted to check out for a long time.

This picture was taken on the road between Boshof and Kimberley. As you will note, I was posing behind my bike as Sam Casey, the invisible man from Intersec. (Couldnâ??t get the gloves to play along though)  :p
10-ManfromIntersec.jpg


This was taken just after we left the N12 on the â??short cutâ? to Orania. The temptation was just too big not to relinquish to demands from the right side of my brain to have a go at an artistic picture attempt of the railway line:
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Both ways, of course:
12-spoor.jpg


The GPS then beeped and told me to turn right. Which I did.

But the road was closed off with a hump of dirt preventing you to continue. I was immediately upset, because nowhere was any indication of the road being closed and since we have done already about 40kmâ??s from the N12 turn off, I wasnâ??t happy entertaining the idea to turn back and basically waste an hour and the odd 80kmâ??s of petrol (On the other hand, I have a bike with a 33l tank  >:D).

We had a quick brainstorm and I was (very happily) delegated to investigate the reason for the unexpected road closure. About 200m from the turn off I came across a dry riverbed with a bridge that was completely demolished by a flood a while ago. So is this what has become of our fine country? If a bridge is swept away in a flood it just doesnâ??t get repaired anymore? Or could it be, under the new government, that this bridge, on the road to Orania, is on purpose NOT being repaired? Be that as it may, we have come to see what Orania is like and after some deliberation (and shoving some rocks around), I was happy that the 4x4 cage would be able to easily manage through the dry river bed.

This is the line that I picked:
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The cage about to enter the riverbed:
14-Bridgecross2.jpg


 
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