- Joined
- Apr 9, 2009
- Messages
- 4
- Reaction score
- 0
- Location
- Claremont Cape Town
- Bike
- Suzuki DL 650 V-Strom
My partner writes a funny/light-heated sometimes provocative weekly column for the Cape Argus called The Human League. With the nice sunny winter weekends in Cape Town over the last few weeks we’ve been getting out & about mainly 250-500km day trips in the Overberg winelands (if you’re from the WC you’ll know the places) that inspired her to write this as a pillion passenger.
the online ver is at https://www.capeargus.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=5071121
or a cut & paste ver below....
Two wheels, a sore butt and whole wide world
Most weekends, my husband turns his back on me and I stare in silence at his head, my eyes tearing up. Sometimes he shouts at me over his shoulder. Sometimes I shout back. He often shakes his head and says he can't hear me. Most weekends, I wear leather, and come Sunday, I am so physically abused I can barely walk. And it is at times like this that we are most happy.
It starts with a map. Our heads together. A finger tracing the green roads indicating dirt. Come the weekend and we dress like idiots: he in a double layer of pants and a jacket that makes him look like a dwarf Habana; me in a gimp jacket, double layer of pants and a pair of ancient boots blooming with fungus.
Then we ride. And ride and ride and ride, until the light fades and our butts fall off and my nose is streaming so much I become part slug. Then we stop. And sleep like poisoned squirrels. And then we ride and ride and ride. Perched on the seat behind him, I enter a third dimension, all my senses awakened, but my mind in gear zero.
We both grew up around motorbikes. He had his own farm bone-rattler. I would cling to the back of my brother's scramblers as he spun through piles of chicken poo. When I was 12, I joined a motorbike circus.
My brother ramped through hoops of fire, I was a clown. I would sit in a sidecar, pushing detonator buttons and wearing floppy shoes, and children my age would throw stones at me.
Every Monday I went to school with green eyebrows.
But that never put me off bikes. Because the world is so much closer from the back of a boney. And we get to eat cake.
On a recent Sunday, we drove 500km, ending up in the village of Elim. Built in the early 1800s as a Moravian mission station, there are no shops selling lattes, no paintings of fishermen cottages, no mussel ragouts, no café tables under awnings. And so, no tourists. Perfect.
The main street is lined with pot-bellied thatched cottages set on a verge of mown grass. Dogs dozed in the sun, families lazed on porches and girls in sundresses tittered behind their pigtails. Down the road, the church is white and blinding - but further down, the museum and other outbuildings lie sagging and abandoned, patches of thatch pecked out, some windows smash-ed. The café next to the water wheel was closed - and we could have done with coffee and cake.
That's one of the bonuses of biking. Although all I do is sit upright, daydreaming of Ewan McGregor while sucking in the scents of honey and goat, wattle and wood smoke, it's hard work riding pillion, and I don't think there is a scone or carrot cake we haven't sampled between Betty's Bay and Bredasdorp.
At this rate, we might have to consider a sidecar.
But it is our country and its people we gobble up most ferociously. Last weekend, we lapped up the sweetness of Paarl's stoeps and sash windows, its winding dirt road up to the mountain, its linen air. We wolfed down the silence and greenness of Wemmershoek; I waved at two children collecting sticks under an oak. Puddles of pink flowers flooded the ditches. Towards Franschhoek, a grey-haired man wearing a Bok jersey beetled past on a scooter, a Maltese poodle, in its own green and gold, getting a blow-dry in a basket out front.
UDM election posters still flap on lamp posts, declaring in faded print: "Now it's time for all South Afri-cans." In Franschhoek, a new housing estate marches up a mountain, its high white walls pushing up against the distant jumble of shacks and tin.
Down in the main road, diners wear wool and perfume and sit back to back, holding forks and sipping wine. The air smells of coffee.
But out above the Berg River Dam, the air defaults to its natural state. On our way home, we took a detour. "Let's see what's down here," my husband shouted. That is the way of the bike: follow the green, aim for the valley, turn towards the summit.
We found a way around a locked gate - and then found ourselves crunching and bouncing up a steep trail strewn with rocks and boulders. I clung on. Down below, the dam skimmed birds off its surface; behind us the mountains were becoming rosy.
We stopped on a corner and sat side by side, listening to the silence. Out there, all looked at peace.
Weary and butt-battered, we picked our way down, turned left on the tar, and headed for home.
Past horses and rugby fields, the steaming houses of labourers, white plastic chairs dragged into clumps of cannas. Past a truckload of vines, past factories and shacks and dogs with long teats.
Past boys playing soccer on patches of sand, past a stinking river, through the smell of braai.
Back home, to our tiny corner of the country, clearer, humbled -and eyeing the map.
the online ver is at https://www.capeargus.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=5071121
or a cut & paste ver below....
Two wheels, a sore butt and whole wide world
Most weekends, my husband turns his back on me and I stare in silence at his head, my eyes tearing up. Sometimes he shouts at me over his shoulder. Sometimes I shout back. He often shakes his head and says he can't hear me. Most weekends, I wear leather, and come Sunday, I am so physically abused I can barely walk. And it is at times like this that we are most happy.
It starts with a map. Our heads together. A finger tracing the green roads indicating dirt. Come the weekend and we dress like idiots: he in a double layer of pants and a jacket that makes him look like a dwarf Habana; me in a gimp jacket, double layer of pants and a pair of ancient boots blooming with fungus.
Then we ride. And ride and ride and ride, until the light fades and our butts fall off and my nose is streaming so much I become part slug. Then we stop. And sleep like poisoned squirrels. And then we ride and ride and ride. Perched on the seat behind him, I enter a third dimension, all my senses awakened, but my mind in gear zero.
We both grew up around motorbikes. He had his own farm bone-rattler. I would cling to the back of my brother's scramblers as he spun through piles of chicken poo. When I was 12, I joined a motorbike circus.
My brother ramped through hoops of fire, I was a clown. I would sit in a sidecar, pushing detonator buttons and wearing floppy shoes, and children my age would throw stones at me.
Every Monday I went to school with green eyebrows.
But that never put me off bikes. Because the world is so much closer from the back of a boney. And we get to eat cake.
On a recent Sunday, we drove 500km, ending up in the village of Elim. Built in the early 1800s as a Moravian mission station, there are no shops selling lattes, no paintings of fishermen cottages, no mussel ragouts, no café tables under awnings. And so, no tourists. Perfect.
The main street is lined with pot-bellied thatched cottages set on a verge of mown grass. Dogs dozed in the sun, families lazed on porches and girls in sundresses tittered behind their pigtails. Down the road, the church is white and blinding - but further down, the museum and other outbuildings lie sagging and abandoned, patches of thatch pecked out, some windows smash-ed. The café next to the water wheel was closed - and we could have done with coffee and cake.
That's one of the bonuses of biking. Although all I do is sit upright, daydreaming of Ewan McGregor while sucking in the scents of honey and goat, wattle and wood smoke, it's hard work riding pillion, and I don't think there is a scone or carrot cake we haven't sampled between Betty's Bay and Bredasdorp.
At this rate, we might have to consider a sidecar.
But it is our country and its people we gobble up most ferociously. Last weekend, we lapped up the sweetness of Paarl's stoeps and sash windows, its winding dirt road up to the mountain, its linen air. We wolfed down the silence and greenness of Wemmershoek; I waved at two children collecting sticks under an oak. Puddles of pink flowers flooded the ditches. Towards Franschhoek, a grey-haired man wearing a Bok jersey beetled past on a scooter, a Maltese poodle, in its own green and gold, getting a blow-dry in a basket out front.
UDM election posters still flap on lamp posts, declaring in faded print: "Now it's time for all South Afri-cans." In Franschhoek, a new housing estate marches up a mountain, its high white walls pushing up against the distant jumble of shacks and tin.
Down in the main road, diners wear wool and perfume and sit back to back, holding forks and sipping wine. The air smells of coffee.
But out above the Berg River Dam, the air defaults to its natural state. On our way home, we took a detour. "Let's see what's down here," my husband shouted. That is the way of the bike: follow the green, aim for the valley, turn towards the summit.
We found a way around a locked gate - and then found ourselves crunching and bouncing up a steep trail strewn with rocks and boulders. I clung on. Down below, the dam skimmed birds off its surface; behind us the mountains were becoming rosy.
We stopped on a corner and sat side by side, listening to the silence. Out there, all looked at peace.
Weary and butt-battered, we picked our way down, turned left on the tar, and headed for home.
Past horses and rugby fields, the steaming houses of labourers, white plastic chairs dragged into clumps of cannas. Past a truckload of vines, past factories and shacks and dogs with long teats.
Past boys playing soccer on patches of sand, past a stinking river, through the smell of braai.
Back home, to our tiny corner of the country, clearer, humbled -and eyeing the map.
