The year long All Expenses Paid hooligan ride

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Whethefakawe

Race Dog
Joined
Jun 21, 2006
Messages
621
Reaction score
1
Bike
KTM 950 Adventure S
I realized that the previous topic name was a bit presumptuous, the "original"adventure ride was probably back in the 1890's by some brave soul wearing a derby. So I thought I'd stick closer to the truth. :D

I have about 170 photos of my all expenses paid, "a little more adventure than you planned" tour of southern Africa in 1982,. According to the masters of puppets at the time it was "just barely inside SWA and nowhere near Angola". All righty then.
In that case these photos were taken in the mine dumps outside Brakpan by Simon Fourie.
A few of these have been seen by maybe 5 or 6 people, but most have just sat in a box, lately I've been looking at them more often.
While scanning these I remembered many details that I had forgotten. I also noticed several things that I never even realized at the time: even when screwing around, R4's were always close at hand, the way the guys  always kept good separation especially when stopped, the way the bikes turned from brown to red as the weeks went by and the paint was rubbed and scratched off.
Except for photos of our 3 serious casualties, they are all "happy" shots, of a bunch of 19 and 20 year-olds having a jol, wheelying, swimming, braaing, and fixing flats. I can't remember what I had for lunch yesterday, but if I close my eyes I can hear conversations and see images and "footage" from 25 years ago as if it happened 25 minutes ago. Good and bad, and some that I wish I could print so, for instance, the smiling face of a dead parabat would stay in sharper focus. The other senses remember too - touch and especially smell, it's an amazing capability of the mind.
All the faces in these photos went safely home to mama, minus a reasonable amount of blood, skin, and bone sacrificed to the Gods of Moto :D
These are shots of fun on two wheels, plain and simple. No political statements or subliminal messages.

Bike squad was based at SWASPES outside the little town of Otavi, together with the other specialist units like horses (berede), tracker dogs, and human trackers. It's an area of dense bush, hot as hell in summer and very cold nights in winter. During the annual dry season "farm incursion" by swapo's special forces my platoon was heavily involved as were gunships, Ratels, parabats, and Koevoet units. This terrain wasn't really suitable for bikes so we spent much of it in Buffels or on foot. Tracking took up much of our time, after a while I could do a decent bloodhound impression from sticking close to the highly-trained trackers, who were, by the way, all white guys in this case.  We still had the "old" XR's, with the 23 inch front wheel. They had huge bashplates and brushbars mounted, which contradicted the mission: if the bush was dense enough to need them, you couldn't go fast anyways. Bike doctrine was all about SPEED. :D  Not only that, but it made them handle like pigs, and the bashplates were designed as the perfect tool for breaking ankles. We didn't like them much.
 
wahooxrspt6.jpg

Wasting our time somewhere, channeled onto a track through bush too dense to ride in.

wahooplatoonotavihw6.jpg

Early one morning after riding up and down a railway line all night shooting off massive amounts of ammo as a diversion.

wahooxrsfarmwm7.jpg

We spent some nights doing farm protection. This specific farmer had a very sexy daughter who was going to university in SA the next year, we assured them that we'd pull in any time protection was needed. :D
At another farm, another story.........

wahoogunship2ys3.jpg

We were not the only ones with fun toys: Alouette gunships, with the 20mm cannon sticking out the left door. One of the pilots could wheelie rather well. The gunners were incredibly good shots.

Around May we fetched 60 or 70 brand-new XR's from a transport depot in Grootfontein. My bike had 0.5 km on the clock. As I recall, the highest mileage on any one of them was 4 km. Of course, one of the guys moered down on the tar road turning left out of the depot, total mileage 0.8 km  :p  :p
After the farm show, a new loot and I took over the other bike platoon from the July intake leadership who were headed home. There were only two bike platoons, a  total of not quite 60 guys. We spent some time training, basically all we did was ride all day every day. As the platoon sergeant, I quickly figured out that my guys couldn't partake in picking up cigarette butts or digging toilets, we had "maintenance and training" every day. It was also a very effective way to control 25 hooligans - I made them a deal, as long as they didn't cause shit and get me in trouble, I'd stick to that story, but if I got ONE BIT of grief from the higher-ups they would dig or sweep or scrub something until my problem went away. Of course, the troublemakers in the platoon had to test the terms of the agreement once or twice, but they saw the wisdom of my system right away :D  I have always been a firm believer in the principle of mutual benefit.

spedjumpsbanksoa4.jpg

Daily training. The oke closest to the camera was 16 years old at the time. Next to him, the 19 year old loot executes a perfect front wheel landing. New bikes, still all brown.

spesbackofstablesod7.jpg

Our local MX track, called "Back of the Stables". Second moto in progress. We laid out tracks everywhere and raced around like madmen, even in Angola.

spesmekombatpy8.jpg

About 40 k's away at a mine named Kombat was an actual track, mostly deep sand with a few jumps, it was good training for what was to follow. Practicing my sand riding.

spesquarry1ff3.jpg

Right next to swaspes base was a rock quarry that provided excellent training and lots of thrills and spills.

We did a lot of riding on railway service roads, they were typically fairly nice tweespoors that switched back and forth across the rails where terrain dictated. On one such ride, two guys kept playing the old falling-back-and-racing-to-catch-up game, and I warned them they were headed for a fall. We came to a spot where the track went between two bushes and made a blind, sharp left turn across the railway line, and we all knew this was going to be a laugh. I hid behind one bush, and everybody else waited and watched across the rails out of sight. As expected, the two hotshots came screaming between the two bushes at about 80, and never even saw the turn. I heard them swearing as they went by me, they bashed a long way into the bush and one moered down. The rest of us were in stitches. I  still clearly remember the sheepish looks on their faces after they got themselves extracted from the thornbushes and rocks and got back on the track. Much later I discovered what a brilliant shot I managed to snap as they went by me:
spesridingovershootxj8.jpg

Note the audience at top left, and the fact that neither is even on the brakes yet :p  :p  :p

At the races. This base was called Tsintsabis, we laid out a mean track in the thick sand just outside the wall. I learned a lot about sand riding that day, mainly KEEP IT PINNED!!
tsintsabisracesob8.jpg


OK, it's beer o'clock. Be back later.
 
Top