Pomphuis Bikers Chronicles - the DRC edition

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bonova

Race Dog
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KTM 950 Adventure S
Ok, i figure i should start this one now - before we forget - time flies by so quickly.
Excuse the writing and the grammer - i like to hope i'm better at riding than writing and taking photo's ;)

Our original plan for this trip was to go to Angola. But we had problems with the visas, and also, we got invited to go to the DRC by someone. So, the DRC it was – tough choice that :).
Our previous group of 5 people (Pomphuis bikers chronicles RR) was now only 3. Garrick and Ryan not being able to make it. It was a massive blow to not have them with, but we weren’t about to not go…

claudetrip2009255.jpg


So it was Claude on his KTM 990 s, Koos on his BMW 800 GS, and me on my BMW x-challenge
We actually did very little planning, and left most stuff to the last minute. One gets complacent when you think you already have everything from the last trip.

Claude
P8050120.jpg


Koos
congotripod2009167.jpg


Me
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The Plan:
Our vague plan was to do approximately 10000km in a month, through Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, DRC, (possibly Burundi and Tanzania), Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Botswana again before heading back to CT.
I find plans fairly cumbersome, and seldom do they actually work out, but at least it gives you a direction to head in …..NORTH  ;D

Pre trip stuff (ok, some might find this boring....skip it if you want!)

For those that read the last RR, you’ll know that we wanted to start a project to run on this trip. We decided to call it “Streetwise”, a project to try and help educate children about road safety in the countries we travel through. This started off as a small idea, and then got bigger. In the end, we had stickers made for the bikes, as well as 500 hats for kids with cartoons drawn by the cartoonist for rapport. Also, we bought 100 reflective bands. Our idea was to try and get groups of children together (at schools, on the side of the road) and try to get our message across to them with a little skit, some translation, and the pictures.
We were too late to look for sponsorship or anything, so just did it ourselves.
More about that later though.

We didn’t want to worry about fuel as much as the last trip, so Claude and I imported aftermarket tanks for our bikes from Aus (My cousin sent them over for us), and we installed them ourselves. This gave us both at least 500km range, me actually further. Koos carried a dromedary bag – 8L, which brought him up to the same mark.
Claude’s fuel pump decided to loosen a wire after or during installation of the tank, and it was almost disaster. He had to get a new one, because the old one couldn’t be easily fixed. Just in time, it was ready (not cheap cheap though)

Some stuff that deserves mentioning: I got an awesome bracket made to re-inforce my pannier rack on my x-c, as well as some really nifty emergency clutch and throttle cables, (and some fuel line connectors) from Mike (superfoxi on the forum) – really must mention his excellent workmanship, and a great guy with lots of stories too.

On the Thursday (we left on the Sat), I’m putting on my new rear tyre, and I check the bearings – shit, they are rough as a … well, they are rough, this is a family forum :D. So, I quickly call Atlantic Motorrad, and they fit me in 1st thing the next day, and replace the bearings pronto. Really impressed, because they were super busy, but made a plan. – thanks guys!
 
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