Africa our way !! ( Complete...... or is it? )

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Fuzzy Muzzy

Bachelor Dog
Joined
Oct 19, 2008
Messages
14,249
Reaction score
2,743
Location
Bothasig , Cape Town
Bike
Honda CRF-1000L Africa Twin
ok ok.. I cant take the moaning and groaning any longer, I figured if I get started on it I have no excuse but to carry on.. so here it is. Africa our way !!

I am one of those okes.. always wanted to ride a bike, but was never allowed one so this RR is dedicated to all those okes who never had a bike growing up, to the okes who take the miss on a weekend away and when 5 KTM 990's roar past your heart leaps and you think to yourself " one day I will be doing that", you see my mom has worked for an orthopaedic  surgeon for as long as I can remember and my attempts at obtaining a bike throughout my school days was just impossible, I remember the day I bought home a Gamma 50.. the next day there was a note saying sorry with a pile of cash on my pillow.. MOM !!

Fast forward to age 35 and my mom gets a phone call.. “ I have bought a bike and I’m gonna keep it”.. the reply “ I knew this day was coming”,it was done,  the brand new Transalp 650 was mine!

And so it was on.. since I could remember I wanted to ride a bike as far up into Africa as I could.. I was born in Zim and spent my childhood in the bush.. so I wanted to get out of Cape Town and back to the elephants, feel the earth and smell the rain.. before I get too old and cranky. It has to be said that I did’nt buy the bike with the intention of doing this trip, it was a sequence of events that just seemed to make it all happen. It all started when I went to Tanzania to climb Kilimanjaro. While riding in a bus from Kilimanjaro international Airport to our hotel I saw a guy riding his bike and I thought.. " I should'nt be in this bus, I should be on a bike" and the seed was planted.

A little while after I got my bike a friend of mine Wayne was looking to upgrade his bike.. he was set on buying a VStrom 650.. hmmm, nice bike, but I had a plan. If I can convince him to buy a Transalp as well, we can share tools, spares etc on longer trips. It was no easy task but eventually Wayne got a deal of a lifetime bagging a good condition, neat as a pin TA for a steal.. The plan comes together a few months later when I was chatting to another mate of mine Martin.. he missed out on climbing Kilimanjaro with me a few months prior and I knew that there was no way he was going to miss out on the next adventure, so armed with a few maps and an idea I paid him a visit.. if he could also be convinced to buy a Transalp we would have 3 and maybe this idea could move to a planning stage.

So while we waited for Martin to ponder the proposal and look for a bike I set about learning how to ride these things, I remember picking up my TA for the 1st time.. it was large, powerful and intimidating, but I knew that I would just have to get over this, get some saddle time and pay my school fees. I can still remember screaming WOOOO HOOO !!!!!! as I rode out of Honda’s showroom floor, oh my God ! can it be true.

My mate William was the main man in the Honda workshop when I bought my bike, he was a great source of information on upgrading the bikes to suite the riding conditions we wanted to ride.. I think the 1st thing he put on for me was my crash bars, that was not a good sign.. then came the hand guards and more gear than I knew even existed, pants, jacket, gloves, helmet, neck brace, knee guards, boots WTF !!

With my budget klupped it was time to give this thing horns and over the next 12 000km I had the benefit of meeting so many okes on Wild Dogs who have organised rides, day trips, Atlantis dunes, geocashing  trips.. the bug had bitten and best of all Martin had found a mint TA with 12 000km on the clock for R32k.. holy moly !! lets start planning. I was starting to feel comfortable on the bike, we had done a little gravel and about one days riding on sand, but exactly how much riding preparation required for a trip like this is a gray area.

So the idea was to ride off into the distance and see what Africa had to offer.. ‘ Lets setup a war room” I suggested with Glee.. “ you know like on Long Way Down where they have an office with maps on the walls and hot chicks organising visas”, one dining room and a map of Namibia later and we were set to start planning the 1st leg of the tour. Ok.. we can do this, how long do we have? And hello, we have our 1st problem. Wayne only has a limited amount of leave.. he has to be back within 4 max 5 weeks, there is no way we can fit an Africa trip into that, we had to make another plan.
 
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