DAY 2 - SANI TOP TO DORDRECHT - 541 kms (1184 kms total)
Woke up early after a windy night without a ton of sleep, but what a gorgeous view of Sani Pass. The first few pictures below show my little camp, the view and the last time my bike would ever be so clean.
I was feeling pretty confident (undeservedly) ater making it to the top of Sani the day before. Little did I know that going down was a lot harder with the fat rear end of my bike. I ended up locking up the tires in the 5th or 6th switchback on the way down and dropping the bike. The right pannier came off completely and I had to unload everything in order to get the bike back upright and on level ground again.
A lot less confidently, I made my way to Hineville. Grabbed petrol there, add some oil, serviced the chain and get a couple tips on my route. Found my way onto some back road for ~50 km of gorgeous dirt tracks to Matatiele and then catch the R56.
As I pulled into Maclear, I noticed a hollow sound from the exhaust. I looked back - shocked to see what I see, I pull over and switch off the bike immediately. I had been using cargo netting to keep the 10L extra petrol tank behind my camping gear. It had come loose at some point and found itself in front of my exhaust can. Soon the exhaust blew a hole through the plastic fuel tank - I was lucky the whole thing didn't catch on fire and explode as there was hardly a drop of fuel left in the thing. Close call! I needed to start learning some rules to follow, or I was gonna kill myself...
RULE #1: Don't use a cargo net to secure extra fuel
As I followed my GPS out of town rather blindly set to shortest route, I hit a cattle gate that was locked. No other option, my shortcut wasn't going to pan out and and I needed to backtrack on the farm road into town again. I was a little frustrated, and probably going faster on the gravel than I should have, given false confidence from having just ridden in the opposite direction.
Taking a blind curve to the right - perhaps at 80 kph or 100 kph - a baakie came roaring around the bend faster than I was going. Worse, he was on MY side of the road! I had two choices: 1). get hit by the baakie or 2). ride the bike off the road and into a ditch, getting off as soon as I could.
As I got off the road, I felt like I could almost recover and pull the bike back onto the dirt track. Then the rear end slid out, I tried to correct, the front end became unstable and there was no saving it. The bike came down hard on it's right side. I landed on some mix of knee, hip, shoulder and head on my right side. It was the first time I had really come off a bike since I was ~12, and popped the clutch on my dirt bike only to accidentally wheelie into the side of my dad's truck. I think this time it hurt more.
I stood up. I didn't think anything was broken, but my head was throbbing. I yelled out at the driver of the other vehicle who had stopped ~100 meters away when he could finally slow his vehicle down. He got out of his baakie briefly, saw that I was standing and alive, gave me a thumbs up and drove off.
My confidence was gone - I felt shattered.
I looked around at farms and not a lot else. I started to survey the dibris. Both pieces of side luggage had come off. One of the mirrors had broken at the coupler. Three turn signals were hanging off. My GPS was 10 meters away from the bike. Some fuel was leaking, but that stopped once I got the bike upright. You can see most of the damage from a picture I took later on in the last picture at the bottom here (missing a mirror, clearly).
I was hacked off, but went to work putting things back together, mostly with duct tape. 30 minutes in, I finally accepted the situation and my own fault. I was going too fast on a road I didn't know. I was listening to something on my iPod and maybe lost a couple of seconds warning from the sound of the approaching vehicle. And hell, if I had been the guy driving the baakie in that part of the country and had nearly killed someone, maybe I would have driven off as well.
More rules:
RULE #2: Don't blindly follow 'shortest route' on the GPS
RULE #3: Ride like someone will be on your side of the road, going too fast straight for you on blind curves on gravel tracks
RULE #4: No headphones when riding off road, or while doing anything other than big highway stuff for that matter
As I put things back together for another hour or so, a couple different farmers came by and offered to help. One of them had a shop and proper tools I could have borrowed, but I just wanted to be back on the road again and as far away from that crash site as possible. It was a bad day 2, for sure.
Eventually I got back on my way and headed for the tarred R56. No more screwing around on farm roads for me. I went as far as I could before it got dark and found a low end bed and breakfast in Dordrecht - nothing to rave about.
Before I could get to sleep, I had one more surprise: while putting my bike back together, I had somehow left my keys for everything but the motorcycle (along with a mini leatherman I had been using) on the side of the road. Luckily, Adventurer had told me to hide spares in the turn signals of my bike, and with a screw driver I was able to fetch the spares and get into my panniers for my personal effects.
What a crap day. I wrote something on Twitter after it all that scared the hell out of everyone at home. Wasn't sure if I'd keep going or turn around - would wait to see how I felt in the morning...