OK post your bad luck and near misses related to Amageza here - both during the ride and the preparation!
I know Wolfmother and Biscuit will have something to add!
Riiight, let's start!
On the Thursday I was busy with last-minute bike prep and suddenly got nervous about failing scrutineering due to my lack of a number plate. A few frantic phone calls later and I was suited up and racing the 30km from Montagu to Robertson to a signage place that would be prepared to make me an "illegal" plate at short notice. In the Cogmanskloof Pass between here and Ashton, as I came around a bend around a cliff, I spotted the biggest alpha male baboon I've ever seen strolling on the very edge of the tar in my direction. I instinctively veered into the other lane to give him a wider berth, but the further across I went, the faster he crossed the road - we were on a collision course! The road was wet and I was running out of road so I just mumbled "oh no! oh no! oh no!" and carried on straight towards what seemed like the inevitable collision. I was already calculating whether the impact would kill me or, worse, damage my bike so as to force my withdrawal from Amageza, but, fortunately, it turns out that baboons have a survival instinct all of their own and at the last possible instant he leapt out of the way. I almost imagined I could feel the tyres whooshing through the hair on his ankles ... My sigh of relief quickly turned into a gasp of horror as I realised that I'm now well into the oncoming lane with another imminent collision - this time with a car. Needless to say, I managed to nurse the HP2 back into my lane with metres to spare.
Meanwhile, at almost this exact time, Guy and Marise (who were coming to pick me and my bike up for the run up to Sutherland) were having their own dramas in the Du Toits Kloof. Due to a pile-up near Worcester the traffic was being diverted via Rawsonville and was backing up into the Kloof from the turn-off. They had barely stopped at the back of the queue, trailer in tow, when a large semi came careening around the corner behind them and, unable to stop in the torrential rain, veered off the road and came careening past on the verge with mud and grass flying from the brakes. It barely missed them but as it ran out of verge where the lanes merged, was forced back into the traffic and took out several cars further ahead. Phew!
...
Finally united in Montagu, with everybody still intact and bikes loaded onto Mike's trailer, we set off for Sutherland, now using my Audi allroad for towing that tanker of a trailer and the two large bikes (KTM 990 and HP2). Now the car had been prone to overheating for the last while but I figured that it'd be fine since we were expecting to reach Sutherland after midnight - and a very cold night at that. However, I'd not reckoned with the sustained incline of the Verlatenkloof Pass so that eventually I was forced to stop after the water temp had topped 120 and the oil temp was also over 100 degrees. Seconds after I switched off the ignition the pressure had built up to such an extent that a hose blew and all the coolant drained out immediately. Right. It was 1:30AM and we could not reach anybody we knew in Sutherland on the phone so there was nothing more for it than to offload the bikes (thank goodness for the LED headlights included in the safety equipment!) and ride into town. Foolishly we thought it would be really close so we didn't bother kitting up properly ... brrr! After a bit of scurrying around in town, and waking Adrian from the White House (our host for the night - what a generous, helpful guy, and reluctantly ex-biker himself with some hair-raising riding war-stories to tell), we managed to round up the local constabulary in their patrol vehicle to go fetch our kit from the abandoned car. Instead, and while we were careening wildly out of town in the back seat of the double cab police bakkie and with empty beer bottles clinking around at our feet, they insisted on towing our car plus trailer back into town!
The tow rope was only about 2m long, the car's battery fading with the result that we couldn't operate the windscreen wipers for long, there was no power-assist on the steering or brakes, and the copper was determined to see just how fast he could tow us, burning clutch notwithstanding... we resigned ourselves to the potential of much greater misfortune befalling us - and soon - so we celebrated this with the last mug of tea from our flask. Things took a turn for the even more interesting when the car's battery faded so much that the hazard lights stopped working and, after a few minutes, the cop panicked, thinking that he'd lost us along the way, and slammed on his brakes. I almost had to stand on my brakes to avoid hitting him, setting off the airbags and then probably crashing properly thereafter... eventually though we made it in this herky jerky fashion to Sutherland and right into the White House parking lot. Phew.
I know Wolfmother and Biscuit will have something to add!
Riiight, let's start!
On the Thursday I was busy with last-minute bike prep and suddenly got nervous about failing scrutineering due to my lack of a number plate. A few frantic phone calls later and I was suited up and racing the 30km from Montagu to Robertson to a signage place that would be prepared to make me an "illegal" plate at short notice. In the Cogmanskloof Pass between here and Ashton, as I came around a bend around a cliff, I spotted the biggest alpha male baboon I've ever seen strolling on the very edge of the tar in my direction. I instinctively veered into the other lane to give him a wider berth, but the further across I went, the faster he crossed the road - we were on a collision course! The road was wet and I was running out of road so I just mumbled "oh no! oh no! oh no!" and carried on straight towards what seemed like the inevitable collision. I was already calculating whether the impact would kill me or, worse, damage my bike so as to force my withdrawal from Amageza, but, fortunately, it turns out that baboons have a survival instinct all of their own and at the last possible instant he leapt out of the way. I almost imagined I could feel the tyres whooshing through the hair on his ankles ... My sigh of relief quickly turned into a gasp of horror as I realised that I'm now well into the oncoming lane with another imminent collision - this time with a car. Needless to say, I managed to nurse the HP2 back into my lane with metres to spare.
Meanwhile, at almost this exact time, Guy and Marise (who were coming to pick me and my bike up for the run up to Sutherland) were having their own dramas in the Du Toits Kloof. Due to a pile-up near Worcester the traffic was being diverted via Rawsonville and was backing up into the Kloof from the turn-off. They had barely stopped at the back of the queue, trailer in tow, when a large semi came careening around the corner behind them and, unable to stop in the torrential rain, veered off the road and came careening past on the verge with mud and grass flying from the brakes. It barely missed them but as it ran out of verge where the lanes merged, was forced back into the traffic and took out several cars further ahead. Phew!
...
Finally united in Montagu, with everybody still intact and bikes loaded onto Mike's trailer, we set off for Sutherland, now using my Audi allroad for towing that tanker of a trailer and the two large bikes (KTM 990 and HP2). Now the car had been prone to overheating for the last while but I figured that it'd be fine since we were expecting to reach Sutherland after midnight - and a very cold night at that. However, I'd not reckoned with the sustained incline of the Verlatenkloof Pass so that eventually I was forced to stop after the water temp had topped 120 and the oil temp was also over 100 degrees. Seconds after I switched off the ignition the pressure had built up to such an extent that a hose blew and all the coolant drained out immediately. Right. It was 1:30AM and we could not reach anybody we knew in Sutherland on the phone so there was nothing more for it than to offload the bikes (thank goodness for the LED headlights included in the safety equipment!) and ride into town. Foolishly we thought it would be really close so we didn't bother kitting up properly ... brrr! After a bit of scurrying around in town, and waking Adrian from the White House (our host for the night - what a generous, helpful guy, and reluctantly ex-biker himself with some hair-raising riding war-stories to tell), we managed to round up the local constabulary in their patrol vehicle to go fetch our kit from the abandoned car. Instead, and while we were careening wildly out of town in the back seat of the double cab police bakkie and with empty beer bottles clinking around at our feet, they insisted on towing our car plus trailer back into town!
The tow rope was only about 2m long, the car's battery fading with the result that we couldn't operate the windscreen wipers for long, there was no power-assist on the steering or brakes, and the copper was determined to see just how fast he could tow us, burning clutch notwithstanding... we resigned ourselves to the potential of much greater misfortune befalling us - and soon - so we celebrated this with the last mug of tea from our flask. Things took a turn for the even more interesting when the car's battery faded so much that the hazard lights stopped working and, after a few minutes, the cop panicked, thinking that he'd lost us along the way, and slammed on his brakes. I almost had to stand on my brakes to avoid hitting him, setting off the airbags and then probably crashing properly thereafter... eventually though we made it in this herky jerky fashion to Sutherland and right into the White House parking lot. Phew.
