NIPPLES FINAL

Reddersburg literally sounds like Saviour’s Town in the Calvinistic Afrikaans people’s language. An hour south of Bloemfontein (Flower Fountain; the first syllable rhymes with the first syllable of woman), Reddersburg is a farming hub. Unable to compete with Bloemfontein’s expensive gas station cum restaurant complexes, unprosperous Reddersburg waits mournfully for its own saviour to wreak a miracle.
 
Off-the-beaten-track spots like this can be a smart choice for overnight stops. On my solitaire Plettenberg Bay solitaire icebreaker I forewent a Port Elizabeth stop in favour of a more inland, and more economical, Uitenhage one, and that overnight stop would become a Kodak Moment of my Plett trip. With this in mind I was less sceptical of the last night’s stop than were most of the lads.
 
It would turn out to be a good thing I kept that to myself.
 
Departing Neu Bethesda, we reach the Gariep Dam. It was originally called the HF Verwoerd (“firvoort”) Dam, named after one of the architects of apartheid. I generally resent South Africa’s current fixation with name changes, but in this one instance I won’t argue.
 
The Tigers set off down a dirt road. We road jockeys had our fill on the Neu Bethesda leg, and turn to the tar. As it happens, it will emerge the Tigers rode just a couple of kilometres of dirt before finding themselves back on tar.
 
We stop for an unremarkable lunch at a joint imaginatively called The Old Car and mentionworthy less for the food than for the Holden grille you see here. 


Holden grille. A bit of Oz resides in the Free State of South Africa. 

That we’re far from the Cape is evidenced by the only wine-by-the-glass being a product called Overmeer, a versatile wine equally suitable for stripping paint, removing rust, or as an accompaniment to bad food.
 
Thus nourished, we set off for the overnight spot in the town of Reddersburg.
 
Entering the run-down town, we ride a couple of circuits of a square circle. Oddly, the tech customers seem to be having trouble locating the joint. Turns out we rode past it twice. It’s not that they missed it; it’s that they didn’t believe this could be the right place.
 
We ride up an unpaved service road, to a gate. A glance at the state of the buildings makes me hope they’re just stopping to ask for directions.
 
The gate at the end of the service road leads to a yard. A female form materialises and strides across the yard to greet us. She is smoker-thin, and is topped by a bale of blonde straw that, like the Karoo, seems not to have seen much water in recent years. She clutches a small dog to her bosom.
 
I’m normally a sucker for other people’s pets, but this time I stay away.
 
Blonde Straw breaks into a gap-toothed smile and beckons us in. I perch the Bandit on its sidestand, without pulling it into the yard, and the others do the same with their mounts.
 
The forecourt of a guest house is typically adorned with flagpoles sporting the colours of the countries from which the establishment hopes to draw its trade. The Reddersburg guest house, whose name sounds conspicuously like The Sorry Mare, has a different twist on this. The entrance is adorned, not with flagpoles, but with two washing lines. These sport a rich assortment of lower female underwear. Either the management and staff of The Sorry Mare have an abnormally high underwear turnover, or they’re running a knicker laundry service and today is pensioners’ special day. If that’s the case, it looks like the whole town bought in.  
 
We shoot one another a “this may not end well” glance.
 
Hoping you can’t judge a book by its cover, we allow Blonde Straw to lead us inside.
 
The Sorry Mare seems to be more a work in progress than a competed project. Its innards are dimly lit, as if awaiting the installation of the proper lights. We are led down a shadowy corridor and shown the accommodation.
 
The accommodation is a dozen-bed dormitory. The noxious odours emitted by seven middle-aged-to-elderly men are to blend and mingle within the confines of this dozen-bed dormitory. Seven middle-aged-to-elderly men will generate over a dozen sorties to the bog throughout the night, with the attendant hydraulic and pneumatic noises that characterise these nocturnal forays.
 
Throughout the trip we quipped about room-sharers getting the honeymoon suite. Now this emerges as an attractive proposition.
 
We may yet get a good night’s sleep; the scriptures of the world’s religions are replete with stories of stranger things happening. At this stage, though, nobody’s betting on it.
 
We are shown to the, er, dining room.
 
Two weeks or more previously, the Sorry Mare received a booking for seven men. The dining table seats six.
 
Blonde Straw assures us the finishing touches are being attended to even as we speak. We ponder this, as they’ve had over two weeks’ notice of our arrival. We had even pre-ordered our dinner from the, er, menu. We were offered curried chicken or beef stew. Dead suspicious of curried anything in a town like Reddersburg, we all opted for the apparently lesser of the two evils.
 
Suddenly, McDonalds looks appealing.
 
With a triumphant flourish, Blonde Straw leads us to what has clearly captured the lion’s share of the Sorry Mare’s budget: the bar. It is built of brick & cement, and tiled with the same tiles adorning the walls & floors of the whole building.
 
We discover Blonde Straw was but the Igor of the piece; the build-up; the loyal servant. Installed behind the bar is the piece de resistance.
 
A hazy, surreal pall of smoke arises and then parts, like some sort of perversely alternative take on Mosses parting the waters.
 
And behind the bar, from the smoke, materialises the MacBeth Apparition; the The Ghastly Climax.
 
This is it. This is Frankenstein’s Monster (or more accurately, its ugly sister).
 
We are unsoothed by Blonde Straw’s assurance we are “in good hands”.  The Frankensteinian Climax is going to "look after" us, purrs Blonde Straw.
 
OMG.
 
“What can I get you,” beams the Frankensteinian Climax, cigarette clamped between ghastly teeth?
 
I’ve never considered myself a candidate for Alcoholics Anonymous, but in this instance, I think I could have done with a drink.
 
Problem is, procuring one would mean dancing with the devil that is the Frankensteinian Climax.
 
With dreadful clarity I now grasp the true depth of Catch 22.
 
The digital clock silently marks time.
 
Suspicious noises emerge from the Sorry Mare’s kitchen.
 
I begin to revisit my views on the supernatural.
 
At length, the silence breaks.
 
Odyssey leader Clive, losing (or finding?) his nerve, turns to Blonde Straw and announces we are leaving.
 
And as one, seven middle-aged-to-elderly men scramble like purposeful, if arthritic, fighter pilots. Seven exhausts bark into life and blast their fumes across the yard, arousing a mournfully torpid farewell wave from the lines of freshly-laundered knickers.
 
We take off, out of Reddersburg.

---

 
My folks were born during the First World War (okay, my mother missed it by weeks). I often wish I could tell them what I’m doing now, just to see the look on their faces. Mom & Dad, I’m part of a group of bikes riding at ninety miles an hour on a public road, and the guys in front are making an overnight booking by placing phone calls from their helmets and the electronics in their helmets will lead us to the destination.  
 
When I was a kid, this was sci fi. But today it’s reality, and we are electronically guided to a guest lodge, a real one this time, in Bloemfontein. We (somewhat) enjoy a very ordinary dinner in a very ordinary chain restaurant in the very ordinary casino complex of a city sinking like the Titanic. Alas, the Cape is far behind us.
 
The next am we are set for an early departure, but with the modifying factor that while Nieu Bethesda’s chill was bad enough, Bloemfontein’s cold has a vengeance about it. The techies report temps of one degree Celsius. Adjust that for wind chill, very aptly called “the feelable temperature” in Afrikaans, and we are literally freezing.
 
A chain-restaurant brunch and a fuel stop later, we shake hands and Stiff Nipples winds down. The bikes no longer formate, but head toward their own ultimate destinations, and if two happen to ride together it is mere coincidence.
 
Re-entering Johannesburg, the Bandit completes her four thousand kilometre odyssey. The Yoshimura announces my arrival. The missus keys the gate open before me and shut behind me. 


Four thousand kays later.

I dismount and she runs around me, clucking excitedly like a mother hen, leading me into the kitchen where she serves me more love-on-a-plate then the entire seven could have finished, all the while regaling me how naughty the dogs were and how difficult the clients were.
 
I sink into a hot bath.
 
The aches and pains of a winter ride in one’s sixties rack my carcass, remind me I’m not the spring chicken I used to be. I guiltily weigh the chances I've taken, the expense I’ve run up. 
 
Long road trips don't come cheap. My mind starts doing the numbers.

You know, for a married man, this has been a little selfish... a little extravagant... a little one-sided... 
 
And the conclusion emerges…
 
How many sleeps till the next one?  
         
 
Regards
Stan L
South Africa

The car is  a Holden HR 1967 (99.9%)
Bandit will enjoy the wash & chain lube.
Sounds like the "ladies" have some relos down here in a little town called "Sodwalls", locally changed to "Sodwells".
I still don't get why you left,