Lake Chrissie

LAKE CHRISSIE WINTER RIDE
 
In an unusually mild winter in South Africa, we get hustled together and dispatched for a ride to the wetlands in the area  we affectionately call the Eastern Transvaal (ET), and your PC maps show as the ridiculously named province of Mpumalanga. The departure point is, as usual, Clive’s wife Mandy’s coffee shop in the Johannesburg-hugging township of Edenvale, where I arrive to guffaws from:
·         BRUCE – KTM 790
·         CLIVE – Triumph Scrambler 1200 Twin
·         LEN – Ditto
·         PAUL – Triumph 1200 Triple
·         STEFAN – Ducati 1200 V4
And the guy on the decent bike? That’s me.

Paul has defected from BMW to Triumph. The 1200, with impressive 21- and 18- inch tyre sizes, is tall. Fortunately, Paul is, too.

There are times when I wish I’d learn to keep my big mouth shut. Such a time will come up when we hit road works on the route I’d proposed. After a “why didn’t I just shaddup and let them take the dead straight highway route?” episode, I enrolled on a STFU class the day we got home.

The ride does start on the highway. Before the town of WITBANK (forget the ethnic rename, it sounds like a blocked drain,) we depart the highway for a breakfast stop… at a cemetery. Sgt Pepper is a restaurant set alongside a cemetery dating back to the Anglo Boer War. The restaurant is themed on Anglo Boer War lines. I order the only vegetarian dish on the menu...a lot of children are buried here, and I’m suspicious about exactly where the restaurant gets its meat from.

Keeping names simple, we pass through towns with (real) names like Roosenekal, Stofberg (“Dust Berg!”), Tinder Box, BELFAST and LYDENBURG. At the latter we turn right and roll onto the section that makes me wish I’d stayed curled up at home with a good book.

Machadodorp. The town was once the capital of the then Transvaal Republic, before said Transvaal Republic became a province of the Union of South Africa, before said Union became the Republic of South Africa, and before the said Transvaal Province was carved up into pieces for gerrymandering purposes.

To get to Machadodorp from LYDENBURG one will, in the near future, take a newly rebuilt tar road. While that road is being rebuilt, however, you will take a nasty temporary service road that combines football-sized dimples with ridiculously tall speed humps. It becomes a kilometre-after-kilometre endurance course. I last swore like this when my tax refund application was turned down just because the expense claims I submitted were fake.  

At length we emerge, shaken and stirred and whisked and blended, onto a reasonably good tar road, if one disregards the occasional crater-like pothole.
After the town of Carolina, the wetlands of Lake Chrissie come into view. After the road works section we’re ready for another kind of wet, in glass.

The gents book into their accommodation. I, having booked late, am escorted across the road where I wind up in a way better room at the smart guest house across the road. Seeing that happens to be where we’re dining and supping (much,) mine will be the shortest crawl from the pub to bed.

Over dinner and drinks (many), I smile smugly as once again the tech users plan routes. All I’ll have to do is follow the tyre in front of me. I’m not the one who has to tap coordinates and routes into a device and then have to watch the warnings on the screen. They’ll steer me clear of damaged sections as I lock onto the tyre of the guy I’m following.  

And speaking of that, a revelation: how com it’s so much easier to follow someone through bends than to be the pathfinder? On this ride I will at last discover the answer.

Tomorrow the new tyre will get put through its paces. Stay tuned; I’m going to reveal an  interesting tyre surprise, in the hope you still get this tyre Oz (you probably don’t).  HINT: It’s Japanese, therefore it’s good. 

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The next am I mount my soft panniers for the Saturday outride. Useful for linings, caps, wallet and phone, extra pair of gloves, technical bag, and any knicknacks I may buy along the way. 

The Saturday outride takes routes through the bone-dry Eastern Transvaal winter landscape. The road is in good nick, allowing us to enjoy the ET for its famous attribute: the curves. The ET authorities famously turn a blind eye to fast riding, and the boys are giving it wrist.

Tall Paul heels into bends, I follow, and it feels so easy. For the umpteenth time I marvel how much easier it is to follow someone through a bend, versus how much harder it is to be the pathfinder. And then, an epiphany. If he’s making it, and you’re watching him, your eyes are in the right place. You’ve got a target; an aiming point. Hmm! In future, imagine where the rider ahead of you would be, and you’ve got it! I’m eager to put this into practice.
The bends open out into a straight. I pour on the speed. Something touches the toe of my boot. Then I notice no headlights show in my mirrors. 
Something’s amiss. I tap off. The Bandit slows to a halt, pop-pop-popping on the overrun.

And then I click. My soft panniers are MIA. They flew off the bike.

Turning around, I retrace my steps. After a kilometre, the forms of Len and Bruce appear on the roadside. They have recovered my MIA panniers. Missing is the yellow bungee that secured, or failed to secure, them to the pillion seat. The panniers have taken battle damage but are essentially intact, their contents are still in place.

I mount them sans bungee, and set off. They flap and lift. It’s a matter of time before they once again become airborne and vanish.

In the wind, my head fills with the voices of my teachers from school days, telling me, in front of the whole class, that my brain is in my rear end. Why do I hear this just now…? Aha! These are voices from the grave, telling me how to solve the problem! Use your rear end, use your brain! I stop, dismount, and shift the panniers forward, so the cross-straps are on the rider’s seat.  I mount up, and my rump becomes the paperweight that secures them to the bike. With brain and backside working in harmony, I can ride sort of normally.
 
The next stop is Cape Hope (Kaapsche Hoop), the site of a previous weekend ride, and this am's tea stop. In SA, tea is a beverage, not a meal. When we set off, however, my overworked brain/backside combination forgets to move the panniers to the rider’s seat. So off we go, and ten minutes later, my panniers have once again vanished into the bush. Tall Paul has stopped, recovered my MIAs, and planted them atop his new Triumph. His top box keeps them in place. Thank you to Tall Paul.

Turning right at the T junction at the foot of the hill, we corkscrew down a winding road onto Long Tom Pass, named after a Boer War cannon, and follow the twists and turns into the town of Sabie or lunch. The previous night I had enthused about the dolmades they serve at the Woodsman in Sabie. Honouring my enthusiasm, they planned a route with the Woodsman as our lunch stop. I feast on dolmades (mince & rice wrapped in vine leaf) and rose wine. (Wine, on a ride? In South Africa, yes.)




Dolmades and rose'at the Woodsman. Clockwise, from left: Len (beard), Clive (ditto), Stef, yours truly, Bruce, Paul. 



Bruce kindly offered me a pair of panniers. Herewith an honourable of his KTM 790.



After lunch we conduct a post mortem on my soft panniers. Bruce generously offers me a pair of Oxford ones he has in storage, to replace my Nelson Rigg ones that were pronounced dead on arrival. Transferring the thankfully-still-present contents to Tall Paul’s top box, we lay the panniers to rest in the bin in the Woodsman’s basement, mount up, and set off for White River.

The road leading out of Sabie offers a right turn to White River. 50 km of fast sweepers take you to White River from Sabie. It’s not my favourite ride. The plantations cast zebra stripe shadows onto the road and visibility is deceptive. I take it cautiously. 

50 km later, we skirt the rim of White River, turn right, and approach the most expensive toll gate in the country. The Machadodorp toll gate (“toll PLAZA”) charges an outrageous AU $10, which works out at a lot in SA's Monopoly money. We are inclined to shoot through without paying, but on the far side, yellow reflective bibs look like cops. We grudgingly stop, grudgingly pay, and grudgingly ride through.

The route takes us back towards Lake Chrissie. The Bandit smells the pub and picks up speed. As it does, I congratulate myself about my smart back tyre choice, fitted just before departure. It sticks reassuringly and somehow gives a more cushy ride than I’m used to. Appparently it’s the Aramid belt. 

But the Aramid belt is the minor part of the deal. The major part is that I get a plenty sticky, long mileage tyre for a fire sale price. Let me rewind a couple of days, and tell you about my smart buy.

Tyres cost a fortune, and don’t last. For years I’ve been running Pirelli Angels, but now the price has spun out of control. There’s got to be a way around this?


I call my mates Brett and Shorty of Biking Accessories in Pretoria, 60 km from my native Johannesburg. They tell me they’re waiting for me. 

On to Biking Accessories Pretoria I ride. Brett and Shorty await. I dismount. Brett entertains me while Shorty rolls the Bandit into the tyre bay. Some time later he rides the Bandit out, takes it for a test spin, and declares all in order.

I am presented with a bill for exactly half the price of the brands I've hitherto been buying. How the heck…?

The tyre is top class Japanese stuff. They assure me it is 100% compatible with the front. Get some heat into it and see how it sticks, they tell me.
Home I go, hit the internet, and search for info about what I’ve just bought.

I learn that, in the 1990s, when radial tyres were still new, Bridgestone (along with other manufacturers surely,) used a rayon mix in their tyres. In about Y2K they all changed over to silicone.

But Bridgestone sneakily carried at least one rayon model over into the 2000s. To this day you can, in South Africa, buy a touring-compound Bridgestone BT54 for way less than the later models.

And that is the tyre Brett and Shorty of Biking Accessories Pretoria fitted to my Bandit.

I cautiously feel it out. It feels reassuring. I weave the bike, to roughen up the sides. Then I begin giving her more and more wrist. And the BT54 turns out to be as confidence-inspiring and comfortable as any tyre I’ve ever used. This, at half, yes, half, the price of the ones I’d been buying hitherto! If you still get the Bridgestone BT54 in Oz, I give it both thumbs up. Fine performer, even finer price.

Fast forward to the Lake Chrisiie weekend, and I park my Bridgestone shod Bandit at Lake Chrissie, recover the contents of my recently-deceased saddlebags from Paul’s top box, and repair to my quarters to prepare for the business of quality-testing South African reds. The money I saved on the tyre will fund a round or two.

Day 3. We set out for the ride home. We approach a toll gate (not Machadodorp), determine it is fuzz-free, and shoot the toll gate. The satisfying wail of the siren penetrates my lugholes. I visualise the LCD board lettering out the delectably plaintive “OFFENCE COMMITTED!” message. Grinning naughtily under our helmets, we give it wrist and blast away from the toll gate. We haven’t even bothered to cover up our number plates.

A gusting wind sweeps the dusty Highveld (“High-felt;” highlands), bleak in its winter khaki. It was indeed the British who stained their white pants with tea (and perhaps something else when the Boers, marksmen that they were, started shooting), to blend in with the drab background.

Their red coats? These reportedly made the bleeding of punctured soldiers less conspicuous.

That cutting, dry wind blows from the north, i.e. from our right, causing us to have to lean right to go straight. It’s been a mild winter temperature wise, but there’s no escaping the dryness and dust of the South African winter.

We pass the towns of Springs and Benoni. Rachel named her son “The Son of My Pain/Sorrow” his painful birth. His father Jacob renamed him Benjamin, “The Son of My Joy.” Jacob himself was later renamed Israel (“He Who Struggles With G-D”). Benoni isn’t a bad town. It deserves a more positive name. 
They should have called it Benjamin.


And with the East Rand behind me, into my driveway I ride.

Another successful ride comes to a conclusion. I park the Bandit, see if there’s any visible wear on my half-price back tyre, spot none (!), go inside, open a new five-litre box of claret (yep, the missus was out,) and toast my latest successful trip. 

The Man Upstairs dealt me a great hand. Great wife, great life, great bike. Every time I reckon life just couldn’t be better, it gets better.
 
Regards
Stan L
South Africa