The Week Before

The executive wing of the offices of Ryhder’s Rider’s Rag was abuzz with excitement on Friday morning. No less than three new bikes had been delivered for testing over the weekend. After pouring over maps and hours of debate, Loone, Mike and I (the intrepid test ride trio of The Rag) conceived a route that we felt suitably challenging to reveal the strengths and weaknesses of the gleaming machines parked outside, freshly delivered from the floors of their respective dealerships. 

Typically, Loone commented that “those bastard fat-cat dealerships are no doubt trying to use us to sell their bloody wares,” but I knew better. His hung-over crankiness aside, these machines were about to be subjected to a level of punishment worthy of the world’s most vibrant and straightforward biking magazine. It would be a case of make, break – or get broken.

The Riders

Mike and Richard. Loone's eloped with a 
German tourist with hairy armpits...

First up, is Loone, publisher, editor and compiler of the much esteemed Rhydar’s Rider’s Rag, a 44 year old veteran of life who can only be described as a “renaissance bum”, an intellectual (he knows how to use a computer) and successful (he once won money at the horse races) - but with less class than a country of teachers on strike. Loone loves alcohol, cigarettes, fast motorbikes and drinking beer at shebeens in the Transkei and, well, just anything that shortens life expectancy.  

And then there is Mike. At 52, he is a well seasoned rider with a full head of hair (good thing he wears a helmet as that thing might otherwise get lost in the breeze) and an endless repertoire of war stories that include racing against – and getting trashed by - Alfie Cox in the Roof of Africa. “I finally had him”, Mike has been heard to boast, “that year when Alfie pitched at the Roof on a 125 … but, the start was the last time I saw him.” Ag, shame. 

Last up, is yours truly, Richard. At 41, I’m the baby of the trio; handsome, intelligent and irresistible to women. Loone says it’s dogs. And cats. And anything furry. But he is funny that way.

The Bikes

I opted to ride the brand new ’81 XT500, kindly supplied to us by a time-warped Yamaha dealer who traded his last bike for a Zimmerman frame around about the time I was conceived. She stands gleaming in the driveway sporting some very modern hardware that includes points and condenser timing mechanism, 6 volt electrics and a decompression lever with an indicator sight glass for kick-starting; a big single “thumper” in the tradition of the British singles. What are you Japs thinking? Was it not enough to get your arses whipped in the war? Cheap Japanese crap, which we voted to be least likely to be around in 1990.

Loone opted to straddle the second bike, an ’82 XR500R. The boys at Honda tout its single “monoshock” technology as “the future of rear suspension”. Yeah, right! It looks like that back wheel could fall off at any minute. What next, Honda, a rear axle that does not go through both sides of a swing arm? Or is this just another Japanese big single wannabe? We were going to find out. At the outset we cannot ignore that there’s more plastic on the thing than a housewife leaving a Tupperware party.

With two cylinders the third bike, an ’80 Motto Guzzi 850 T3, is the odd one out; with disc brakes (front and back working off the rear brake pedal) and electric start. It looks like something from a James Bond movie and sounds like a VW Beetle on steroids. “The finest that Italian engineering has to offer”, quipped the dealer. We have it on bloody good authority that the motor was designed to pull gun carriages in the war. Fascist bastards! It was Loone’s idea to allocate this ride to the aging git of the trio to avoid aggravating his gout from having to use a kick-start.

The Ride Plan

The plan was to ride out from Waterfall into the Umgeni River Valley (that’s an area about 30 km inland from Durban for those inadequate types who do not live in KZN) around the Inanda Dam and back – mostly tar with a bit of dirt, a load of cow shit and tons of loose gravel tossed in for good measure. The route is a round trip of 130 km’s comprising winding roads with dips and climbs fit for a roller coaster - the ideal testing ground! 

“The bloody dealers can clean them after themselves”, was Loone’s final assessment of the route. “That will teach Kawasaki for not donating me a ZX14 after all the raving I’ve done about her.” Hey?

The Departure 

Flight plans filed and an all clear from the control tower (Marie, I love you babes; thanks for letting me go after checking my life insurance premiums were up to date), 09h00 on Saturday dialed up and it was time to depart.

Loone had some trouble kick-starting the XR500. He claims he twisted his right ankle last weekend when he lost the front of his beloved ‘80 Suzuki GSX1100E on some gravel and decided to sacrifice his ankle to prevent the bike for squishing Lady Friend, who was riding pillion. Like hell. I bet Loone just didn’t want to scratch the boney and claimed Lady Friend’s salvation as his in the hope of a bit of leg-over. Still, Mike and I make the right sympathetic noises and I even offered kick-start it for him. Not Loone, though. He insisted on kicking the bitch himself, crying like a baby each time – which was like, often, because he kept stalling the thing.

Mike, meanwhile, fully clad in leathers that must have required a prairie full of buffalo to manufacture, grins as he pushes the button on his handlebars, causing the Guzzi to fart into life.

I straddle the XT500 and with a deft kick, (you need an incredibly strong quadriceps like mine to get this thing running), the XT fires first time, waking the neighbours, and in consort with the XR and the Guzzi, sends all cats and dogs within 5 km running like it’s Diwali. 

As I have the advantage of youth and am still able to distinguish a goat from a mangy dog at 10 metres, I take the lead, Loone the rear – and Mike wedges himself  somewhere in between. I wonder if that means anything?  

We head down Inanda Road into Molweni Township. (For “Molweni”, read “darkest Africa”). The quiet, orderly suburb of Waterfall quickly dissolves into a hotch-potch of housing styles, some rather informal and some quite splendid. “Is that the chief’s house?” my naïve side wonders. “Nah,” responds my dark side, “more likely the mansion of some well established AK47-toting criminal!” I drop a gear and open up. Tough shit for Loone and Mike if they can’t keep up. Loone, however, is having none of it. He plays the German tourist, stopping repeatedly to take photographs of the most ordinary things, like the African women bathing naked in the river …

We are now deep in the valley and riding upstream along a road that winds its way next to the mighty Umgeni River - and downstream from the Inanda Dam wall – and I use the opportunity to really crank the throttle and experience the XT that the Yanks have been raving about for years. The vibration lets me know that the engine is there, but I wonder just how much longer before the mounting bolts shear off. Accelerating, each explosion in the big cylinder is clearly discernable and reverberates off the surrounding cliff faces; thrilling stuff! 

In my mirrors I see that Mike is hot on my back wheel, seemingly idling along on the big Guzzi twin tourer and looking slightly bored, actually. Loone, however, is conspicuous by his absence from my mirrors. Somewhere far behind the bugger’s stopped again to take pictures, no doubt. For the umpteenth time Mike and I pull over and wait. Minutes pass and Loone suddenly appears, tearing unsteadily around a bend on the XR, pushing the knobbly tyres to the max on the asphalt, his eyes wide and desperate. “Why” he asks, coming to a wobbly standstill alongside us, “do the manufacturers of digital cameras find it necessary to electronically simulate the sound of a shutter when you click the button thingie to take a picture?” Mike, forever the repository of useless knowledge launches into a lecture on camera technology. Loone’s eyes roll back in his head; he’s not getting any of it. Me, I sigh, wondering if I am at a seminar or on a bike test. Must be all the years they have on the cock … uh … clock, I reckon. 

The First Stop 

We stop above the dam wall to take in the view. Loone, in his ongoing quest to shorten his lifespan, lights a cigarette. Mike, scrabbling around in his leathers for chewing gum, proudly informs that he has quit smoking, all the while positioning himself downwind of Loone to catch at whiff or two of nicotine.   

At the viewpoint some of the locals have decided to overhaul their VW kombi taxi. The engine is out, lying naked on the warm African soil – precision German engineering now in the hands of some of the finest African craftsmen. “How about that?” I say. “ You couldn’t ask for better working conditions”, responds Mike, admiring the fantastic view. 

Stage Two 

After the stitch in my side receded from again watching Loone fight with the XR kick-start, we were off on the next leg of an epic ride that is set to linger in the annuls of biking journalism like a good 3.00am garlic-for-dinner-the-night-before wind. The road went up and up with some splendid hairpin bends made to scrape your footrests, if so inclined. (You did notice the sublime pun, did you not...journalist humour at its best!).

The mountains looked blue in the distance, a perennial side effect of the winter fires and the typical of the windless mornings of the Durban’s luxurious winters. In the hazy distance I see the large flat-topped mountain that we will hopefully summit. 

I have to work the gears on the XT. Mike just lumbers on, like the Guzzi has an automatic gearbox, or something. Thanks to the torque of the XR and its ridiculously close gearing Loone never has to leave 5th, which is just as well because, as he has somehow discovered, the XR comes sans 6th and 7th gears. Besides, I can see he is changing gears with the inside edge of his boot. His left ankle does not have the flex to get his foot beneath the gear lever. So much for bike street bikes and 300 km/h, hey Loone?

The road snakes around the dam and we pass happy groups of shiny black children swimming in the shallows and playing on the sandy beaches. Goats, dogs and cattle roam freely and I wonder to myself how the system of ownership works. How do the locals figure out which animal belongs to whom?

We cross the headwaters of the dam via a single carriageway bridge, Loone stopping and making irritating artificial camera shutter noises. It is pretty, though and warrants the stop. We have now crossed the dam, riding in the opposite direction along the northern bank. It’s a blerry big pond! We ride with senses fully tuned in, a necessity given the obstacle course offered by livestock, local public transportation and patches of washed out gritty soil on the tar.  

In the excitement I go into a bend a bit too fast and get that ‘Oh shit!’ feeling, that sudden realization that the probability of experiencing injury, pain and embarrassment - in that order - are about a million times better than winning the lotto at any time in your miserable life should you have the opportunity to ever buy a ticket again! My body responds by injecting adrenaline into my blood stream. I lean the bike over and shorten the accelerator cable, the XT reacts responsibly and I find myself on the other side of the bend in one piece. But it was a close thing. I look with interest in my rearview mirrors to watch the action as Mike and Loone take on the challenge of the killer bend.  

“This is going to be good,” I chuckle.

Mike comes through on the Guzzi - I swear - faster than I did and looking like he’s sitting at home in his Lazyboy, watching old video tapes of the Roof of Africa while dreaming of beating Alfie . Loone does not exit the corner. “Shit,” I think, “the crazy bugger’s ditched it.” Mike follows my U-turn, probably thinking the same thing. And there’s Loone, off the bike, doing his German tourist bit while taking a piss behind a cow. 

At 11h30, after taking a right turn at the Amatata signpost and ascending for 10 minutes through a grueling little mountain pass, newly tarred and incorrectly cambered, we emerge on top of the mountain. We leave the tar and 400m on we park the bikes right on the edge of a cliff overlooking the Umgeni Valley that offers a panoramic view of Inanda Dam.

The Summit

It's a blerry big dam, boeta!

It’s pretty. We can clearly see the road we have traveled. It’s blissfully quiet and there is no one to bother us. I fish out coffee and Eet-sum-mor biscuits and we sip and chomp, swopping silly biker banter of the mine-is-bigger-than-yours sort. Not that any of us care. We’re just happy be here.  

If we were girls – or men of a certain bent (and that’s another pun) - we would hug and kiss and discuss our most recent pap smear.

And Mike hangs around downwind of Loone again.

Loone disturbs the peace by announcing that he has counted the trading stores on the way up and insists on stopping at one for a beer. “These rural trading stores serve the coldest beer in the world,” he educates us. It is a subject with which he claims enjoy more than just a passing familiarity. I believe him. 

The summit was to be our turnabout point. But none of us is anxious to head back. We opt to press on a bit and head out into the unknown, turning left instead of right when we reached the place where we turned left before. It’s all there on the map if you don’t believe me.

 Three old girls rest at the summit

The Extra Bit 

Turning left, the road is recently tarred and the tyres get good grip on the tight bends, except maybe for the knobblies under Loone, but, hey, that’s his problem.  Ten k’s on the tar ends abruptly. It would have been easy enough for the XT and XR, but we decide not to totally trash the Guzzi and turn around. Besides, the XT and XR fuel tanks are getting hollow, unlike the Guzzi with it’s 700 litre tank and artillery-gun tow hitch. 

On the way back we see a bright pink trading store and make a noisy entry, much to the entertainment of the local youth who gather around the bikes like connoisseurs at a bike show.

Loone offers beer all round. Mike and I decline. “Bloody girls!” he mutters in defiance. “If you don’t want to join me you can watch me drink it.” We enter the store and he buys a Black Label quart (that’s ADVERTISING, SAB – send money) from the mama behind the counter who is looking with apprehension at the biker rabble that have descended on the relative tranquility of her establishment.  

We stand outside in the sun watching Loone quaff his beer like a babe on the breast, cigarette in hand an exhaling in Mike’s general direction as he has chewed right through his packet of gum and its wrapping and is looking ready to start on his helmet. 

Truth be told, this is not a bad pastime at all; hanging out at a trading store, sitting on a shiny, hastily knocked together wooden bench vacantly staring out into Africa.

The only sound that punctuates my thoughts is the music from the trading store, the occasional belch from Loone and the laughter of the kids looking on.

Riding back the way we came, the journey now seems shorter. Loone wants to ride to the dam wall but the fuel situation of the XT and XR is now critical so we turn up the road that leads from the Inanda Dam picnic site up towards Brackenhill. Here there is another short, wickedly twisted, steep pass. Mike makes like he’s been stung by a hornet; either that, or his gatvol with our company because he motors up the steep incline, leaving Loone and I to chase madly to keep up.

In no time at all we are back in my driveway, motors tick-tick cooling.

Postmortem

Any bike review worth it’s salt ends with an assessment of the performance of the bike. When more than one is involved, it’s good manners to compare the merits of each machine against the other and it’s suitability for the ride in question. 

“So, Mike,” I started, “what’s your take on the Guzzi?”  

“I got people coming,” he responds shouting over his shoulder as he roars off on the Guzzi. 

“Are you ready to leave?” calls my darling Marie, coming out of the house. The kids are away for the night and we going camping. Alone. 

I turn to Loone. “Bye,” I say. “I gotta go.” 

I’ll get back to you with the postmortem just as soon as the dealerships have tracked down Mike and Loone and recovered their bikes.

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