Balls of Steel

Balls of Steel and Bullet Proof: Two blog entries by intrepid biker Anna Versfeld on one page. Not as violent as the titles suggest, you’ll be glad to know.

Balls of steel

Even more regularly than I get told my bike is bullet proof, I get told I have got balls. (Sometimes these are made of steel.) I am, however, not quite feeling the acquisition of these balls myself. In fact, any erroneous sense of being an intrepid traveler I may have had was well and truly was eroded by the cavalcade of South African 4X4s´s, pulling boats and trailers, heading South, back to South Africa.  I have been riding against the barrage of oversized vehicles that made up the 20km queue on the South African side of the border when heading into Mozambique on Christmas Eve. I am certainly not traveling the road less traveled at present and surely that would be what is really ballsy?

The one widely divergent opinion as to my anatomy came from a lady in Pilgrims Rest, who was more concerned about the benefits of the lack of balls. I was meandering along the only street, when a little boy, about 8 years old, called me saying, “My daddy wants to talk to you.” His daddy was sitting at a table with a lady, who, as I arrived leaned in and said, “Come sit next to me. Can I ask you something girly…I have never been on a bike, does it work?”
“Um, she is not working that well at the moment”, I said.
“No, no”, she said, “I mean does all that throaty rumbling work?”
“Ah”, I replied, “Well, no idea about anyone else, but it doesn’t do it for me.”
“Are you traveling alone?” she asked. “You are traveling alone and it really doesn’t work? What a terrible pity!”

It seems like I do not have the best of either world.

Bullet proof

There are two things generally said about my bike, by those in the know. They are “bulletproof” and “easy to fix”. I left home half wondering how all these people knew they were easy to fix if they were also bullet proof, but hoping that both statements were, to some degree, true. I am now doubting both statements as I write this from Vilankulos, about 700kms from Maputo. The question on my mind at present is how I travel, home or anywhere else, with a huge bike, that doesn’t go and is not about to.

My bike travails started outside Bloemfontein, with an oil leak that became an oil spill. I thought I got her fixed in Johannesburg and rode happily to Pilgrim’s Rest, but there she burped to a stop. With a bit of nursing, I persuaded her a further 90kms to White River. There she burped and spat some more, and made very clear that that was as far as she was prepared to go. Her right side cylinder head was falling off as a consequence of the tie bolts pulling out of their sockets. This needed specialist attention, the kind that resided in Johannesburg.

I got the bike and myself from White River to the insalubrious Nelspruit train station with the help of three burly bikers. There I boarded a third class train, the only one with freight, to Johannesburg. The trip from Nelspruit to Johannesburg is about a four hour drive – make that 12 hours on the Shosholoza Express on a good night. My trip required an additional four hours for delays on the tracks, and a further three hours for the station staff to figure out how to get the bike off the train and onto the platform, which stopped well before the carriage carrying the bike.

The first plan was to start the train, then pull the emergency brake when the bike carriage reached the platform. This was abandoned fairly quickly. The second (on the advice of a supervisor) was to edge the train forward.  This seemed logical enough, and would have worked had they not stopped with the door of the bike’s carriage two metres short of the platform, but over the line where they were allowed to receive a signal to carry on forward. This stumped staff, and took the examination of a further two supervisors. The next plan was to draw another train alongside ours and to take the bike through that. This was soon abandoned. Then another plan arose to bring a mobile platform alongside, and then another to shunt the train forward from behind. The latter they eventually did with success, after having first tried to shunt the bike and I us off in the opposite direction to the yard. (“Your friend and her bike are already on the platform”, they tried to assure my frantic my friend Julia as she yelled at them from the platform that they were going in the wrong direction.) Eighteen hours after having put my bike on the train in Nelspruit (and twenty since I had seen a toilet I was willing to use) I had the bike off in Johannesburg. I limped into BMW, Boksburg, bike on a bakkie, where I was met with choruses of “What happened?” And then, to drive the exhaustion home, “Why didn’t you call us? We would have been straight out with a trailer to fetch you!”

A mechanic or two later, and I was finally in Mozambique and on the road North from Maputo. You may have other problems, the mechanic had said as I left, but that one is fixed. (Oh, how I wish I could start believing what I am told about this bike!)

Sections are of the road North are beautiful, in others the tar laces between the potholes. In one long stretch the road is being redone, and the alternative is a 70 km sand strip which is sometimes firm, more often softly slippery with my Marie biscuit tyres made for tar. I have, over the last three days, at very least, learnt to fall fairly gracefully. Crashes and skids aside (I am becoming blasé about them now), things got tough yesterday.

I left Tofo beach, Mozambique’s very own version of Goa, and close to my version of hell. I was all too happy to be on the road again, but first needed to pass through the prettily sleepy town of Inhambane, to get another number plate (mine had bumped off at some point). I arrived, and found the town completely shut eyed, and the realization that it was a Sunday dawned on me.  Needing a coffee, I found a small café and pulled up outside. While having a check round the bike, a portly man in a straw hat stopped his morning stroll. “Everything alright?” he asked.
“More or less,” I replied, explaining that my number plate had fallen off.
“Now that, he said, is a problem, you cannot ride without a number plate.” (This I knew; the police in Mozambique are notorious for lashing out the fines at any opportunity.)
“Do you think I can go to Vilankulos and get one there?” I asked, ever hopeful.
“Let me phone a friend of mine, to check”, he said. While on the phone I heard him say, “She is very nice, she is riding a big bike all alone and she is coming from here without a number plate, will you help her get one tomorrow? And please, tell your people to let her pass without problems.” He put down the phone and smiled, “You are in luck. I am the chief of police and traffic for this region, and I have just spoken to my friend, who is chief of traffic in the next region where Vilankulos is. You can go, you will be fine. Now, would you like some breakfast before you leave?”

The chief of police and traffic proved not only to be the provider of my breakfast, he proved to be my saving grace. Just as I finally eased onto smooth road after 170 kilometres of rough riding from Inhambane, and still 120 kilometres from Vilankulos, my blue monster burped a burp I recognised very well. Her cylinder head was falling off again. After a two kilometre push (of all 300 kilograms, luggage included) to the nearest village, I opened her up. One tie bolt pulling loose, one rocker completely snapped. Who would have though that I would be let down by two rockers in one year?

I got here, to Vilankulos, in a policeman’s bakkie after 11pm last night. On arriving, I offered to at least pay for some petrol. “No, no!” he replied, “We would never debase ourselves by accepting money for something like that.”

With time and cash having already been chewed up by previously required convolutions and repairs, this looks like it is the end of my riding trip. The question now is how on earth I get myself and my metal (which I am more than ready to lose at this point) back home.

1. 

   Dirk Versfeld says:

   January 15, 2010 at 10:16 am

   Anna – I don’t believe you’ll ever dump your bike. You may be in the dumps yourself, but you love her, and however will you get around Cape Town when you eventually get back there?