The Long Ride to Oudtshoorn
by Tracey Lee Gosling
It’s Wednesday night and I’m lying in bed thinking of the long ride tomorrow. Do I really want to be such a good friend and see Shorty through the pain of tomorrow’s gruelling ordeal? Yes and yes again! He is my buddy and to attempt riding all the way to Oudtshoorn’s De Hoek Resort (437km) all by himself, on a tiny Gomoto GT125, is not only crazy but he would probably go crazy with boredom. I had to save Laura from that potential disaster. Besides, it’s always nicer riding with a buddy, no matter how far the distance.
Anyway, Thursday morning arrived and Shorty woke me with a nice cup of coffee. After doing the bathroom thing and packing bikes, off we went, leaving Laura behind in her jammies to catch up with us much later. We both filled up at the Richwood petrol station and at exactly 7h30 we left, heading for the N1 and then Route 62. So far so good, we can’t go too fast yet as the traffic does have that limiting factor. On the N1 we stuck to the left hand side to allow the cars to pass. Still not a problem I’m thinking as the N1 has quite a few hills. By the time we approached Paarl, I resigned myself to the fact that the Gomoto cannot go faster and it looks as if we are going to go a fantastic maximum of 70Ks per hour on the flat. By this time I have a slight numbness starting in my southern side and I swear my seat has never felt so hard before. (And we aren’t even out of Cape Town proper yet!) Up and over Du Toits pass at a whopping pace of 40/50 Ks per hour, I did get the go ahead from Shorty to pass but I didn’t. If I say I will stick by, that’s what I do. I did want to get off my bike and give him a push up the mountain but I think that would have disqualified him for the prize of longest distance done on the smallest bike. This is what all this pain and suffering is all about!
Hey guess what, when we came down the other side of the pass we actually clocked between 80 and 85ks. Cool!!
Our first stop was at Robertson and boy Oh boy, our butts were absolutely numb all the way down into the knees! It was a bit chilly too so a few sips of blood warmer and another top for me and 20 minutes later off we went. The very first time through Robertson that I didn’t check for speed cops, why, because the cameras were too fast to catch us, ha ha ha
Enough with rubbing the “fast” pace we are doing and some more on the actual trip.
The wind fought with Shorty a bit. I think. It might have been him trying to ease the pain down under. I at least could stand on my foot pegs for short periods and wriggle around on my seat, man, I must really go to a shrink and see what’s wrong with my head. I have to be missing a few marbles to do something like this!
We arrived at the Country Pumpkin just before 12. Calculating the speed, we are doing 1Km per minute. The Gomoto is going well and we can smile as we are just about half way there. We stood around a bit talking to Peter G and trying to get some feeling back into parts of us that have died. Had something to eat and drink and 45 minutes later, hit the road again.
Between Barrydale and Ladismith there are 2 stunning passes and I must say in all honesty, I actually had a ball riding so slow. I always thought 120/130 Ks is a cool pace to travel as you get to see so much more, well I can tell you exactly what the bugs were doing on the side of the road. I won’t go into detail as children might read this story, but the sights were an education. Flowers that pass in a blur of colour, birds sitting on the wires suddenly start looking different. I actually saw a falcon eating a meal. Just after the Riversdale turn off I noticed Shorty turning his reserve tap and checked my mileage, 320Km. We are close to Ladismith now so I’m not worried and I know he has a spare 2 litres with him.
We get to Ladismith garage in good time. 5 minutes ahead of our calculations and it’s just on 13h45. We should get to Oudtshoorn by 4 o’clock. We didn’t stay long as by now the cold beers were shouting all the way from Oudtshoorn and I wanted some strong medicine for my butt! We have 6 hours of travelling behind us and only 2 ahead, man, what a feeling!
We got off our bikes and into a bar in Oudtshoorn at exactly 15h50! That beer just went straight down without touching sides. We were tempted to have another but I wanted to get the trip completely over with so we could do some serious denting to the stocks in the beer tent! Shorty agreed so off we went again, this time just 37Ks further. When we arrived at the resort, Wally had a lovely message for Shorty on that fancy notice board which I though was very good! It also put a smile on Shorty’s face. I had to tolerate a lot of banter about being not right in the head to ride with him so far and take so long but hey, I got big shoulders and if the roles were reversed I don’t think I would have kept quiet! Well done boys! I still love you all!
The bottom line is that Shorty set out to accomplish winning the prize for longest distance done on the smallest bike and he did it. A total of 437Kms! He might be a small man but he is very big in finishing what he sets out to do. Well done Shorts!
PS: Please don’t get it in your head to do the same thing for the Buff! I love you lots but not THAT much!
Cheers everyone, hope you had as great a time at the Springbok as I did.
