5 Most Stupid Things

I left South Africa in July 2001.
It wasn't as badly potholed as most SA roads, but it was a tad too narrow
for several hundred km.

 

Ride pillion naked.....erm, never mind...
--
O
1 Black, shortly to undergo extensive surgery.
1 Red, undergoing lightweight surgery. -----
1 Blue, for Power-Ranger baiting. | o |
Numbers ... | o |
Stuff ... | ooo |
Life ... -----

 

Actually I think ZK is referring to the bit past Bloemmies in the Free
State - I can't actually say I've ever been on that (or at least recall it).

The bits of the N1 that connect to the N3 are superb, toll road for most of
it yes, but lovely dual carriage way 120km/h stuff.

IMo of course.

 

Having looking at a Map, that bit you mention may well be - I can't recall
actually _driving_ on that bit of the N1 so I shall just flip wilbble do
myself
and say that the bits around Joburg are very nice ;-)

 

Ag kak man! The bits around Jo'burg are fine! Shit, I used to drive the N1 /
M1 twice per week from Pretoria (Centurion) to Jo'burg (Avonswold), no
sweat, except maybe for the rolling gun fight I got caught behind one
evening on the way back... FFS dude I was *not* on about the N1 in the
metropolitan area, more about what it's like once you've dropped an hour or
so south of Jo'Burg, at which point it's one lane each way and not much fun!

 

fun!

Listen China...

Yes, well up until the N3 (holiday traffic) it's now dual carraige way
120km/h toll road. It's also the same north of Pretoria (I did that bit in
2002).

And in honesty, you never get to SEE any of the road in the metro areas
because of the all the blooming traffic

 

Listening mode=ON.

Aye, but that's not even a gnat's cock and a half compared to the other
thousand-plus kilometers. Have you ever driven all the way down to Cape
Town? It's really not much of a road once you're a couple of hundred km out
of Gauteng. And as for the road that runs out of Kimberley and meets up with
the N1, hoi feck! It's bad enough on four wheels, two wheels would simply
*have* to be a trailie else you would never make it.

Again I know it well, out of the apartment carpark, along West Street
towards Makro, right at the robot and head along John Vorster, fiddle with
the interchange, out onto the N1, north past Lynwood, Atterbury et al,
through Pretoria, past the Petroport and on up to Warmbaths or beyond, used
to do it every now and then, weekending at Mabalingwe. Not a bad bit of road
that. Definitely not the same as heading south though.

Yeah I know, I used to drive N1->M1->Jan Smuts Avenue twice per week during
the evening rush hour. No fun at all.

 

1.Ride all the way home from work with a broken clutch cable.
This can be tricky in traffic as you end up riding at engine idle
speeds to avoid having to knock it into neutral.

2.Race London couriers in the rush hour when both filtering.

3. Attack a bend at an indecent speed only to realize one is about to
.......... Sneeze.

4. Try to ride backwards ie sitting on bike backwards looking over
shoulder - left hand reversed on throttle. Dont bother tring to change
gear btw.

 

On Mon, 12 Jan 2004 11:54:13 +0000, Klaatu <>
bored us all completely to death with wittery prose along the lines
of:

And

5. Forget number 5.

 

<snip>

Does the fat sneaky speed-cop still lie in wait north of the Drakensburg
tunnels? The guest-book at the Inn On Louis Trichard was full of dire
warnings in 2001.

 

You mean the N4 methinks. Cos I can't think of any tunnels along the N1,
unless there's some much further up (never explored that road all the way
north) and erm, my geography isn't tops but aren't the Drakensbergs over to
the east a bit? That's the mountain range that runs through Lesotho isn't
it? (I spent a couple of days in Lesotho as it goes, seriously weird place,
got some photos of the dam somewhere... ag some other time).

If it is the N4 that you mean then I think I know the tunnel you're on
about. No idea about any speed cop thereabouts, but at the
gone-and-forgotten-name-of-it toll near there I did once get stopped at a
road block manned by two coppers and seven or eight soldiers all mean
looking and fondling their submachineguns... bit of a brown trousers moment,
but it's amazing how quickly they tell you to piss off when they see a
foreign driving licence

 

No, it is the N1, up in the Northern Province, about 20 miles south of the
bridge across the Limpopo to Mugabeland (Cane would probably like him). The
tunnels are astonishingly still named after Hendrick Verwoerd, the architect
of apartheid!

My bro. was once caught in a similar roadblock in the Free State - the main
point of it appeared to be bribery.

 

Absolute charmer isn't he just :-/

Blimey!
I used to live in Centurion, which had been renamed from Verwoerdburg,
though we still had Verwoerd Straat IIRC.
There are a lot and a lot of Harley riders in and around Centurion, but I
don't think the two issues are related.

Mind you, they renamed the airport but not Jan Smuts Avenue in Jo'burg, odd
that. There's still a couple of places around called Kaffirspruit too!

Ahhh the Free State, weird weird place, never did understand anybody wanting
to live there, 'cept mebbe ET in Oranjeville ;-)
I stopped for fuel in Bethlehem once, that's in the FS isn't it? They have a
joke:
Q. What's the difference between Bethlehem in the Holy Land and Bethlehem in
South Africa?
A. You've got no chance of meeting three wise men in Bethlehem South Africa

 

Africa

Heh!

Stayed a couple of days in Welkom, where a lot of obsessive gold-miners live
and work. The town centre is the place to be at the weekends - the local
bikers all gather to ride around in a circle, and watch the robot.

 

[Snip South Africa]

Coffee -------> Monitor
In Centurion the Harley riders gather in the car park by The Droz (sp?
stupid word anyway). They seem to just hang about for blummin' ages doing
not very much, they don't even nip into Greenfields for a coffee or The Droz
for a beer or whatever... just hang about... they're all kitted out in
fancy-boy leathers, wearing weird bandanas and stuff, with loads of chrome
chain accessory bits too then after a suitable amount of hanging about they
start the engines and rumble away down the road. I don't think they get much
further than the next block down before they circle around and come back to
the car park. After a couple of sessions of this they decamp and congregate
in one of the other car parks. Repeat until bored into submission.

On the other hand, the sports bikes owners go for a good hard thrash up to
the Haartepiersport (sp?) Dam, that's if they're not busy binning their
bikes at Kyolami (damn my spilling is shet today) that is