bugsonmyboard

Sitting in a comfy Cape Town backpacker hostel where I’d pitched my tent for the week, I began to feel nostalgic for places now many miles in the rear view mirror. I walked into a supermarket and bought everything that I could possibly want to eat. I went into a hardware store and found any tool I could need. I spent half an hour in a motorbike shop gawking at shelves of tires and parts. On the way to all of these places, drivers courteously allowed me to occupy an entire lane of traffic without shoving me over to the shoulder. A wonderful little machine washed the dust from my clothes for me. Much of the inconvenience and uncertainty of my days has faded away. The things that I once complained to myself about are no longer a problem, and in an odd irrational way I miss them. They were the sour that made some of those sweetest moments possible when sliding on a wave or flying through the dirt or meeting the kindness of a stranger on a dark road in the rain. I’m going to do my best to remember this feeling in the months ahead when I’m eating lots of rice with fishy sauce for every meal and trying to find a clear spot in the jungle to pitch my tent.

Namibia is long. I rode and rode and rode and there was always still some Namibia up ahead. Crossing borders has become astonishingly easy: no visas, no hassle, just present the passport for a stamp and on my way. I made a camp just across the border in South Africa and found a storm waiting to meet me during my ride the next day. I hit the coast about 100 miles north of Cape Town with huge storm surf furiously pounding on the shore. My target was a classic lefthand reefbreak, but with the chaotic mess that the ocean had become, I couldn’t even tell where the spot was. There was a big campsite right on the beach, but with the storm raging, I was the only person staying there. The next morning, the storm had subsided, the surf cleaned up and as I sipped my morning coffee I began to see some defined lines forming up on the reef.

As the tide rose, a couple of local surfers appeared in the line-up and I suited up to join them. Getting out involved slogging your way through thick stands of bull kelp with their holdfasts attached to the shallower parts of the reef. Trying to dodge the kelp paddling into a wave made it feel like surfing back home in Northern California. I surfed fantastic head-high walls in light offshore winds with four of the local riders that morning. The inside pitched over a shallow chunk of reef and I got a few quick, super easy and nearly dry little tubes through that section. By the afternoon, everyone was finished and after running back to my campsite to scarf two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, I had it all to myself for the rest of the day which was just too much fun. The campsite had endless hot showers that made coming in from the surf a total joy.

A motorcycle trip: possibly the only time in your life when you will store your olive oil next to your chain lube.

I went to sleep excited for what I’d find the next day, but woke up to another stormy mess in the ocean showed no signs of letting up. I’d caught a lucky break between storms on that first day and after 4 more days of waiting in the wet, my patience gave out and it was time to head to Cape Town.

I laughed to myself when I got under way that after all this way, it was only a few hours ride ahead to Cape Town. I was glad for it as well, given the state of my bike. The rear tire was absolutely done, the front brake pads had only the smallest fraction of a millimeter left to burn, and the rear brake pads were on the metal. The rear tire was starting to show the steel belting in one spot, which can be dangerous, so as silly as it seems I took the only preventative measure I could think of. It is not a good sign when you start putting tube patches on the outside of your tire.

I removed the rear pads and dug my spare ones out to find that I’d carried the wrong brake pads all the way from London. Now I had no pads in the caliper at all, so I had to take care not to hit my rear brake. The rain started in again the morning I headed off – less than ideal conditions to be short on braking power. No problem, I’ll ride slowly. It’s only a hundred and twenty miles, perfect tarmac the whole way.

Unfortunately, the road leading away from the coast was under construction and the rain made it super slippy. With poor traction it becomes reflexive to use your rear brake, since using the front brake can easily cause the front wheel to wash out when turning, resulting in a rapid face plant to the dirt. It took total focus not to touch my rear brake for that stretch, but eventually the tarmac returned and I sped along to Cape Town.

In Cape Town I found the great guys at Outriders moto shop to help me sort out my bike. How luxurious it felt to watch someone else wrestle a tire on to my rim while I stood by drinking a beer with the guys in the garage. Dyna Rae got some new rubber on the rear wheel and fresh set of brake pads front and rear. After tucking into the backpackers in Cape Town, I found a place to change her oil, clean the fuel and air filters, check the valves, lube the cables, replace the headlight bulb, and redo some electrical connections. With a little TLC, she was running smooth and feeling strong again.

After a couple days in Cape Town, I met up with my good friend Mike from California who is to join me riding the stretch from Cape Town to Tanzania. Mike is a dirt rider and a surfer who was with us on the Circle the West journey on his DR350 the summer before I’d left the US. While we set to finding Mike a bike to ride and figuring out logistics, we had a look around Cape Town. For some reason we decided to hike to the top of Table Mountain on a day that the top was completely shrouded in a bank of fog – the ‘tablecloth’ flowed down the slopes and over us as we ascended into the mist. One of the wonders of the natural world and we decided to climb it when we could hardly see anything. Very well done, American tourists.

In Swakopmund, Namibia I’d met a Samantha, a UK doctor living in Cape Town, and also a surfer. Mike and I met up with Sam and her friend Carla for a few days of super fun longboarding at the south facing beaches of the Cape Town where the wind always seems to blow offshore. The water was bone chilling, but we were a hardy little surf crew and quickly had steaming chai lattes from in hand upon exiting the water.

Sam is an adventurous type and I had to stop her from making off with my bike.

Unfortunately the registration system changed this year in South Africa, requiring up to a month wait for foreigners to acquire something called a Traffic Register Number to register a vehicle in their own name. They wouldn’t even let Mike submit the application without proof of residence in Cape Town in the form of a bank statement or a power bill. Even a letter from the management of the backpacker place stating that we lived there wouldn’t suffice. So that left us running around to banks trying to open an account. This was turning into a major fandango. The only alternative was to have a bike registered under someone else’s name, but that could only add trouble to border crossings.

We enlisted some help from a guy named Alex who knew his way around the traffic departments in Cape Town via his business called Drive Africa. By using his address and contacts in the traffic department he saved us weeks of time for getting on the road. In all it took us about a week and a half get a bike sorted and on the road. Mike went with the low budget option of a Chinese manufactured 250cc bike. The thing is obviously of dubious quality, with plenty of unnecessary colorful plastic bits bolted here and there, but the cost was less than half of its Japanese counterpart. Never mind the less than 6 inches of dodgy feeling suspension travel, it’s got radical off-road styling.

The Chinese Dream only broke down twice on the way out of Cape Town. The first time, the battery wasn’t charging properly due to a connection that had come loose and the second time, a faulty retainer clip had allowed the exhaust to burn a hole through the rear brake line creating a little brake fluid fountain every time he used it. Half the adventure may just be keeping this thing going. The upside is that that most of Africa is riding around on Chinese made bikes like this anyway, so if we can’t fix it, surely someone else can. This model from Bashan Motors is called the Xplode. We really hope the Xplode doesn’t explode.

The cows gave moos of approval for Chinese Dream

and rainbows appeared overhead. I think we’re going to be OK.

From Cape Town we rode along the coast to the southern tip of Africa at Cape Agulhas that marks the boundary between the Atlantic and Indian oceans. Warm turquoise waters and Indian Ocean swells lay ahead. This was it, the bottom of the continent, the point I’d been aiming towards for eight and a half months; riding through deserts, mountains, and jungles, across rivers, mud bogs, and dune fields. It seems like ages ago that I collected my bike in a London shipyard warehouse and pointed her south towards the straight of Gibraltar. I can hardly believe that I’m about to turn around and ride back up the other side of Africa.