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Dirt Busters: A Guide to Adventure Motorbiking
Dirt Busters: A Guide to Adventure Motorbiking
Dirt Busters: A Guide to Adventure Motorbiking
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Dirt Busters: A Guide to Adventure Motorbiking

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New horizons beckon around each bend when popular crime writer Deon Meyer and photographer Adriaan Oosthuizen take on the country's most beautiful off-road routes. They share some of the challenges they faced and the interesting characters they met as they went in search of adventure and spectacular scenery.

Their favourite routes cover nearly the entire country and are aimed at both experienced and novice riders. The route descriptions read like travel stories, with each one offering something different to discover: a breathtaking pass, a meandering river, charming old farm buildings or a deserted stretch of the Karoo.

The book also contains a riding guide, which explains the theory behind adventure motorbiking. It offers several handy tips, such as how not to fall over on a sandy road, how to navigate dongas and streams, how to do an emergency brake and how to avoid accidents in general.

- Over 30 routes are described and graded
- Dramatic landscape photography
- Colourful maps illustrate each route
- Guide with practical riding tips
LanguageEnglish
PublisherTafelberg
Release dateApr 1, 2014
ISBN9780624056829
Dirt Busters: A Guide to Adventure Motorbiking
Author

Deon Meyer

Internasionaal bekende skrywer Deon Meyer woon op Stellenbosch. Sy publikasies sluit in dertien misdaadromans (onder meer Spoor, 2010, 7 Dae, 2011, Kobra, 2013, Ikarus, 2015, Koors, 2016, Prooi, 2018, en Donkerdrif, 2020). Orion, Proteus en Infanta is met die ATKV-prosaprys bekroon en Prooi met die ATKV-prys vir Spanningsfiksie.

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    Book preview

    Dirt Busters - Deon Meyer

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    Dirt

    Busters

    Text by DEON MEYER

    Photography by ADRIAAN OOSTHUIZEN

    Dedicated to Jan du Toit,

    mentor, riding companion and friend

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    Introduction – Deon Meyer

    ‘What’s so great about riding a motorbike anyway?’

    That’s the question I get asked time and again, usually accompanied by the same sceptical look children have on their faces when their mother lectures them about the nutritional value of Brussels sprouts. In the past, when I still believed it was possible to describe the endless pleasures of motorbiking in words, I always started with the story of the elephant.

    Dave Briggs and I passed through the border post at Chirundu far too late one afternoon, thanks to a bothersome Zimbabwean customs official. Dave was on a K75, I on my old R1100 GS. We had to be at Kariba before sundown because in northern Zimbabwe you don’t ride in the dark – there are buck and bushpigs, cattle and horses to contend with, not to mention the hazards presented by pedestrians.

    So we went full throttle. Just before the turn-off to Mana Pools National Park we came around a wide bend at 150 km/h and there he was in the golden light of an African dusk: a giant elephant bull, casually strolling across the road. We really had only one choice, since it was too late to brake: we had to slip past his trunk on the narrow strip of tar left between ivory tusks and the edge of the road.

    For that instant, captured by our synapses like a cerebral Kodak moment, we were right in front him, next to him. We could see the wrinkles on his rough skin, his big, black eye and those incredibly long eyelashes, and, I swear, we could even smell his elephant scent.

    ‘You’re saying it’s about the adrenaline rush,’ people would pronounce after hearing this story, needing a label.

    Yes, sometimes it is about the adrenaline, I would answer patiently. Sliding down an impossibly steep slope of some obscure jeep track, rear brake locked, squeezing the front brake as you try to navigate stones and gullies … yes, it’s pure, undiluted adrenaline. But that’s not really what it’s all about.

    ‘So what is your thing then?’

    Bikes for adventure touring. And then I would start to prepare for the inevitable explanation as you see them struggling to grasp what you mean. These are motorbikes, I’d say, which are made to perform as well on tar as on dirt roads. Even in the roughest of African terrain, like that footpath across the Makatini Flats along which legendary off-road instructor Jan du Toit led us, thorn branches whipping our shoulders, as we navigated ditches, curves, streams …

    These bikes have panniers with enough room for a tent, sleeping bag, gas lamp and provisions, and they are built for long-distance comfort with a broad, firm seat and a shield to keep off the worst of the wind. On the gravel road you need to stand up for better control and the footrests and handles are designed so that you can do this for hours at a stretch.

    ‘Sort of like a four-by-four.’ I would actually see the lights go on.

    Only better, I’d say.

    ‘Oh?’

    Then I’d tell them about the early-morning ride Jan and I took through the Namib. How I felt the chill desert breeze against my skin and smelled the faint scent of grey grass and quiver tree and damp sand. We rode from Aussenkehr, following a dry stream bed into the valleys to the top of the mountain, where the plateau opens in a gentle curve in front of you. A herd of springbok suddenly joined in the game, cutting in behind us, then running with us, bouncing and tossing their heads playfully, before vanishing just as swiftly as they’d appeared. A moment so magical that we stopped, switched off our engines and sat there smiling wordlessly.

    Or I’d tell them about splashing through the rivers of the Baviaanskloof with my wife, Anita, every sense engaged. You hear the shurrrr as you push through the streams, see the spray glinting silver in the sunlight. You smell the fruitfulness of earth and feel the cold, wet mountain water as it splashes through the raised helmet visor.

    You go places that even 4×4s can’t – like the sandy footpaths between Melkbosstrand and the West Coast road, the spooky bluegum forest on Jan’s farm in Amersfoort and the swimming hole at Klipbokkop Mountain Reserve near Worcester. I describe, with growing passion, the thick, white sand of Mozambique. I explain how you can gallop with giraffe through the Pongola Game Reserve, explore muddy mountain trails on paunchy ridges protruding from Lesotho, beyond Rhodes. I so badly want them to understand, to fire them up. If they could only once share in the camaraderie of four or five or six motorbikes in high-speed convoy, or experience the sensation of a sliding rear wheel that you straighten out with the power of the accelerator round a curve.

    But not everyone gets it. I never say so, but I think it must be in your genes. I imagine how a million years ago there must have been primitive people who, when they saw a game trail winding up a mountainside, felt an irrepressible urge somewhere deep inside them to follow it. Just to see what was on the other side and to keep on walking.

    This, I suspect, is at the heart of the matter: the longing to discover remote places, to get away from the hustle and bustle and to feast on new horizons. The only reason the peoples of the Stone Age had to do it on foot was that adventure-touring bikes didn’t exist back then.

    Over the years I have come to accept that my answers usually fail to convince people. When someone these days asks me what is so great about riding a motorbike, I smile politely and steer the conversation in a different direction. But, when I get home, Anita and I will spread out the road map and search for a faint, new line that begs to be followed.

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    Introduction – Adriaan Oosthuizen

    I was 16 when my friend Francois parked a gold Honda SS 50cc at our back gate late one summer afternoon. From my outside room I heard the dup-dup of the four-stroke engine but didn’t recognise the origin of the sound. At that stage none of my friends had motorbikes.

    ‘Jissou, man!’ I yelled in surprise and amazement when I walked out.

    Suddenly one of my mates had joined the small group in school who owned a motorbike. I wonder how many evenings we spent on that bike cruising the streets of Bellville. Sometimes there were three or four of us on the bike, going nowhere in particular. ‘Put your hand over the exhaust and then open and close it. It sounds just like a XT 500,’ Francois would say as we zipped around late at night.

    That was where it all began. I guess the exhaust gases probably get absorbed in your bloodstream and that’s how motorbikes become part of your very being.

    In matric I received a broken-down Suzuki PE 250 from a sleazeball who was trying to score with my sister. With the help of Francois and another friend, I stripped the bike down to the bare frame. We bored its cylinder capacity to 300cc and put it back together … though we were left with a few screws and bolts.

    Holy smoke! When we kicked it to life in Iona Street, it was like we had let a monster loose in the neighbourhood. Its two-stroke power band was legendary and woke many people.

    With this bike I crisscrossed the sandy dunes outside Atlantis many times. I steered it over the Cederberg and up parts of the West Coast, and I raced through Bellville without a silencer in the middle of the night. Once when I raced into our driveway and the rear wheel locked on my father’s front lawn, I knew I had gone too far. I was too big for a hiding, but his tongue lashing over the furrow I had carved in the lawn is as fresh as ever in my memory.

    In the infantry during the Border War, I watched the mounted units and their antics with longing. It’s quite a sight to see 30 Honda XR 500s racing synchronised and growling across the veld.

    During my student years at technikon I bought a second-hand XT 600 Ténéré with the help of my reluctant father. ‘Son, this thing looks dangerous,’ and ‘Please ride carefully,’ he admonished as we walked into Volkskas with my bank book.

    Of course I didn’t always ride carefully, but that iron horse took me to places I had only dreamed of until then. I crossed the Transkei on it and covered all of Namaqualand. As a young nature conservationist in Springbok I alternated between motorbikes and horse riding. Both these animals take you places where you normally can’t go. Both inject shots of adrenaline into your veins.

    Cameras and motorbikes

    At the start of my motorbikes adventures I always carried a camera and two lenses in my tank bag. The big Canon EOS-1N with its battery pack and fast lens weighs quite a bit. I also had to protect it, which left little room for anything else. The items I wanted to use during the day, I had to carry in a rucksack.

    But my cameras always went along. Just in case I saw something captivating. One of a photographer’s greatest fears is that you will miss ‘that moment’. I specifically used my film cameras as my digital camera would have been too expensive to replace should I connect with mother earth. And naturally I could not go without my little tripod, which fastened onto the back of the bike along with the rest of my baggage.

    When I was travelling alone, all the equipment and my frequent stops to take photos were no problem. It was quite a different story when I was travelling with a couple of buddies. Not that they complained much, but it’s not just a matter of shooting from the saddle. You have to stop and take off your helmet and gloves, and then unpack the equipment and set it up. By the time I’d taken the photograph, packed everything away and dressed myself again, the convoy was on its second drink in the bar at Middelpos and the half-time whistle had already blown in the Springboks and All Blacks rugby match on television.

    Before long it just didn’t work for me to go through this whole shebang, especially when I was in a convoy. Still, I couldn’t go without my camera. That would be like going through life without a pocket knife. The solution came in the form of a small, inexpensive digital point-and-click camera that could capture any moment without me even having to take off my helmet.

    However, over the years my cameras were not only a dead weight. Many years ago, I once rode with Deon and Jan du Toit on a route that took us over the Prince Alfred Pass. I was on a BMW Dakar with a rear tyre that had seen better days and I had a whole bag full of camera equipment on my back. We were riding through Knysna’s dark forest when in a split second Deon was suddenly sliding on a turn. I thought it was because he’d accelerated, but it turned that it was due to water seeping from the side of the road and creating a thin layer of slick mud.

    Deon stayed upright and I thought I would too. But no! He had knobbly tyres while I was on worn Snakeskin. In the turn I only touched the accelerator and landed slap-bang on my back. I might have hurt my back badly if it had not been for the camera bag that broke my fall that day. The cameras were fine, but I won’t elaborate on my knee, which hit the ground first.

    * * *

    I’m on the R355 in the Tankwa Karoo riding at a high average speed and standing up on my KTM like a jockey. A big smile suddenly stretches across my face … I experience the euphoria of feeling almost superhuman. All my senses are activated and razor-sharp. The scents exuded by the veld enter my nostrils.

    The slightest change in the road and the accompanying handling of the mechanical monster between my legs leads to a higher level of awareness. The perspective from above is so different from when you sit. Every now and then I steal a quick glance at the dust cloud following me. There is something hypnotic about that dusty stripe.

    I am on the hard jeep track in the veld and can see far into the distance. A longish bend in the road ahead, I twist the throttle and hear the revs climb to that mechanical scream I love so much. I admire the noise and the new mood of the motorbike. I have angered him and he tries to get away from me in the turn. I feel the rear wheel wanting to move out and the consecutive controlled slide through the bend.

    Awareness is measured in seconds and milliseconds. As time ticks by slowly, I think of nothing beyond the impulses that my senses send to my brain. I have long left all my worries behind.

    I see the road and I feel the motorbike. I experience enlightenment without meditation. I am part of the motorbike. I am the motorbike.

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    Naming the book

    The hardest part about putting this book together was finding the right title and subtitle for it. It was really tough and not only because it is an off-beat all-in-one attempt at a route guide, photographic record, a bit of iron horse philosophy and a textbook with instructions on how to ride your motorbike. The biggest problem was semantics: what do you call these motorbikes which, like a Swiss army knife, can do just about everything?

    Some journalists refer to the big adventure bikes as ‘dual-purpose’ or ‘dual-sports’ models – quite rightly so, of course, as they are equally at home on dirt and on tar. But many of the smaller dirt bikes share this ability, such as the old Yamaha XT500. Yet these bikes are not comfortable long-distance touring bikes.

    It’s also a known fact that you don’t need a dual-purpose motorbike if you’re after adventure. Any motorbike tour is an experience, whether it’s on a Vespa, a Honda Fireblade or a Kawasaki KLR 650. For all these reasons ‘dual-purpose motorbikes’ would not have sufficed in our subtitle ‘A Guide to …’

    We also considered ‘dirt-road motorbikes’, but we were worried that we might receive indignant letters about false advertising from people who own 450cc (or smaller) dirt bikes. Although many of the fundamental principles are the same, the focus of our effort lies elsewhere.

    The search for the right name and subtitle became pretty drawn out – and started to interfere with our touring plans. The purpose of this book is to share our passion for what we believe is the most enjoyable way to ride a motorbike – the why, the where and the how. That was how we came up with ‘A Guide to Adventure Motorbiking’ – quite a mouthful, but it probably sums up what we do the best. BMW and KTM sometimes call

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