Sick

Dinner was swell. There were 13 of us and half the table was German, the other half English. At one point we were discussing Triumphs and Nortons, and the Germans got a real kick out of some of my Lucas jokes (why do the British like their beer warm? Because their refrigerators are made by Lucas). The Brits limited themselves to pained smiles.

The next morning dawned somewhat overcast, with the mountains obscured by cloud cover. Andrew, my host, drew me a three-hour route that would take in some scenic overpasses and lead me to the town of Howick which had an Internet cafe where I could send some emails and upload this blog.

I had been riding, following the map, for about 20 minutes when the rain started. At times it was coming down quite heavily, and I realized that I'd under dressed. The bike's thermometer registered 21 degrees, but the rain made it feel much colder. Luckily I'd packed my rain suit, and that helped a bit, but it was still chilly. I engaged the heated grips at full power. This I had not expected in Africa, in summer.

While most of the dirt roads are quite well maintained, others can degenerate into 4x4 trails. On one such trail, in the pissing rain, I encountered some of that wretched African red mud. Despite the full knobbies the bike felt like it was on ice. There was absolutely no control – on throttle, off or constant throttle. It didn't matter.

The GPS said that the next turn was 20km away. I forged onward at about 10km/h, rocketing up to 30km/h on the clear spots. On approach to a particularly nasty stretch of mud I chose the wrong line. Some of the ruts were rather evil looking, however they were far better than attempting to ride the central crest, but I dithered, choosing the crest. The front wheel fell into the left rut, and the rear into the right. I was going sideways, on a 600lb motorcycle at 20km/h. There was no saving it, and I concentrated on trying to ride out my momentum so I could lay the bike down as gently as possible. I executed the famous Thorpe tuck-and-roll maneuver and stood up unharmed.

It took several attempts to right the GS, as traction was severely limited. But I did get it up, and thanks to the many guards and skid plates there was absolutely no damage. Only another 10km to go. I had heard that some people ride these roads on normal street bikes. The thought of doing this on, say, a CBR600 horrified me.

Once I came to a paved road I engaged the GPS and made a beeline for Howick. I was cold, tired and starting to feel a little shaky.

The Internet cafe was pathetic. Two computers couldn't get a network connection, the CD ROM didn't work on another, and on the last the monitor was broken. I ended up borrowing a customer's laptop in order to post to the blog.

On the way back to the lodge I began to feel seriously sick. I put it down to being cold. It was a long hour's ride back on the highway, and another 30 minutes of wet dirt roads on top. As soon as I was back at the lodge, I stripped down and jumped into a hot bath, but it didn't help. I exploded into the toilet a few times and went to bed, shivering.