South Africa - Naturalization Processes

Well, the trip is officially on!... And that is essentially because I find myself here in South Africa :)

It effectively took two full days from departing Vancouver Canada till I arrived here in CapeTown South Africa.  there were four flights totalling 24hr, three connection waits totalling 15hr, and then there was the time zone difference of about 9hr.

And as usual throughout the whole transit escapade I managed to get a total of only about 2hr of sleep.

But my body clock is pretty messed up anyway so the fact the sleep deprivation is only part of the issue :)

 

Day 1:

I arrived in Cape Town at about 1pm and was of course immediately accosted at the airport by dozens of touts offering me taxis and shuttles and hotels and hostels etc... I opted for a generic shuttle to take me directly to the hostel that Id pre-booked about a month ago... I rarely do the pre-booking thing but this time since I was arriving just before the Easter long weekend I thought it would be wise to reserve myself a place to avoid having difficulty finding a place to sleep.

The hostel is a very well established place with a good reputation and has lots of energetic young travelers from all over the place. I checked in and tried to get some sleep but even though I was completely exhausted, sleep eluded me. Not to worry because at six that evening I had a meeting planned with the motorbike owner...

At the duly appointed hour, David, the owner of the motorbike I had committed to buy by email showed up. And we then drove out to his place in the suburbs and I met his wife Angela as well as a daughter, four small dogs, two chickens and  not least of course my new motorbike :)))

 

Yes, I was happy to confirm that David was exactly the kind of person I had inferred him to be through our email correspondence. In fact I had been so sure he would be that I had already transferred over US$4000 to him before I even got on my flight with nothing more than a couple of pictures of the bike and our email "commitments" to bind the deal.

David and Angela treated me to a lovely roast dinner and there was assorted banter about past present and future bike trips and then an inspection of my new moto,, and then I was driven all the wy back to my hostel where I promptly went to bed and had another go at catching up on sleep.


Day 2:

David and I had agreed to meet today at 9am at his work and do the official transfer of the vehicle registration. So, I got myself a taxi over there and then David sent me off to have the bike inspected for a road-worthy certificate... This was no problem for the bike, and it was also my first opportunity to ride the machine... It immediately felt quite comfortable to ride and I was back at Davids work within about half an hour with the necessary papers in hand. We then headed out to a government liscence/rego office and waited about half an hour or a bit more in a line-up... But, more or less as expected, it was found that we didn't have what we needed to do the job...

This was not due to any real lack of diligence on either of our parts but was more likely due to changing government processes for foreign owner transfers... So we were "rejected" at the first attempt! 

It seems that we have a couple of options at the moment. The first option and the one we were trying to do was to change the registration to my name... Apparently this is no-longer possible even with everyones official IDs and letter of sale etc... The problem is that to do this, I need to apply to the Transportation ministry for permission to have vehicles registyered to my name here in South Africa... And this application takes a few weeks (no definite dates) and even then once I got this then after I have left SA and taken the bike, the government would ever after keep sending lisencing requests to my address here in SA... So this option looks infeasible from two fronts, 1 that I don't have weeks to spend waiting for the government to "maybe" issue me this permission, and 2, I don't want the bike generating "junk mail" and potential official enquiries etc ad-infinitum for the address I use while here in SA.

So, option 2 is to officially export the bike... In fact what I think we will do is have David export the bike just before I head off North. This will clear the bike off the books for the SA government (the only other way to do this is to "write the bike off" which is a different but equally official exercise that requires the bike VIN number to be reported as "written off" by someone with the authority to do so... At this stage it looks like the export option will be best but this too require a police sign-off that there are no outstanding violations or theft notices etc against the bike VIN number. So whichever way we go from here it will take some more effort than we had expected. Bit of a bummer but Im sure we will sort it out.

Im going to make a few phone calls to a couple of people who may know what the best approach is and how to work efficiently through the beaurocracies but at this stage it will not be happening till after the Easter weekend.

In the mean time Ive got quite a bit of work to do on the bike and there are plenty of touristy activities to do here in cape Town as well :)

For today, I managed to find a couple of motorbike shops, get chain lube and WD40, buy a key blank from Honda and have it cut so I now have a spare. I also removed the bikes old "open-ended" hand guards and fit my new closed-ended bark busters (more substantial and in my experience needed for when I inevitably drop the bike on hard ground with some forward speed - stops the hand controls being snapped off). and I also managed to glue the spare keys under a removable panel on the bike in case I lose my main set of keys at some point.

 And now its time for dinner and a couple of beers ... Not a completely successful day, but pretty good for a first effort :))

Day 3:

Today I managed to bolt on the new Crash-Bars for the bike (the only major missing hardware for the bike) which took pretty much the whole morning, and I also bolted on the mounting plate for the top-box that came with the bike. I also did a mechanical inspection of the brakes and chain and sprockets which are all in very good condition.
After that I took my-self on a bit of a local tour to see the city... and I have to say that its a very nice city indeed. Cape Town is on a small narrow peninsula and is effectively surrounded by ocean on three sides, while the land is dominated by a mountain ridge (Table mountain, Signal Hill, and  "The Twelve Apostles" are features of this range) that results in steep slopes and excellent views from almost anywhere in the city. And there is plenty of old Victorian architecture mixed with lots of quite good contemporary architecture as well.
In short, I like the city a lot and could probably live here quite happily :)

 

 

 

Ohh the Spending!

Less than a week to go before I head off to Africa.
Ive finished working and have been getting ready to head off... and I tell you, its an expensive exercise!
I had kind of hoped that Id already have pretty much all the equipment that I would need for this trip... given that Ive done two big moto-tours before and have accumulated lots of parts and gear from those rides.

But no, about half the gear I have has in fact worn-out and needs to be replaced, and since im buying a bike there in Africa i will need to "fit it out" with some stuff for the long ride that it certainly wont have... and since North America is such a large market for moto stuff, parts will be way cheaper to get here than to get when I get to South Africa so i may as well take them with me if I can carry it in my luggage.

And on that note, I seem to have managed to buy another motorbike... Like thats a suprise I hear you all think!  Well, yes it is spring here and I do seem to have a habit of buying motorbikes in spring :)))
But, Ive bought this one for this toure, and yes, its located in South Africa...
So Ive effectively bought it sight unseen from someone who Ive never met!
As i mentioned in an earlier post, i had started checking up on the local e-classifieds in SA for suitable bikes. Once I was less than a month from arriving in Africa I felt it would be OK to start to try to contact bike sellers via email to get bike details etc. Well, a really nice bike came up for sale in capetown and I sent an email enquiring, and the seller responded...
Suffice it to say that after a bit of email chat I felt sufficiently confident to commit to the deal, and now after further emails and sorting out details, I feel even more comfortable and Ive transfered several thousand dollars to the bike seller before Ive even left home... It may sound like Im just a "gullible chump" but I really dont think so and clearly Im willing to bet substantial money on it :)

Anyway, here is a picture of the bike (not the actual one Im buying tho):

Its the Honda XRV 750 and its called the "Africa Twin".
As I mentioned earlier its a classic over-land touring bike and though it is 80s technology, its immensely reliable and very off-road capable. It has all the features that I demand 921" front wheel, long travel suspension, big fuel-tank, great reliability. Its biggest draw-back is that its very heavy at about 200Kg with an after-market exhaust, but I guess ive decided to live with that issue and hope that the better wheels/suspension will make it more manegable than my old VSTROM.
The bike Im getting already has an after-market exhaust (I think), a top-box, a centre-stand and fat foot-pegs, and the current owner has got some crash-bars for me.
I'm bringing extra stuff for the bike including side-cases, tank bag, hand guards, air-hawk seat cussion, and heated grips.
And then there will of course be spare tires, chain/sprockets, brake-pads, air/oil filters and heaven knows how much else... It all just keeps adding up and as usul im finding that Im spending litterally thousands of dollars even before the trip gets under-way! The money just flys away in all directions :)

But thats just the way things work with a trip like this... there is a big chunk of spending up-front.
The up-side of all the spending thogh is that Im getting really excited about the trip now :))

Sliding Update

Thought Id post an update on my sliding activities.

Its a few posts back now but I tried Skeleton at the Whistler sliding track something over a year ago. Since then I've been sliding pretty much as often as I can though that has mostly been only about one weekend per month in the winter season.
I've slowly become better at it and I've been moving higher up the track as the coach has decided that I'm ready. There are about four of us in a cohort that have been progressing together and there is another newer group of sliders who are coming up behind us too.

 

Here I am at 120Kmh in the bottom corner pulling about 3.5G...(my form is terrible by the way... I should have my shoulders down on the sled not up in the air)... Its really hard to take a good picture of someone moving at 120Kmh in a confined space! this shot was taken by a professional photographer named Adam Taber... he has some great shots of sliders and other stuff at: http://www.adamtaberphotography.ca

The Whistler track is long and steep (1450m long and 150m vertical drop) which makes it very fast and quite dangerous so they don't just launch beginners off at the top. On other tracks people get to move to the top pretty quickly but its a slow progression at Whistler.

The track has 16 turns numbered from top to bottom.
With a sprinting start from the top of the track, a pro slider will clock close to 150Kmh, pull 5G in the bottom corner, and take just over 52 seconds to complete a run!

When a beginner takes the track, they start off from a stationary start at turn 11 (just under half the track) and they will top out at pretty much 100Kmh, pulling 2.5G and the run will take about 30 seconds. From this point its no problem to do 6-7 runs in a session without becoming tired and "sloppy".

Then after a while the slider gets to move up to Turn 7 (about 2/3 of the track). From here (again with a stationary start) they will hit about 120 Kmh, pull 3.2G, and a run will take about 43 seconds. From here, its good to only do 4-5 runs in a session, after which things deteriorate.

Then, again after they are deemed competent, the slider moves up to Turn 3 (which is the highest start for Luge on the track). From here (again with a stationary start) they will hit about 128 Kmh, pull 3.6G, and a run will take about 48 seconds. From this point, we only do 2-3 runs in a session

And then after a lot more practice there they get to move to the top of the track and finally start running starts on the full length of the track, and most people only do 2 runs a session and there are rules that prohibit more than 3...

Im sure that to the uninitiated, that just 2-3 runs of less than a minute each would seem hardly like a full training session, but I assure you that its a good amount! Having experienced it, I know first hand that in the bottom two corners I simply can not hold my head up after more than 3 runs... The forces acting on you are amazingly harsh.
The "rules" about the maximum number of runs per day for sliders are I think justified as there are more and more indications that these kinds of repeated "shock" loadings cause brain injuries that develop over time.... and everybody has "rough" runs on a fairly frequent basis... Pretty much every session I slide I get to see people "bouncing off the track walls" when they get a "wrong line" in one or other corner... and the bruising can be server!

A graphic demonstration of the forces involved... This guy is moving at about 140Kmh and his head is just dragging along the ice under the 4.3G load!

For myself, I have now progressed to the Corner 3 start and I'm also now allowed to participate in the official practice sessions for Skeleton that happen most days of the week.
Its very near the end of the season this year but I'm sliding at least twice a week now. That means I'm driving (or more correctly ride sharing) up to Whistler and back twice a week which is quite tiring.

I'm really enjoying the sliding and intend to do it even more seriously next year (after the Africa trip). I'm looking around for an appropriate used sled ($2000-$3000) and a nice but used helmet ($200 - $300). I wont feel I'm a real slider though till I'm doing running starts from the top of the track... which should happen early next season I would think... If I were at pretty much any other track in the world, it would probably take just a dozen or so runs to before I could go from the top of the track... but its those extra 20-30 Kmh on the Whistler track that can really get you hurt!

Ill let you know when I get to the top :))

Jewellery Box

Another project that I have had around the place for a couple of years is a jewellery box.
Its made out of a left-over piece of the wood slab that I used to make my dining table... Its very nice "figured bubbinga" (an relatively common African hardwood).
I had about 60cm of wood cut off the end of the slab where it got too narrow to use as a table. I was initially planning to make it into a bedside table but for some reason or other I decided to make a little jewellery box... At that point I cut up the remaining slab into chunks for the top and sides, but then the wood just sat around in my spare room for a year or two before I had another go at it.

Anyway, I got going on it again this winter and it is now Done!

Its about 50cm wide and 20cm high and deep.
I lined the shelves with black velvet which looks quite nice.
The wood its self should become a rick red brown with time. Its just been sanded and finished so the color is not that strong yet. The table I made from the same wood has darkened nicely (the box is sitting on the table in the pictures).

The only thing the little box is lacking now is of course some jewellery... hmmm there may have been a flaw in my planning there :))

The Cafe Racer Project

Im getting ready to head off to Africa and so I've been finishing off a couple of Projects that have been "on the back burner". The big one is the Café-Racer motorbike restoration/renovation.

The bike is a 1972 BMW R75.
I had left it with my machinist friend Mark for the winter so that he could do a suspension modification and a couple of other minor fixes over the winter whenever he got the time... And he has now completed the work and last weekend I went out to his place and collected the bike

First thing to do of course is to check out the changes to the bike... Mark is always so professional in his work that I hardly need to worry about the quality or soundness of design but he often modifies the way a "fix" is built compared to how I might have described my desires.... Its always for good reasons and this time its no exception... he called me a while back to discuss some slight changes and we agree over the phone on alternate solutions, but this is the fist time I get to see what the end product of his labours looks like.

... and I have to say I think it looks very nice :)

So here are a couple of pictures of the "work in progress":

The rear suspension "brace/stirrup" while being fabricated

The gear shift linkage (had to modify it so it would not get hit by the kick-start pedal.

This is how the new rear shock installation looks now that its completed.And here is what the finished bike now looks like with the "mono-shock" rear suspension:

 

Now the rear-end of the bike looks nice and clean... like a racer should :)

So the bike now looks just how I wanted it to and there is virtually nothing else I would do to it.
But there is a bit of a hitch with that new rear suspension in that it is excessively "stiff".
Now I thought Id figured out a design and chosen a shock absorber that should mean this would not have been a problem, but it turned out during the build that I had overlooked a critical factor... Mark figured it out and told me what was going on and we have a solution but Im yet to fix it.
The problem is that the old suspension had only three inches of travel in it... The replacement shock I found was in a "direct" suspension application without the usual rear suspension linkage that complicates things, and was on a bike of approximately the same size ( a Kawasaki Ninja 650r) so I thought I would be OK... but, the Kawasaki had a rear suspension travel of about 5 inches...

Now because of that, in order to make the shock work over its full range of travel without having the BMW's rear suspension travel increased (which would likely play havoc with the rear drive-shaft gears), Mark had to adjust the "angles" of the build...
The net result of it all is that the new rear suspension is overly stiff... And the best solution seems to be to change the shock spring for one of about 2/3 of the stiffness (its that 3" to 5" ratio from the differences in the suspension travel).
So, I will need to source a new rear spring, but that can wait till I get back from Africa I think.
In the mean time Im really happy with my motorbike and don't plan to do any other modifications too it any time soon :)

Thanks Mark for another great job on the fabrication work :))

Purchasing a Bit of Fear

Well, I went and made the commitment
Today I bought a ticket to South Africa :)
I fly out of Vancouver in mid April and arrive about mid-day in Cape Town South Africa...
It would be better for buying a motorbike to land in Johanesburg but I gotta say I just didnt feel confident about showing up there with a big pile of luggage and not knowing my way around at all... I just dont get a good "vibe" about moving around in that city ... Though of course Ive never been there and Im probbably just being over cautious... But, I felt it would be better to to get the trip off to a slightly less challenging start by heading to the "less intense" city of Cape Town.... and its also the very bottom of Africa so its a good start point for my trip North :))

I was not nearly so sure about the return trip though... SA requires "proof of onward travel" before they will let me in though, and at this stage I just dont really know where Ill be flying back from... It could be that my "rough plan" works out and Ill make it to Israel and fly back from there... or maybe Ill have to move on to Turkey or even Western Europe before I can sell the bike (I hear Ireland is the place to do that without lots of beaurocratic hastles!)... Or it could be that I dont get past Ethiopia (Sudan may shut down completely with the violence in South Sudan starting to really flare up now), and in that case, I may have to just ride back South and fly back out of South Africa??
I just dont know what will happen, but I needed a flight booked from somewhere for the visa issue, so I decided to be optimistic and went ahead and booked a flight from Israel in late November.

That makes for 200 days of travel and I get back to Vancouver on Halloween :))

But I have to say, that even though Ive gone ahead and booked and paid for flights, I feel more than a little trepidation! I definitely feel considerable anxiety about this trip... Not about my "stuff"... I dont really care what happens to my equipment or my bike... And its not lions or elephants or snakes... or even bad drivers and other traffic hazzards that concern me... nor all the unpleasant parasites and diseases that lurk there in the "Dark Continent."... No, its the most dangerous thing on the planet that Im worried about
.... yep... People!!

There are lots and lots of very poor people all over Africa, and no matter how grubby and smelly or how "low key" I try to be, I will still, always be very clearly a "rich" foreigner traveling around on a motorbike.  And unfortunately there are a great many people who are willing to use force to take things that they want for them selves... Its a behavior that is "tried and true" and has been in opperation for litterally hundreds of thousands of years ... In fact its a main stay of Darwinian selection... the Law of the Jungle! (how apropos for a trip to Africa :) )... So, I cant really complain too hard about it I guess, but the fact is that it scares me a bit... all the moreso because here in the "civilized" West, most of what we hear in the media about Africa involves lots of people with lots of guns and not much discipline or apparent moral conscience... Again, its probably got a fair bit of "media sensationalism" in it but it still manages to play on my fears.

But, Ive gone ahead and done it anyway... Ive purchased my self a big slice of adventure with a heavy topping of spicy treppidation and perhaps just a sprinkle of guilt. (should I really be blowing this many thousands of dollars on a trip like this or should I be paying off mortgages and saving for my rapidly approaching old age?)

Guess I will now have to diligently set about getting enthusiastic and try to enjoy the anticipation :))

A Christmas Story?

... A bit of history...

Earlier this year I bought yet another motorbike (It was after I had sold two that I already had though!)... Well, thats not surprising I hear you say!
Indeed, not surprising at all. :)
In this case, I was buying the bike for a specific reason, which was to get a bit more experience riding off-road before I head over to Africa.
So I bought a well used little dual-sport bike which is a trail bike that has lights and signals on it so that it can be road registered as well as used off-road.It was a 2001 Suzuki DRZ400.
So, over the summer I went on a couple of organized weekend trail trips and also did several of my own little jaunts into the dirt. I still have a long way to go before I would considder myself  a "competent" trail bike rider, but it did provide me with the experience I was hoping for, and as a bonus its a much smaller and more fuel efficient bike just for tooling around town too. In fact, I had decided to keep riding it through the winter months as my commuter bike rather thatn using my nice street bike (winter here is really hard on a bike with all the rain and the salt on the roads).

The bike as it was when I bought it..

... But then, one Monday morning when I headed out the door to go to work I found that the bike was not where I left it... A quick re-check of the situation confirmed that the bike was indeed gone and I still had the keys... Stolen!
In reality, it did somewhat serve me right... I had become very blase about vehicle security and I always park the bike on the street in front of my house... I take the keys but security for dirt bikes is pretty minimal and is really just the ignition lock... The bikes are pretty easy to hot-wire, and failing that, any two reasonably fit guys can just pick the bike up and throw it in the back of a pick-up truck and be gone in two minutes flat!.
So, not that I at all condone property theft, but I had made the bike an easy target and sooner or later it was gonna happen.

So I called it in to the police and made the required statements, and that was about all I could do... The bike was old and cheap (about $2800 in value) and so I had not bothered to put insurance on it for theft etc (many people with dirt bikes are the same here, though they mostly dont leave them parked on the street!)... So I could not make an insurance claim and the bike was simply gone!... Oh well... In fact, I was really quite pleased that my response to the whole situation was pretty un-flustered and I didnt really bother being upset about it at all... Though, make no mistake, suddenly being out $3000 is definitely a "big hit" to take on the chin for me, like most people!

So, it looked like Id just have to drive my little truck for the winter... I didnt really need the bike since I had got what I wanted out of it and id be off traveling to Africa next spring, so no need for a replacement bike.


But, then about a month later I got a call from the police saying that they had recovered my bike!...
Thats great!... But I didnt get my hopes up too high cos who knows what they ahd done to it...
A bit more information came through and it seemed that the bike was probably rideable cos apparently they had caught someone trying to jump-start the bike on a street somewhere (dead battery??)

Anyway, after a few more phone calls and me having to pay a couple of hundred dollars to the impound/towing yard I was allowed to collect my bike...
And indeed it was no-longer "the same" bike that had been stolen...

They (who ever stole the bike) had removed (and by removed I mean ripped and cut-off) all of the lights and instruments, and the ignition lock as well as some of the side pannels... And the bike would not start at all..
So, I spent about 20 minutes figuring out what was wrong with it, and it turned out that the only real problem was a blown fuse for the ignition/starter solenoid. After I fixed that the bike fired up imediately and the engine ran perfectly :)
That made me smile a bit though, the guy using it had probably tried to start the bike while it was in gear and the extra load on the starter had blown the fuse... which killed the whole ignition system and hence he couldnt get it started at all.... or maybe water/salt had managed to short out some off the "snipped-off" wiring. And then the police had found him with the bike with no lights trying to jump start it on a public road.... So he got caught and I got my bike back all because of a $1 fuse :))

But, there is still lots of expense and effort required to rebuild it, and again I can not claim insurance to pay for it...

The bike as I got it back (certainly not "recognizable")... new "custom" paint job!! (done with three cans of paint, a paint brush, and a very sloppy hand!)

No instruments or lights or turn signals and all the electrical wires are just snipped off!

Both the side panels that protect the radiator were just ripped off... as well as the mounting tabs on the rad.

So, I at least had the bike back, but after my initial assesment, I figured I'd just sell it "as is" and take the loss... But after some more consideration, I figured that there is quite a lot of value in the bike being a "plated" road bike... (its got road registration papers)... Id likely only get about $1800 for it just as a dirt bike (ie I lose $1000 in value).
So, I did some internet shopping and found that it was going to cost me about $600 to get the parts to "rebuild" it...
So, that is what Im going to do... Ill order tha parts and put it back together over the next few weeks. then Ill have the bike to ride for the winter again and after Im done, I can sell it for probably pretty much what I bought it for (I hope).

The whole episode has still cost me about $800, but its a lot better than having cost me $2800 which was the situation when the bike was stolen.... So, its a little Christmas Miracle for me :)

... Its great the way perspective can completely change the way a situation feels :))