Week 2 started with me making a very bouncy trip up to Johannesburg thanks to the failed shock. Until you try it you don't realize how hard it is to ride with no damping, the bike was like an uncontrolled pogo stick on occasions as it leapt from pothole to pothole. Needless to say speed was low.
The down side of the failed shock was I had to pull out of a 5 day ride that Kobus, our superb host from the weekend meeting, had invited me on. That was a bit of a downer as I got on really well with all the people going on it.
The initial part of my search for a solution in JB continued the downer feeling, local suspension specialists said the shock was not easily rebuildable and a new shock (if available) was going to be hugely expensive. My mood that afternoon was not good and the weather promptly matched it by putting on a huge hail storm. Fortunately I had seen it coming and checked into a hotel 15 minutes in front of its arrival. The hotel staffs priorities were excellent, my bike and the owners Jag got parked in the foyer for protection, everyone else's cars had to take pot luck outside.
Next days sunshine also brought a solution. A contact called "Dr KLR", I'm sure Africa's only specialist for my type of bike, sourced and fitted a good second hand shock for me at a very reasonable price - I had been incredibly fortunate to have the failure only 200 kms from his workshop; I can only imagine how much more time consuming and expensive it would have been if it had happened further north up the continent.
Since I was in JB I decided to make the most of it, staying a couple of nights in Soweto absorbing some of the history of the apartheid struggle - a part that resonated with me since it occcured when I was at university and first started to have some political awareness. A visit to the Heater Pierterson museum, a memorial to a child who died in the riots of 1976, but also to all who suffered during the turmoil of the ending of apartheid brought me too tears, and reminded me strongly that systems you live within can so easily appear right and proper at the time, but when you look back with hindsight can be seen to be intolerably cruel.
This week also saw me undertaking the bane of all travelers - obtaining visas for onward travel - in this case for Mozambique which after hearing very positive reports is my destination next week (after Swaziland this weekend)
The down side of the failed shock was I had to pull out of a 5 day ride that Kobus, our superb host from the weekend meeting, had invited me on. That was a bit of a downer as I got on really well with all the people going on it.
The initial part of my search for a solution in JB continued the downer feeling, local suspension specialists said the shock was not easily rebuildable and a new shock (if available) was going to be hugely expensive. My mood that afternoon was not good and the weather promptly matched it by putting on a huge hail storm. Fortunately I had seen it coming and checked into a hotel 15 minutes in front of its arrival. The hotel staffs priorities were excellent, my bike and the owners Jag got parked in the foyer for protection, everyone else's cars had to take pot luck outside.
Next days sunshine also brought a solution. A contact called "Dr KLR", I'm sure Africa's only specialist for my type of bike, sourced and fitted a good second hand shock for me at a very reasonable price - I had been incredibly fortunate to have the failure only 200 kms from his workshop; I can only imagine how much more time consuming and expensive it would have been if it had happened further north up the continent.
Since I was in JB I decided to make the most of it, staying a couple of nights in Soweto absorbing some of the history of the apartheid struggle - a part that resonated with me since it occcured when I was at university and first started to have some political awareness. A visit to the Heater Pierterson museum, a memorial to a child who died in the riots of 1976, but also to all who suffered during the turmoil of the ending of apartheid brought me too tears, and reminded me strongly that systems you live within can so easily appear right and proper at the time, but when you look back with hindsight can be seen to be intolerably cruel.
This week also saw me undertaking the bane of all travelers - obtaining visas for onward travel - in this case for Mozambique which after hearing very positive reports is my destination next week (after Swaziland this weekend)
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