Trading Wheels

Well there’s no turning back now. I’ve sold my bike and after looking at a few old on/off road bikes we’ve bought an old Yamaha XT 550 thumper. This bike will definitely be for Theo since I don’t think my right knee cap, which is a metal jigsaw puzzle, will cope with kick starting the thing into life. Visions of me flying over the handlebars and developing a limp doesn’t do it for me. Theo says I’ll definitely have to get something with an electric start but that makes it more difficult to keep within our budget. We either have to get something more recent and bigger i.e. a 650 but that costs way more, or consider something smaller like a 250 but then I’m worried I’m gonna poer poer along at 80km/hr. mmmm – not into that. I’m definitely not getting one of those Chinese imports either. I’ve heard too many stories about things falling off and anyway there are far too many almost brand new ones up sale – warning lights.

I had a flicker of doubt when I realized I’m exchanging my nice shiny bike to buy something that looks like an old scrappy piece of junk. Oh well the up side is I won’t have to worry about polishing again. I suppose I’ll trade polish time for scraping mud off the engine and tightening nuts and bolts. I’m also aware of the fact that speed will no longer be a part of the equation. I know it’s going to be a different ride but what about counter steering and leaning in the corners? Many people have asked us if we’re getting old, what with trading our super bikes for dual bikes, while others have warned that offroading is scary and quite an adrenalin rush. I suppose I’ll find out for myself soon enough. Just gotta find a suitable bike.

Every Which Way But Loose

Well the upside of living in South Africa is you probably will get burgled somewhere along the line. Make sure you’ve got insurance, as we did, and you’ll be ok. Luckily we don’t have a mansion of a house full of stuff which other people want.

In the meantime I’m keeping my eyes peeled for a hot looking bergie in leather pants, the ones I’d only just been able to fit into again after eating vegetable soup for 3 weeks. The 10 stolen bottles of aftershave had sentimental value. They were years and years of unimaginative Xmas presents I’d given my dad since the age of 12 and which my mom had recently given to me after he died last year. Nothing else will be missed.

Anyway our insurance sent us off to a shop in Cape Town to choose replacement things. Theo made a b-line for a Garmin. Very sensible choice considering my direction skills are non existent. In fact the other day I realized, as I lay in bed with aching toes, that even the blood traveling around in my body was getting lost these days. It zooms down my left side and forgets to make a detour down to my toes before rushing up my right side.

Getting back to the point, we took the Garmin for a test drive. I’m impressed. The thing even talks to you telling you when to make a turn. It’s got a calculator so we can work out how far we can travel before the next fish and chip shop. You can see what the time is in Japan in case you’re wondering if anyone there is watching the same awesome sunset as you, and you can see which way the North Pole lies. Finding places is gonna be easy now so long as you know the exact address, spelt correctly, to punch in. I wonder if I’ll be able to punch in “bar – Kosi Bay – Beach front.

I’m just dying to find out.

I Felt The Earth Move Under My Feet....

...literally I swear. It happened a few mornings ago when I woke up reeeaaally early. Ok admittedly we’d partied the night before when we had our friends around and told them about our plans. I didn’t wake up with a babalas at all, in fact I was extremely clear headed (some of my friends think I’m too clear headed but I digress). I didn’t wake up with a bang either - barely time to schedule that in these days.

It was just before dawn. Just before that time of the morning when the birds wake up. I hardly hear them since during the week its rush to work and who wants to wake up that early over weekends. Well anyway it was abut 10 minutes before the sun actually came up and I lay in bed buzzing on adrenalin. I could feel the energy oozing out of my body and merging with the earth’s energy around me. Ok, heavy philosophical I know but I just had to share that really weird yet wonderful feeling. It lasted abut 10 minutes and then the spell was broken by a single Hadida flying by. My mind returned to earth and I wondered where the bird was off to. It was either returning from a late night expedition or it was taking the phrase The early bird catches the worm a bit too literally. Minutes later the sun came up. It was Sunday and I needed to face my own day which was breakfast with the outlaws so we could fill them in about our plans. Oh horrors, how would they react? We’d find out soon enough.

Exposing The Truth

Once we’d made the decision to exchange our rat race lives for the unknown, we started planning things and everything just snowballed. Every waking (and sleeping) moment was about wind generators and batteries and showers and toilet dumps and water systems and battery charges and inverters and and and. We had a basic schedule/ dateline but then our landlord put a spanner in the works by giving us notice and we needed to move earlier than planned. Suddenly we were selling furniture and I made an effort to keep my cellphone charged and handy, something I was not renowned for doing.

Besides selling excess furniture and other junk, we needed to sort out accommodation for our 19 year old son at college, sell our 2 road bikes and our car and buy 2 on/off road bikes and a bus which we needed to refurbish. My brain went into overdrive. This was all supposed to be fun and exciting. Yeah right. We borrowed a huge drawing board from our friend and plotted things out with marker pens to maintain our sanity. Some days we were excited and ready to move mountains but sometimes panic set it when I realized I didn’t have a clue about alternators and I’d stress about silly things like how to pack glasses in the bus so that they don’t break when we were on the move.

Meanwhile our friends were wondering why we weren’t interested in joining them on breakfast runs or doing bike rallies anymore. It was time to break the news. My mother rolled her eyes at our plans but was quite happy to have us move in with her for a few months. Our son was exited about moving in with his college buddies and scoring our furniture. He thought our idea was cool. Our friends wanted to know what we’d been smoking, but were intrigued, especially the part about running the bus on vegetable oil.

Our secret was out and we were ecstatic.
Yeehaa.

Journey Into The Unknown

I’m finally ready. Mentally that is. Theo and I have wanted to change our lifestyles for some time now and that’s how we ended up deciding to sell everything, and buy an old diesel bus, hook up 2 on/off road bikes and travel South Africa. Indefinitely that is. Wow - scary and exciting. It’s taken me a while to get my mind, which I almost lost in the process, around the idea but that’s pretty par for course since I’m prone to getting lost. I mean you don’t just wake up one morning and say “gee let’s buy a bus and disappear into the sunset”. Mind you Theo did and at first I thought it was just another one of his schemes. Eventually my earthy side won the battle going on in my head and I thought what the heck, lets go for it.

We’ll be selling our car and our 2 road bikes in exchange for the bus and 2 old, cheapo on/off road bikes. We don’t have property to sell and we haven’t won the lotto and anyway if we did we’d still definitely go ahead with our idea. Our small work pensions will be our backup for new tyres or gear boxes etc so we plan to work at different things as we go along.

So you probably think our idea sounds a bit far fetched, ha, well picture this. We plan to convert the diesel bus to run on used fish ‘n chip oil. That got your attention I bet. It’s the latest rage overseas you know. The plan is, as we pass through towns, we’ll collect the old oil from fish and chip shops and the occasional restaurant. The oil gets strained and stored in a container under the bus but needs to be heated before it can run through the engine. If you don’t see us coming you might smell us.

We plan to buy a wind generator kit which we’ll attach to the roof of the bus as and when we need to generate more power. The electricity will be stored in a bunch of batteries and we should be able to run our laptop, a fridge, a sound system and 1 or 2 smaller items. Who needs more? Our TV will not be missed! I hope.

Besides a bed, a kitchen area and packing space, we plan to install a caravan type toilet, water tanks for running water which we could heat with gas. Luckily I’m not a finicky person and don’t have a problem peeing behind a bush. We will also be stopping at caravan parks occasionally, and not forgetting all the one stops so look out for us next time you all meet at one for a breakfast run. I suspect we’ll be very visible. Mind you I’ll probably be catching a shower while Theo sorts out the dump.

We plan to explore some out of the way places on our on/off road bikes. In fact I think that’s how the plan materialized. We got gatvol of riding the same roads around Cape Town and missed out on the dirt roads cos as you know road bikes don’t do well on gravel. We were ready to exchange the speed thing for getting back into nature. Well it was that combined with the fact that Theo was gatvol of his job and I was starting to feel like part of the furniture at mine. I got a fright when I realized I was getting sucked into the system shared with work colleges who thought it was a great achievement to retire after giving 40 years of service to the same company. My 20 year old son doesn’t need me around anymore to wipe his nose and I think his youthful ideas about quantum physics and thinking out the box has inspired me.

Every now and then my stomach churns when the scary thoughts enter my spacious mind but then I remind myself that it is what I want to do and it is possible. Getting off the grid is gonna be a challenge but it sure is gonna be an adventure and I can’t wait.