Lets Ride

Well the silly season is in full swing. This means a few noticeable changes, ( I will leave that post for another time). One change that any casual observer will notice is the huge influx of traffic and congested roads. Therefore making it a great excuse to utilize the recently repaired bike for a little sight-seeing (any plausible excuse to take the bike out at this stage works for me). We set off nice and early to a market on the other side of our peninsular. Lets see how the other half live.

Not a bad place to park the bike and start our day

 

Fiona and I both were thinking that we should have brought our swimming stuff with us as  the water looked so inviting (bit odd to be driving a racy 1000cc motorbike in full jackets , gloves and backpack spilling over with mask, snorkel and fins (one thing at a time Dan….One thing at a time.)

We strolled around taking in the sights and sounds, drank great coffee, then made our way to the harbour waterfront as I have a thing for boats. (I came to the startling realization last year, I am actually interested in most things).

If I am not mistaken we counted six boats like this one pictured above, in various stages of decay. I remember this boat not that long ago being a working vessel. Quite sad indeed. The vessel owners are not getting permits to continue fishing. So they sit neglected, until the inevitable happens. Our country’s fishing permits have had a serious shuffling, in an effort to make everything more “politically  correct”. Thus all the permits were re-allocated. I even heard of an inland woman’s knitting club getting a permit. To remain PC we must have fisher woman. Even if they don’t actually fish or even know what blue water looks like. It looks good on paper and that gets votes. I wont even start talking about the permits sold off to a foreign country where all the toys come from as I don’t want to get negative about it all.  Governments really do strange things for the short-term while their people struggle.

The good thing is the local kids have the best marine jungle gym and play area, If you don’t mind rusty steel and broken glass. Ok, lets be honest, I am a bit jealous of these kids.

We took a few min to watch how (lets call them salvers) remove the more valuable components of the vessel with nothing more than a hack saw blade and elbow grease. One thing Fiona noticed, as the kids were climbing all over the remains of this boat is they were repeatedly saying O BAMA. Yes that’s correct South African kids between the ages of 10 and 16 were calling out O BAMA! Whilst swinging on the ropes like agile spider monkeys.  We could not work that one out. Anyone have any ideas on that ? One kid in particular approximately 10 years old (pictured above) managed to hand over hand from the jetty to the boat and back faster than I could tie my shoe laces.( yup, that’s me getting jealous again). He would have a bright future in rope access rescue.

The day turned out far better than expected. We had wonderful weather. My bike runs really well and I even managed to get convince Fiona for a much-needed ice cream stop. A win win on all fronts.

This day out has inspired me to visit my local pier. The last time I dived there I managed to obtain a great fishing rod and a full set of lures. However most of my time was spent wrestling a particularly ornery octopus for a water logged cell phone.( It was a bit ridiculous on the part of the octopi as it wasn’t even a particularly good phone) Seems everybody is getting tech savvy these days.

Thanks for reading

Dan