The Epic GS Trophy Tour 2018: Day 1

“Manne, gaan ons dié jaar die Trophy doen?”

This is pretty much how it starts every year. Once every 12 months, 4 diehard adventure bikers embark on a 5-day bike trip to attend an offroad biking weekend organized by BMW. Thousands of BMW adventure bikers roll in from all corners of South Africa to spend the weekend navigating tar, green (easy), orange (intermediate), red (advanced) or black (do you have a fucking deathwish!??) routes mapped out by the organizers.

Invariably the responses to this important question range from “Absofuckinglutely!”, to “Definitely!” This is our thing. A web developer, medical doctor and 2 IT specialists who work their asses off during the rest of the year commit to taking a week off every year to experience camaraderie, sore butts and adrenal terror. We all agree that we don’t get enough opportunities to ride our bikes so when the GS Trophy comes around, it would take a catastrophe to make us miss out on it.

It’s not all fun and games however. Heck, sometimes after spending a whole day playing in the dirt and mud on our bikes we actually have to return to basecamp and force down several ice cold beers! This isn’t for everyone, I can tell you! Sometimes things go wrong. One of us manages to drop a bike on our leg and break an ankle. Perhaps a front wheel is destroyed  at speed on a gravel road and we need to do a makeshift repair with a hammer, wild swings and a lot of cursing. And yet no matter what happens, when we return home after several thousand kilometres with sore asses and muscle sprains we all agree that THIS trip was the best one ever!

The trip planning usually starts with the serious business of planning the route. Road surfaces, weather conditions and the toughness of our ass cheeks are all factored into the equation and after some heated discussion and perhaps a few beets, the itinerary is finalized. Next, the discussion about the packing lists start. Little old ladies who are planning a shopping expedition to stock up on heart pills and blue rinse couldn’t be more finicky than these 4 grown men. Entire auto workshops could run on the list of “emergency tools” we decide to carry between us. Small countries could be fed with the number of breakfast bars loaded into our topboxes. Entire pharmacies could be stocked with the hemorrhoid cream— You get the idea.

This year, 3 of us traveled down from Joburg while the other one plotted an intercepting route from the east coast. Today was the first leg of the route and all of us seem to be on our last legs. We covered about 680 kms on tar and loose gravel, managed to grab a quick Indian pale all at a brewery and arrived at the guesthouse with enough aches and pains to keep the staff of Greys Anatomy busy for an entire season.

Route Day 1:

N3 to Harrismith, then R74 past Sterkfontein dam, R103 to Escourt, R617 to Kokstad.

Tomorrow, the saga continues.