Seth's brother, Raffi, came to visit for three weeks. Within a few days of arrival, he had found, test ridden and bought a used motorcycle. What is with these boys! The motorcyle had been wrecked, and required (still requires) a little work. Right away, Raffi and Seth were working to figure out exactly what needed to be replaced before they could get it registered and inspected, so that Raffi could ride it before he left (in three weeks).
A few days later, Raffi called the shop where they had ordered some plastic pieces to replace the broken ones, and discovered that they had arrived! Oh joy! He went out to leave, and a few minutes later came back. "Truck won't start," he says to me. "Really?" I don't know why, but I was surprised that the old piece of junk had finally kicked the bucket. "Hmmm." I said, not really knowing what to do. Usually when this sort of thing happens, I just wait for Seth to come home. Raffi, however, NEEDED to get the new pieces of his motorcycle. "I guess you can take my motorcycle if you want," I said, evetually. He was off! He found the biggest bag he could carry on his back and was gone in a flash.
A few days later, we still haven't gotten the truck to start, not because it is completely broken down, but because we really haven't even looked at it since Raffi came back in and said it wouldn't start. Raffi was going to go up to Burlington to hang out with his cousin, and he was going to take my motorcycle. He leaves.
A few minutes later my phone rings, and its Raffi. "No WAY," I think to myself, "that thing is BRAND NEW!" After a rather confusing conversation with Raffi, I discover that he is only just at the bottom of the hill we live on, but while he was riding down the hill, the bike turned off and stopped. OK, now, this is a BMW motorcycle. It is a 2007 model year X Challenge, and we just bought it in February. This should not be happening. Surely, it has to do with Raffi. He did already break the truck, and now he broke my beautiful motorcycle. (I jest. There is no way that Raffi could have caused this...just bad timing...That won't stop me from teasing him, though.)
So! My BMW is broken! We call the shop where we bought it, and the owner, Max, picks up the phone. (We thought that was kind of crazy. Does anyone else think that is crazy, that the owner of a BMW dealership just answers the regular phone?) The dealership is 2.5 hours away from us, so it is kind of a pain to go all the way down there. Seth mentioned that to Max, who said "You guys are in Vermont right? You bought the bike in February? I remember you guys." (?! He remembers us!) "We're racing up at Burke Mountain this weekend, so if you bring the bike up there, we can bring it back here and fix it up." Seth is the one who was on the phone, and I originally thought he was talking to the head mechanic. He started getting excited. "YEA! I was going to come watch you guys race there this weekend!" I hear him say. I was not aware we were doing anything spectacular this weekend, but that's ok, he sometimes leaves me out of the loop. I didn't really hear the rest of the conversation, but Seth was SO excited when he got off the phone. "I get to race my mo-to-cycle, I get to race my mo-to-cycle," he kept saying in a sing-song voice. Any problems he may have had disappeared.
So! Seth is all set to race in the Burke Mountain Hill Climb! We brought his bike out on Friday evening for the tech inspection. We walked over to a booth to register him, and the lady behind it asked if I wanted to work the event. "Sure!" I said, rather excitedly. "I mean, uh, if you need me." Trying to tone down my excitement. She told me it was the only way I would get to see him race, so I agreed it would be best.
It seemed we were a bit early. Seth had been told that tech inspection started at 4, so we had been rushing to get there by 5 at the latest. I even took off early from work. None of the other motorcycle people were there. It turned out that Max was doing the motorcycle tech inspection, and he wasn't there either. We walked around the campgrounds at the bottom of the toll road a few times, looking at all the different cars that were arriving. Eventually, some of the other motorcycles arrived. One guy was riding an X Challenge. Same as my bike! His worked though.
His girlfriend, Jen, was also talked in to working. The guys went up on a "rookie orientation," and Jen and I got to know each other. Max had arrived at this point, in his extended wheelbase, extended roof Dodge Sprinter, something Seth has been lusting after for a few years now. He says it would be the perfect "motorcycle hauling machine." Apparently he's right, because Max has a fleet of them. The guys get back from their orientation, and are visibly excited by the Toll Road, which is what they will be racing for the next two days. We hear that Max will be doing tech inspection for the motorcycles in a separate parking lot. We all head over there, but it seems that Max has disappeared! I guess he had to go on a rookie orientation too. We wait there for about an hour (well, it seemed like an hour...it was probably about 20 minutes.) The other guys put numbers on their motorcycles while we're waiting, and Seth remembers that he doesn't have any numbers! Oh no! Andrew, who is Jen's boyfriend, the man with the X Challenge, has three sets of three sixes. He makes himself #66, and gives the rest to Seth. What a nice guy! Seth turned them around and made himself number 9. Ha. After a while, the people who knew Max decided he wouldn't care if we just left without doing tech inspection. "They are all going to pass anyway," said Andrew. We left. It occurred to me that I hadn't taken any pictures! What is wrong with me! So I took some on the way home:
(We hit a pothole right as I took this picture.)
The next morning, we had to wake up bright and early to get there by 7, since we missed tech inspection the day before. We got there around 7:30. Seth and I both got out, and I found Jen, and we went to our worker's meeting. We got there a little late. "Leave their helmet on, have them sit down, and try to calm the driver down as much as possible." The lady in charge was saying. I looked at Jen. It had not occurred to me that we would see someone crash. I suddenly felt extremely under qualified to be working the event. I've never even taken a CPR class or anything. I don't have the slightest idea what to do if someone crashes, aside from leaving their helmet on, having them sit down, and trying to calm them down. This was a meeting we should not have been late for. Jen and I were assigned to checkpoint 1, which may have been the most boring checkpoint of them all. It was on a straightaway. The other checkpoints were right in the middle of crazy turns. We were being broken in. There were two other people at our checkpoint who did most of the work, since we had no idea what was going on for a while.
First the cars went up, there was a group A and a group B. At the end of group B, the motorcycles got to go.
Group A:
Group B:
Motorcycles! There's Seth!
Those pictures were from the "fam" or familiarization run. Once we knew what it meant, Jen and I kept saying familiarization run, because it sounds more normal than saying "fam run." I guess to us that just sounded incomplete/stupid. Anyway, during the familiarization run the whole group went up together, but during normal timed runs, they went up one at a time.
For the rest of the day, we just watched cars and motorcycles going past us at rediculous speeds. Each time one went by, we had to check them in over the radio. When car 45 went by, we had to say "Four Five by One." "Check One." the control person said. A few seconds later we heard "Four Five by Two." "Check Two." That was it. It seemed exciting at the time, but it really doesn't offer much in the way of an exciting story. No one wrecked (thank goodness).
We had a red flag at our booth, in case something up ahead was going wrong, we could stop a car before it got there. We had to use it twice. Once, on the first run, some kid started without his helmet on. It was sitting on the seat beside him, he just wasn't wearing it. We missed him, and they stopped him at checkpoint 2. Once he put his helmet on, he got to keep going.
The other person we had to red flag was Seth! When he started, they didn't start the time. So, we had to send him down to start again. We missed him too, so they got him at #2. We weren't that far from the start, so by the time we were hearing them tell us to flag them down, we were watching them pass us. That was our excuse, anyway. Here are someone else's pictures of Seth starting:
Here he comes at Checkpoint 1!
"Bike Nine by Check One.""Check One"
There were two Porsches, somehow I neglected to get a picture of either of them. I did get this one though.
Doesn't this all sound terribly exciting?! It was for Seth. He had a blast racing. This is me at the end of the day, having decided that Mom would certainly yell at me if I didn't have a single picture of myself:
This is basically a copy and paste of what I've already written about Africa, but I was able to add pictures and do some editing. I just thought one of the more important trips of my life should be here.
In August of 2007 Seth, Raffi, their Dad, and I went on an amazing African adventure. We went to Namibia and rode motorcycles, under the guidance of Werner, for 6 days. Werner = Indiana Jones. He looks exactly like Harrison Ford, so it is as though Indiana has stopped being an archaeologist, aged appropriately from the 80s (when he was released) and started a business giving motorcycle tours of Namibia. It was awesome. A nice fellow named Claudio was on the tour with us. Claudio hails from Italy, but had an unnatural hatred towards all the other Italians we saw. (Somehow, every restaurant we went to during the entire trip had a group of Italians there while we were there. Claudio would look at me and whisper "Italians!" in a tone of disgust I have never heard applied to that word.) On the last day of riding, at the last roadside break we took, Claudio gave me a little flower and said, "You are amazing! You are superwoman!" If I had somewhere to put it during the final ride back into Windhoek, I probably would have smuggled it back into the US and kept it forever. I didn't, so I threw it by the side of the road, as discreetly as possible. Claudio is also the first one who vocalized what was on everyone's mind: Werner looked like Indiana Jones.
The first night we were there Werner took us to Joe's Bierhaus, where we had amazing steak, and beer. Werner was trying to figure out who wanted beer, and Seth asked what kind there was. "Draft" said Werner," it comes out of the wall." As he was saying this, and continuing to explain how a tap works, he was motioning with his hands as though he was getting beer out of the tap. "Yea," Seth said, "I know what a tap is, but what kind of beer is it?" "Draft," said Werner. We decided we would try whatever it was, and agreed to have some draft beer. "You too?!" Werner asked me. "Yes?" I replied. He looked at Seth: "She drinks beer. I like that." Seth ordered a "Knuckle of Kudu" for his meal. It was described on the menu as "For the Strong Man." Werner encouraged him to get it, and when it finally came, we were all impressed. It was basically an ENORMOUS chunk of meat with a bone sticking out one end. It looked like it was straight out of "The Flinstones."
The first day we rode along winding gravel roads through the hill country which surrounds Windhoek, the capital of Namibia. The views were amazing, and we were all wishing that we could take snapshots with our brain, or at least had a helmet cam! The gravel was thick, and Seth's Dad and I were quickly left in the dust by Raffi, Seth and Claudio. We went along at our own pace though, and always caught up to them before the support truck caught up to us!
The first day also brought my first experience of actually peeing in the bush. Sure, I have peed outside in the woods before, but in the woods, there are lots of bushes. In Namibia, there are a few bushes here and there, and they all have thorns. (80% of the trees of Namibia have thorns. When you come to a stop, it is not to be under a tree. Shade is good, but the bikes don't need it, and thorns are bad.)
That night we camped on the farm of a seemingly nice German family. This was by far the best campsite we stayed at. They have what looked to me like the fort of Kelly and my dreams, which was the toilet and shower for us campers. There was a fully enclosed toilet and shower, and another shower and sink outside with only stick walls surrounding it. The shower head came out of a tree (one of the few without thorns)! It was by far the coolest shower I have ever seen, and when Seth and I own a ridiculous amount of land, I think we are going to try to recreate it. The largest concern was trying to figure out if people were more likely to see me through the glass bottle windows of the enclosed shower, or the slits in the stick surrounding the outdoor shower. I still haven't figured it out. They even had hot water, as long as you made a fire in the little fireplace next to the outdoor shower! Werner cooked us dinner over the fire that night, using a rod iron structure that stands itself over embers and kind of acts like a skillet. I believe that night we had Kudu steak with mashed potatoes. It basically tasted like beef stroganoff, for anyone who knows. It was delicious. We also had lots of Awful Tafel, Tafel being the mysterious beer from the previous night. During the camping part of the trip, we had it in canned form. It is apparently the only kind of beer to drink in Namibia. (there are others available, but this is the one you drink)
The next day we went to the Omaruru Game lodge, where we got to ride around in an open-aired Land Rover and look at animals. It was good, mostly because I got to use their restrooms, which did not involve a bush.
Our campsite that night was at Brandburg, the tallest mountain in Namibia. When we got there, the owner of the campground came to tell us that we would have to walk to the next section's showers, because there was an elephant stampede the night before, and they knocked over the water tanks for our site. Werner told us to put our tents under the tree that night.
The next morning we took a hike up to see the "White Lady," which is a bushman painting up in the mountains. There are lots of theories, current and historical. The prevailing current theory is that this white figure is actually a male (it definitely is) and it represents a shaman of some sort. The painting was pretty cool, the hike to it was not so cool. It was bloody hot, with all of our motorcycle gear on. It tuckered me out (possible heat exhaustion), and after riding back into town for lunch, I decided to ride in the car the rest of that day. Which of course, I now regret, as I knew I would, but oh well. That night we stayed at Spitzkoppe, which is a huge orange granite rock that juts straight out of the ground. It was spectacular. Werner explained to me while we were driving there that it was formed by the heat of the earth when North America split from Africa.
The long drop we had been promised turned out to be full (Andre, Werner's assistant, was in disbelief) which meant more bushes for me. The area around the Spitzkoppe is quite sandy. It was difficult to secure our tents into the ground. That night, the wind picked up and Seth and I could feel the tent floor coming up all around us. We got out and put the anchors back into the sand, which was also flying around in the wind, as best we could. We got back in the tent and slept rather unsoundly for the next few hours, 'til the floor started coming up again. We got out again, and apparently made a lot more noise this time, because Seth's dad poked his head out of his tent (which did not seem to be phased by the wind) and asked if we needed some help. We had to do this once more before morning finally came.
That was the last night of camping, and the next day we rode towards Swakupmund, the awesome coastal town. After lunch we got off the road and rode down a dried up river bed the rest of the way to town. After we got from the road to the river bed, we were in a canyon. Rock walls shot up on either side of us, with sand in the middle. We were getting closer and closer to the desert, and it was getting hotter and hotter. It was quite sandy, which I must admit, I did not care for. It was really fun however, and I'm glad I had the guts to go with the guys instead of following the car, which Indiana tried to talk me into doing. As we reached the end of the river bed, we came across a huge party going on at a camper parked just off the "road" in the sand. There were tons of people there and they were dancing and grilling and drinking. It sounded, looked, and smelled quite festive. The owner of the camper came over and gave us all a swig of his rum and coke. We didn't know it was rum and coke, or that we should even be accepting drinks from strangers, but Werner said it was fine, so we did. Being almost dehydrated and overheated (and still having a ways to drive), it was not really the drink we had in mind, but we were almost out of water in our camelpacks, so we accepted it. I have never slept better than I did that night, in the hotel we stayed at after the hardest day of riding, dinner at the best restaurant, in a real bed.
We stayed in Swakupmund for the next few days, which was great. It was so insane as we were riding in to the town on the first night. The fog was rolling in from the ocean, and it was as if we were riding towards a grey wall. It also got cooler almost instantaneously as we left the riverbed and headed towards the ocean. As we got into town, we were riding next to a brick wall. I stood up and looked over it, and saw the desert for the first time in my life. It was awesome. I'm surprised I didn't run into something. Sand. Flat sandy ground turning abruptly into dunes, and then the bright blue sky.
The next day we went out and rode in the dunes, which was incredible. Seth is in love with the desert now. He says he would rather ride in sand than mud any day. I am a little more hesitant. Mud definitely sucks, but sand, sand is horrifying.
Seth's dad and I stopped a bit early that day, and went back to the hotel. This gave the boys some time to really explore the desert with Werner and show off their mad skillz. We met Seth, Raffi, Werner, and Claudio later at a bar. Raffi said, "They all want to marry you." Seth said that Claudio and Werner had told him that if it doesn't work out between us, to send me over, because they would love to have a girl that rides motorcycles and drinks beer.
The last day of riding was bittersweet. I was pretty excited about the thought of not putting knee pads on ever again, but we were all sad that our sweet adventure was coming to an end. The scenery on the last day was absolutely spectacular. On the way out of Swakupmund it was definitely still desert, but being on the coast and still in the fog, it was quite cold. Then, all of a sudden, we hit a wall of heat. Seriously. I was frozen and then I was thawed. I savored the heat for approximately 5 seconds and then I was hot. At the next stopping point, everyone exchanged their shock at the sudden and drastic temperature change. It was insane! Anyway, as we climbed into the mountains again, the road became twisty and the air cooled down. We stopped for lunch at the top of a mountain pass where there was a little pull off area and a hut.
Then we kept going til we got back to Windhoek, and after another great dinner and a good night's sleep, we flew out the next day to Cape Town, South Africa. My goal in Cape Town had been to recuperate. When we got there and found the apartment we had rented, Seth and I both fell asleep almost immediately! Our apartment was right on the ocean, and our room had one wall that was just a huge window looking out to the ocean. AWESOME! I could have stayed in that room for the whole three days of Cape Town.
But alas, that was not anyone else's idea of a good time. We went to Table Mountain the first day, and then hung out down in the town for a while, visiting a sweet car dealership that had all sorts of custom high end vehicles, old and new, for RIDICULOUSLY low prices. I'm talking like, $30,000 including import to the US. They also had a few really cool motorcycles.
The next day we went on a wine tasting tour in a little town outside of Cape Town. It was pretty funny. I had never been on one before, and the sheets they gave us with descriptions of how the wine tasted and smelled included "barnyard," "pencil shavings," and "body odor." None of it tasted like that to me, but Seth and Raffi got a pretty good kick out of the "scratch-n-sniff" style wine tasting.
That pretty much wraps it up! It was hard to leave Africa, especially knowing that it would take a 16 hour plane ride to get from Johannesburg to Atlanta. The trip was amazing though, and I would go back at the drop of a hat. I feel it is important to point out that the first time we were hassled by customs was coming back into the United States. It made Seth angry that his own country didn't want him, and he seriously considered moving back to Namibia. Andre told us we could by a hectare for about $100 US.
"No need to hurry. No need to sparkle." is a quotation from the Virginia Woolf book "A Room of One's Own." It is at the end of a beautifully written paragraph describing the luncheon party her character is at. Her character remains rather aloof from the rest of the party, choosing to sit in a picture window watching the signs of the approaching autumn, and thinking to herself. Contemplating the festivities going on around her. Here is my favorite section of the paragraph:
"Meanwhile the wineglasses had flushed yellow and flushed crimson; had been emptied; had been filled. And thus by degrees was lit, halfway down the spine, which is the seat of the soul, not that hard little electric light which we call brilliance, as it pops in and out upon our lips, but the more profound, subtle and subterranean glow, which is the rich yellow flame of rational intercourse. No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself."
I love this paragraph. I love the situation it describes: Among friends, settling into real, deep, meaningful conversation. The moment when all of our masks drift away and we reveal our true selves to each other. Time disappears and we appreciate the moment we are in, while we are in it.
This is obviously something that can only happen in person. I intend to use this blog to portray as well as possible through written word, the important moments in my life. The ones I appreciate while they are happening. I view it as a letter I have to write only once, and let family and friends choose to read it or not to read it.
Group B:
Motorcycles! There's Seth!
Those pictures were from the "fam" or familiarization run. Once we knew what it meant, Jen and I kept saying familiarization run, because it sounds more normal than saying "fam run." I guess to us that just sounded incomplete/stupid. Anyway, during the familiarization run the whole group went up together, but during normal timed runs, they went up one at a time.
Here he comes at Checkpoint 1!
"Bike Nine by Check One."
