By: Séan Hendley
By now you should have seen a bunch of articles about the various dealerships we visited on our road trip when we wend down to The Cape to collect the Suzuki GSX1000GX. This is the actual trip report, which started with a ridiculously early Monday morning trip to OR Tambo International Airport…
We were offered a long term demo by Suzuki Motorcycles South Africa on their GSX-S1000GX, the only catch was that we had to pick the bike up from Suzuki South in Plumstead, Cape Town and ride it back to JoBurg.
My interest was immediately piqued as I quietly enquired about the route or time limit as well as budgetary constraints. The answers to all my enquiries were, ride whatever route that you feel will be most appropriate. Be back by Friday, (no mention of which Friday was made), and don’t be stupid with the fuel and credit cards.
Do have fun and bring us back a lekker story. WELL NOW! How can I refuse such a lekker offer?
The Bike:
The Suzuki GSX-S1000GX is Suzuki’s latest, greatest, most technologically advanced and kitted model to date. Suzuki touts it as their “Sports Crossover”, which is fairly accurate in my humble opinion – more on that in my review of the bike and how it was to tour 2,300km’s in 5 days in a dedicated article shortly, this is my story about riding up South Africa.
The GSX-S1000GX instrument cluster employs a 6.5-inch full-colour TFT LCD screen with custom graphics and readouts designed to provide the rider with instant access to a variety of information. When I got back to JHB, Jannie from Bikeshop Boksburg showed me how to connect my phone to the screen for a lot more very useful functionality. (Thank You Sir). Next time, I’ll read the manual first, I could have used that on my trip.
The next bit of top notch new tech is a first for Suzuki, in the form of the Suzuki Advanced Electronic Suspension (SAES) which offers a broad range of settings that support everything from aggressive sport riding to long distance touring. Toggling through the on screen display you can easily change from solo rider to rider with pillion or even rider with pillion and luggage.
I just like the feel and feedback of most electronic suspensions on rider with pillion, so that is what I eventually settled on for the majority of the ride.
Those are the two major features that I noticed right off the bat, the other stuff we will chat about in the next feature
Yes, I did all of that…. And much more on similarly great roads, if not better and definitely much nicer scenery – if you could imagine that.
The Ride:
DAY 1 – I picked the bike up with exactly 0.00km on it – most people might be happy about that – me not so much. Let me me explain, 0.00km means that no test ride/shakedown ride has been done, and with over 2,000kms of solo riding ahead of me in the the vast hinterland that is the Karoo I was justifiably apprehensive. Fortunately, I had booked two days in Cape Town visiting dealers and customers in the area – go check out those articles on this website, some mighty interesting things happening in Cape Town. I got in some sight seeing while I was there and managed to knock out about 200 kays and am happy to report that my apprehension was unfounded.
My old mate, Andrew King, (ex-KingTec M/cycles) is DP as well as workshop manager at Suzuki South and runs a tight ship, so the bike was right!
From Plumstead I headed out to Durbanville to book into my diggs before wandering up the freeway to Paarl to go have a wander around RAD Paarl’s new premises. It is such a lekker place to be with such good people that I only got going again as the sun was hangin quite low over the western horizon.
With Franschhoek only a stone’s throw away I decided to go and ride the pass to close out the day.
There are road works happening along the way, which had the traffic backed up at the contra flows, but with the Suzuki’s extremely enthusiastic acceleration and fairly diminutive girth I boomed up ahead quite quickly. Good thing too, as by now the shadows were getting longer than my waffling.
Once I cleared the congestion the road is a smooth and flowing bit of riding Nirvana through tunnels of green with shots of autumn reds, oranges and yellows breaking up the greenery. Mountains to the left of me, winelands to the right and here I am riding my Suzuki with a view.
Franschhoek is a special place, but my goal was to get properly acquainted with the Suzi’s handling dynamics in some serious twistys and also spend a bit of time carving up the pass. I have ridden many and vastly varied bikes up the Franschhoek Pass, so I have a fairly good bearing on what I want and don’t want a bike to do up there.
Sadly, there are big chunks of the pass that have washed down the mountain,which are cordoned off by unmanned contra flows, so tilting around a sweeping bend and then suddenly having to pull up really tested the bikes brakes, my reaction times and the tensile strength of my undergarments.
After the second such incident, I dialled it back a bit and took a casual wander to the top for a few pics before heading back down into town for another pic or two and the first of many refuels on this trip.
It was back out through Paarl, onto the freeway chasing the setting sun and in to Cape Town rush hour traffic to meet an old friend for dinner. In a lot of ways, Cape Town rush hour, especially in diminishing light can be quite manic, but it’s still nothing like Fourways rush hour.
The taxis behave for the most part, theres not a pothole as far as the eye can see or a wheel could feel and most drivers are courteous.
What country is this?
After a leisurely dinner I had a 20km ride out along ContermansKloof back to my hotel in Durbanville – in the pitch dark, along some very twisty roads.
DAY 2 – A visit to the LEATT laboratory the next morning took place after breakfast. That was fun! Durbanville Hills area is gorgeous! Rolling wheat fields ready for harvest, interspersed with wine farms, equestrian estates bisected by ribbons of flowing black tarmac and not too much traffic. I had a bit of time on my hands and managed a couple of runs along this bit of heaven before my meeting.
A couple of hours and another quick flip through “The Hills” later, I was on the freeway and heading into town. The freeways in this part of the country morph between traditional freeways and main roads through towns, so no sitting back and engaging cruise control for km after km, you have to have your wits about you here – but it’s all perfectly smooth, all the traffic lights work, all the road markings are clear, no missing manhole covers or overflowing sewers and no old plastic packets decorating the sidewalks….
Again – what country is this?
The ain’t no JoBurg or Pretoria city centre. I had my phone mounted to the handlebars for the maps and not once did I worry about some pillik grabbing it and running off. The cops are different too. Cape Town city has a lot of one ways that had me and the GPS arguing, necessitating a couple of quick u-turns, one of which was completely illegal and in front of a cop.
My GP plate and my intense quizzing of the phone on my bars merely prompted a rolled down window and friendly, “Izz minheeerrrr okayyy?”
I explained my challenge and he quickly pointed me in the right direction with a grin and a compliment for the Suzuki GSX-S1000GX.
The rest of the day was spent wandering around the city centre and then battling severely constipated traffic off to Claremont.
As the shadows started to get long, I had earned a sunset on BloubergStrand and clawed my way through another evening of Cape Town rush hour traffic. This side of Cape Town is postcard perfect with old colonial mansions now B&B’s lining the main drag.
Blouberg, well I just don’t have the words, but I got the pics which tell it a lot better than I do. I do understand why everybody wants to live here. As the sun set I found myself a chilled spot for a pizza where I could watch the sunset and the lights come up over Table Bay, and writing this, the memories of it has my soul just wanting to go back there. Then it was another night ride through the peripheral city suburbs and back onto the pitch dark ContermansKloof road to my hotel, by now I was a bit more ready for that road in the dark and actually enjoyed the contemplative solace of the light puddle from the headlight. I now understand the Capetonian attitude, “Shwaahhh man, look at the mountain maaannnn,” I had a very good sleep that night.
And that is as far as we get here – Part 2 “Hitting The Road into the wilderness alone.” coming soon……..
