He is a good owner. Just last night he fitted a new clutch, cable, speedo cable, enlarged the port in my exhaust pipe and dropped my needle into the slide .4mm and tightened the engine mounting bolts Now I run right up to 110kmh, but boy is my piston dizzy.
So after a short ride out to the r1 gate to make sure I was reassembled properly, he loaded the flat tyre repair stuff, a bottle of water, filled my tank and we set off for Chilenda.
No sooner was I starting to build speed once on the T5 road, than the local police bike flashed his lights and I stopped, because I am law abiding. Show me your licence, he said. Tabledrain showed him his Oz licence and off we went. Hhmmmph, police bikes, who ever has so much chrome and what is it with those high bars!!
Into Munyama, an unofficial town of 50000 people, a turn left onto the dirt road that would lead to Chilenda. The name is a little misleading, it isn’t actually a place, it is a general area, so when you go down this road you end up at Chilenda Falls, which all the cars moan about going to as they all get muddy and dirty.
I detoured through the Lumwana General Hospital grounds.
A series of buildings, built with NGO funds, the government in Zambia never followed through and filled it with staff and tools of the trade. A sad monument to government , borrowing shall we kindly call it..
The road narrowed, the mud puddles expertly avoided all the while TD is on top standing on the pegs and waving at everybody shouting hello to the children that ran out towards the road.
For some reason he stopped at a locked water well, it must be because the country side accentuates my green
Weather wise it was a perfect day, cool air filtered through my air cleaner, good petrol, empty road( except for the goats, pushbikes, pedestrians and wandering children) all enjoyed at a very sedate 30 kmh. It needs to be understood that the road is also a footpath, people aren’t used to fast traffic, so a slow pace is best.
30km into the ride, 5 or 8 km short of the falls, as I powered up a slope out of a river crossing there was a very big crowd of people. Drain stopped and put his feet down and as always a crowd assembled. It turns out a wedding was in progress so rather than steal the limelight from the happy couple( and ride through a crowd of several hundred people) we turned ourselves around, TD got one guys hand out of his back pocket who was trying to lift some cash and off we went back to Munyama and the tar.
Along the way interesting sights were revisited. Here we have an abandoned school, the weeds and old chalkboards a reminder that money doesn’t grow on trees, even if the trees grow in the classroom.
Local bricks, made on site, the dirt coming from a 1000 year old ant hill, fired on site and turned into a building somewhere.
Look right, innovative engineering for the area,
look left, the standard home,
both deserted. The local area is not an economic powerhouse.
The area is dedicated to one chief, for his day he was THE MAN. i
He is still dead however.
Once back on the T5, I got my piston going as fast as it would go, the speedo was groaning because it could hardly count fast enough to keep up with the wheels..
We arrived at home safe, happy with our little jaunt and, for my part at least, ready for the run to Kitwe next weekend.
I hope Drain is happy with me, because that hole beside me is a fire pit…
