10 000 bikers party in Margate

More than 10 000 motorcycles rolled through the toll-gates of the kwaZulu-Natal South Coast at the weekend, according to the toll-road operators, heading for Margate and the second annual Africa Bike Week.

Every large motorcycle gathering has its own feel; this one was laid-back, uncompetitive and easy-going. There were no forms to fill in and no registration fees; any rider on any (supposedly roadworthy) machine was welcome;

Many of the more outrageous custom-built bikes would never pass a roadworthy test; at least two enduro bikes were in Sunday morning's mass ride but the local law smiled indulgently and held normal traffic to give the bikers right-of-way.

Nobody seemed fussed about what you rode or how much noise it made so there were very few burnouts or wheelies (outside of David Eager's breathtaking stunt shows - see the gallery!) and not much speeding.

Africa Bike Week was organised by Harley-Davidson and most of the bikes there were Harleys; the typical Harley rider wants you to see his bike as more than just a multicoloured flash going by, although it is de rigueur to accelerate very hard in first and second gears so everybody within 500m knows your Hog is running open pipes.

Nobody sneered at the magnificent touring bikes that rolled into town on trailers behind their air-conditioned, all-wheel driven owners; most of the machines arrived under their own power, albeit not all without incident.

One rider came more than 1000km from Mpumalanga, blew an oil-feed O-ring along the way and arrived with the right side of her bike's engine dripping oil - but she was there.

Big cruisers are expensive, the more heavily customised examples outrageously so. Their riders are successful people with nothing to prove, there to be see and be seen by people who love custom-style bikes as much as they do.

And Margate, a town that knows a money tree when it sees one, did them proud.

The entire length of Beach Road was closed to cars with booms manned by traffic officers at every entrance. Most of the parking on Main Street was reserved for bikes and Main Street itself was closed for an hour or more each day for Eager's stunt shows right in front of the Margate Hotel, which had put up a pub on the pavement and a grandstand overlooking the street for the occasion.

Harley dealers from acoss South Africa (and one from Morocco) put up marquees and there were tented shops (far too elaborate to be called mere "stalls") selling everything from bikes through accessories to clothing and insurance and rider-to-rider and bike-to-bike intercoms.

Then there was Tennessee Market Square, selling every kind of food you could think of and then some. Ever heard of currywurst? I hadn't, but you should try it sometime.

And of course pubs - permanent and tented - selling huge quantities of beverages mild to wild. Yet I never saw anybody falling-down drunk; it wasn't that kind of party.

BIKES THE STARS OF THE SHOW

There was a huge stage at each end of Beach Road - with almost continuous entertainment on both ranging from country music (Silver Creek Mountain Band) to hard rock (Black Era and Staaldraad) with fashion and dance shows in between.

But the stars of the show were the bikes - old and new, American, Japanese, German, Russian, British and Chinese, cruisers, off-roaders and race replicas, including a sprinkling of sidecar combinations and a larger number of trikes - parked mirror to mirror along Beach Road.

The street was crowded with bikers and locals all day and most of the night, bikes threading their way through the mass at walking pace.

Live music started at 11am on Saturday as a continuous stream of bikes rolled into town but it was stunt professional David Eager who kicked the party into top gear with a superb display of wheelies, stoppies and rolling burnouts on a fenced-off section of Main Street that he admitted afterwards was a little too short for comfort.

A brief shower of rain, minutes after the end of one stunt show, did little to dampen the party spirit as the music and the roar of engines went on until the small hours.

MASS RIDE

Nevertheless, Sunday morning started early as 2543 bikes gathered on the roof of the nearby Shelly Centre shopping mall for the start of the mass ride, a relaxed parade through the surrounding small towns where it seemed most of the inhabitants were waving at the side of the road and all traffic other than our procession had come to a stop.

In many places traffic in the opposite direction was blocked by the number of locals standing in the road to watch the bikes rumble by. Most of the riders never got out of third gear but only one bike blew a head gasket - and that was near the end of the ride.

The riders were just as cool. The ride created a feeling that, together, we'd done something special. In a way, it was a collective thank-you to the locals for hosting us and made fellow bikers of strangers on widely different machines.

Monday was dominated by the ride-in bike show - no trailer specials here, each entrant had to enter the arena under its own steam. The sheer variety of bikes on show was astonishing, from chrome-laden, stretched-out choppers to exquisitely airbrushed tourers.

PEOPLE'S CHOICE

The people's choice was a sports bike: Jan Olivier's metal-flake, yellow Honda Fireblade, with a stretched, single-sided swing arm for that "dragster" look, exquisitely detailed rims and hand-crafted, straight-through exhaust system.

The category winners were: