Nooitgedacht Races

The back road off the “hill” to Nooitgedacht was a typical un-paved bauxite road, dusty in the dry season, mucky in the rainy season. Just past the bottom of the hill was a sharp left hand turn that got particularly mucky – about 8 inches deep and virtually impossible to ride a bike through. But that didn’t stop us. We used to race our bicycles down to the little lake where we fought the clay wars (see separate post on clay wars) in order to stake out the best territory. And of course the guys from “up-the-hill” were trying to get there before the guys from “down-the-hill” who came from the other direction. The up-the-hill guys (I was living with den Hartogs at the time) would come screaming down the hill as fast as we could go, trying to use momentum to carry us through the mucky zones. Of course we tried to stay in the ruts left by the last Land Rover to pass by, but that was a tall order as the clay-bauxite mud was slippery and the Rover would be sliding and weaving around leaving a tough trail to follow, and the ruts were so deep, the bike pedals could get caught in the muck anyway. It was pretty rare to make it through the two big mucky zones without wiping out. Usually the bike would just run into deep mud and get bogged down, but there were many spectacular wipeouts at fairly high speed, especially at the sharp turn. Making a sharp turn at high speed on a slippery surface on a bicycle is just asking for trouble, but it was the only chance we had of not having to laboriously push our bikes through all the deep mud. Wiping out into 8 or 10 inches of soft clay was not too bad unless there happened to be a rock somewhere in there – ouch. Fortunately, no serious mishaps occurred. Our bikes took a beating though, we were always straightening handlebars and of course had to wash them down when we got home. Naturally as young boys, we found wipeouts by others to be totally hilarious, but there was also an element of showmanship. If you were going to wipe out, you might as well ham it up and put on a show. Some wipeouts gained legendary status, such as the flip over the handlebars or the face-first power dive. I still smile when recalling some of the antics.