With the festering season but a dim babalaas memory and all those stupid resolutions laughed off, it was now time to visit my old (my very old – established in 1967) bike club and check out how they were hitting off the new season.
So I shot up to the Big Smoke (JHB) and visited the CMC (Classics Motorcycle and drinking Club) at their converted bowling green clubhouse, welcoming back the heroes of the Swartbrand Run.
Let me tell you the story. On the first weekend of each year the CMC experiences a non-club event called ‘The Swartbrand Run’. Which is an informal foray into the Magaliesberge by anyone favouring a classic (25 years or older), who is male, and who is over 16. This shebang and its chauvinistic rules is the creation of one notorious noncommittee member Colin Blackburn (Blackburn, Swartbrand - geddit?). Colin belongs to a faction of the CMC called the ‘Copper Gang’ – a buncha reprobates who mimicked 50’s rockers by shoving copper pipes up their silencers and strutting around in T shirts emblazoned with “ I’ve had mine extended..”
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