Osama B’s – Race Report 2009 (Day 3 - Final day) by Bruce Turvey

Day Three – Comeback time for the Pipe and Tweak

“These okes are muck, and the jockeys nubile toasted herself trying to get away from us yesterday, so let’s finish these lurkers.” That was the plan, but without a trace of navigational skill between us, it was always going to be tough to follow the pack and find the six or so minutes we needed once we knew where we were. But that was the plan and we were sticking to it.

For the first time in my racing life, I spent most of the day enjoying the Swazi scenery with about 58 other riders. So lost were we, man. The slow pace wasn’t suiting our riding style. Narcotix, loving being in the lead pelican, summed it up. “Okes, I blow in two hours whether I’m riding or standing, I have one and a half left, could someone please make a decision.” There were very little decisions being made until a cat on a motorbike told us where to go, and the race was back on….sort of. More getting lost, more milling about and we kind of muddled our way to the snack area again. Sneak of sneaks!! The jockey was off like a shot while the rest of us were taking in a potato and some energy loob. “Pipe, the jockey’s doing a sneak!!” We tossed our snacks and ran after them still chewing and drooling replenishment items. After a few big ones, we had caught them. Life was good again, we had the jump on the matching okes from Cyclebad and could put the hurting down – until we got lost again. And sure enough, we were a happy little group again.

Chances of victory were looking slim. Pipe and I were muttering stuff like, “do you know where we are, cos when you do, we gotta dump the clutch.” Took us a while to work things out, we finally did, but not very far from home. Like a jack in the box, the Pipe and I were breaking like mine workers on a Friday afternoon. Big gear on front, standing and pumping like Rocco Sifreddi on summer holidays – we were gone. A little look back saw a chase without much anger. Things were looking up again, as long as you didn’t ask the legs how they were feeling. Crying out in pain no doubt, with the Pipe up ahead yelling “Cmon son.” Fitting, cos I felt like a small child getting beaten by the Swazi mountain. World of pain, a quick summit and a run in with Mickey’s Madness. Watching the Pipe faceplant in front of the cameraman raised my spirits somewhat, but what happened thereafter has to be age restricted to be fair. We basically drop kicked, threw and yanked our bikes over The Madness. A clattering mess, we arrived on the tar getting yelled at by a long skinny local in a one piece biking suite in what must have been some local dialect. We understood little of what he said, but took it to mean “hurry the *&(*$ up.” So we did, and spanked it over the line in first place. Now we watched the clock and counted down the time. Sure enough, the Boys Blue had made a hash of The Madness and victory was ours. So sweet it was, man. And just when we thought things couldn’t get more entertaining…..the cuzzies from the coast come caning it towards the finish – give each other a longing look and go for the high five, only to entangle their bikes and land beak first, sliding in a dustball over the finish. It was spectacular, but did cost Craig a collar bone. Cheap at the price. What a day, what a week, what a millennium!!!!



Night 3 – The most important stage by far

The festivities kicked off early. The bikers wanted to see if they could drink the Maguga pub dry – and I think they did. By the end we had resorted to Malibu and Pepsi cos the beers, the cane and the rum were overs. The blur of feeding, the odd speech, some more zulu dancing, not to mention the disturbing imagery of Boris topless in an orange G-string busting out moves to ZZ top, was nearly all it took to round off another memorable Swazi Frontier.

Some misguided attempt by some French lady to end the jol early was ill received. “Bluh, bluh, you are disturbing le guests!” was responded to by “We are the frikking guests, and we haven’t ridden one lap of Swaziland and over The Brutals to go to bed early. We left Europe to get away from you lot, leave us alone! And touch that DJ system at your peril” The party raged on uninterrupted.

Who could forget though, the piece de resistance so generously imparted on us by Narcotix. Always having the last say, he hit the middle of the “dancing ring,” bust out some well clevva break dance moves terminating in him spinning on his head and nailing the stiff little man landing to the maximum. He then got up, gave the okes a bow, and retired. Respect!!

Another top race, a top crowd, unreal organization, inspirational sponsorship, spanking scenery, off the scale mountain biking and a ballistic bender. Again, big it up to Fossil and Les for a special occasion. Only thing wrong with this dice is…we have to wait about 349 days til the next one.