Thousands of bikers, riding everything from scooters to V8-powered trikes, descended on the normally quiet, family-orientated holiday town of Margate on the Kwazulu-Natal south coast last weekend for their own, two-wheeled Freedom Day celebration.
And what a celebration it was, as they enjoyed the privilege of having Beach Road closed to anything with more than three wheels, of having local law-enforcement stand smiling by as they rode past without number plates or silencers, their exhaust note setting off the alarms of parked cars as they passed.
For this is a town that for one week of the year renames its main street Harley-Davidson Street, where businesses stay open until the last reveller straggles off to bed, and where the locals take as much pride in the gleaming machines parked in every available space as their riders do.
Africa Bike Week, the biggest free-entry motorcycle rally in South Africa, is hosted each year by America’s biggest motorcycle manufacturer, along with similar events in Europe, Indonesia, New Zealand and, of course, the United States.
Now in its fifth year, it has become a mainstream motorcycle event.
The majority of bikes at Africa Bike Week 2013 were made in Milwaukee, but there were machines bearing every nameplate you can think of - and a few that you won’t - adding to the diversity of riders casually rubbing shoulders along Harley-Davidson Street.
The whole length of the beach front was lined with elaborate displays set up by Harley dealers from all over South Africa, many featuring custom bikes built especially for the occasion, stalls selling bikewear and accessories, helmets, bike-oriented jewellery, an immense variety of fast foods and beverages, and even insurance!
Top South African bands and DJ’s kept the music going all day and most of the night on two sound stages, while jugglers, stilt-walkers and fire-dancers provided surprise entertainment at every corner.
But Bike Week is really about the bikes.
2013 marks the 110th anniversary of the founding of the Motor Company by Bill Harley and the brothers Davidson in a three by five-metre wooden shed (most Sarf Effricans would call it a wendy house) in the back yard of the Harley family home in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Harley-Davidson Africa brought along a huge range of demo models, set up not one but two Jump Starts - real motorcycles mounted on a rolling road so that even somebody who has never sat on a motorcycle can start them up, let out the clutch, go through the gears and feel the vibration of the world’s most iconic V-twin engine - and riding lessons in the car park of an adjoining building.
Milwaukee sent along a fourth-generation member of motorcycling’s royal family – Bill Davidson, unassuming and down-to-earth, forever living in the shadow of his flamboyant father Willie G, but with a genuine love of biking (he used to race when younger and arrived at Africa Bike Week at the end of a 1500km tour of South Africa) and the patience to spend interminable hours chatting with riders, signing autographs and posing for pictures.
Davidson started riding before he started school and grew up listening to Willie G and his uncles discussing the running of the company the way most of us watch TV. He says he always knew he wanted to get involved in the family business, although there was never any pressure to do so - he has a brother whose only connection with Harley-Davidson is that he rides one.
FAMILY HERITAGE
After a long stint in product development, where he spent a lot of time riding competitors’ machines to learn what the motor company was up against, he is now vice-president in charge of the Harley-Davidson museum, an appropriate niche for his somewhat introspective persona and deep appreciation of his family heritage.
That shows most when he’s asked about the closure of the Buell division after the economy tanked in 2008. Erik Buell was and is a friend, he says, and long discussions went back and forth about possible ways to save the radical sports bikes he’d created before the axe finally fell. He insists that, in the light of the company’s strong current position, it was the right decision, but it’s plain he doesn’t feel good about it.
Davidson and his girlfriend Michelle Radcliffe - also a rider in her own right - spent a good portion of the weekend down on the beach front talking to the bikers, but in the evenings the place to be was on the balcony of the Keg and Galleon overlooking Main Road, as the riders paraded up and down, most without helmets, number plates or silencers, accelerating hard past the crowded hotel to make as much noise as possible.
POLICE ESCORT
Many of the larger clubs gathered outside the town to make a ceremonial entrance on Friday evening. At least one - Steel Wings - was big enough to justify a police escort; the cops made the most of this opportunity to be part of the action with blue lights flashing and sirens yelping, and who can blame them?
By late Saturday afternoon it was difficult to walk on Harley-Davidson Street, and almost impossible to get bikes in or out. The noise level was indescribable, with engines revving, well-lubricated riders shouting to be heard and Daai Girl Band from Pretoria belting out a high-voltage rendition of Mustang Sally.
Up on Main Road a large crowd of locals gathered outside the Keg, yelling encouragement as the more outrageous riders - mostly on Japanese bikes - went from ear-splitting revving to burnouts and doughnuts, accompanied by clouds of acrid rubber smoke, that went on almost literally all night.
MASS RIDE
Small wonder, then, that things were a little quieter early on Sunday morning as 3242 motorcycles gathered on the roof of the nearby Shelly Centre for the 34km mass ride. They were led by two local traffic officers riding Police Specials provided for the occasion by Harley-Davidson Africa, through Port Shepstone, Ramsgate and Margate, along streets lined with locals for whom Africa Bike Week is the highlight of the year.
The procession was so long that I was able to stop twice to take photographs and still arrive at the end point before the last bikes came in.
By then the area in front of the hotel had been fenced off for the ride-in bike show, a stunning demonstration of just what is possible with two (or three!) wheels and an engine. Entries ranged from the brilliant to the bizarre, including a dainty little café racer based on a 1969 Honda CB175 sports twin, a three-cylinder two-stroke DKW car converted into a trike and literally acres of chrome and show-class airbrushed paintwork.
DRAGON RIDER
The standard of the nearly 60 entries was astonishing, considering that most were privately owned and regularly ridden, and the prize-giving by Bill Davidson was almost an hour late as the judges struggled to pick the winners in six categories, but in the end the winner of the Freestyle category was Louwrens Miller’s entirely homebuilt S&S-engined Flathead Power, a superbly detailed evocation of a classic flat-tracker.
Overall honours in the Modified Harley-Davidson class went to Lezanne De Koning’s Dragon, an imaginatively styled Street Bob with its headlight shining out of the dragon’s mouth, and its indicators in the eyes.
Most of the bikes to be seen on Main Road on Monday morning, however, were festooned with luggage as the riders geared up for the road home. Africa Bike Week had come and gone, leaving behind a kaleidoscope of vivid memories and some oddly-shaped burns in the tar – until next year.