Friday 7 July 6:23pm My grandfather could never be called a bush mechanic. He is such a meticulous man. Patient in a way I have rarely seen. He works slowly and methodically, measures and remeasures. When a screw seems to be stripping he assesses it. Thinks about it- he never forced things. Once when my motorcycle started cutting out whilst driving on the highway I managed to get it to a town with the patient help of a fellow biker (whose name I have forgotten). The petrol attendant noticed me in my orange rain suit and asked if I needed help and I explained that my bike is broken and I was trying to fix it but didn't really know what I was doing. She then actually literally pointed me towards the car of the local mechanic who was sitting in it with his daughter. He called his friend over and they walked over to my bike and helped me push it to their workshop. This guy just unscrewed the fuel tap from my tank without taking out or turning it over or nothing. No precautions - no careful rag held nearby. I ended up having to plug the fuel tap hole with my bare finger. Standing in a literal massive puddle with my finger down my tank I realized that I might have walked into one of those situation where you should have not trusted someone else to work on your bike. He still seemed confident even at this stage. When he had found a filter to insert, he poked the tap back up gushing out more fuel out and failing to get it in place. This is miraculously the first point where I lost my cool and started ordering them around. I think they listened to me partly because they realized that this was a mess and partly because I was very angry. I made them empty the fuel in another container and move out of of the now flooded garage shop to outside. Our nostrils had started burning. Then I removed the tank so that he can work on it not under a bike in a puddle of petrol. We then realized he had broken the filter of my fuel tap which also sealed the tap to the tank. He then made multiple plans with oversized pipes and things to get it all together again. Anyway I feel like this guy- (who in end managed to fix my bike and let me drive home six hours safely afterwards where I would have been stuck without this drama) much more displays the hacking and slashing of what I expect from a bush mechanic. My grandfather I would trust to work on the most valuable vehicle. So I stayed an extra day and he showed me how to bleed my brakes on the back- he very carefully welded my side stand foot bigger. He remade the brackets I made for my LEDs so that they can bend down lower- previously shining up too high. We attempted to change my front brake fluid too but the screws on the top reservoir remain stuck and he stopped before really damaging the stupid philips head screws. He told me that if it gets desperately low I should attempt to bleed it from before with a tube and a holder of brake fluid. Today soon after eating another delicious breakfast and after being given more food to take with by my grandmother and the most beautiful orange flask, I set off towards polokwane. I made it there quickly then set up my gps to take me to the Zimbabwean Beitsbridge border. I made the mistake of checking no toll roads and it took me on a very fun but quite terrifying sandy dirt road. I think I should probably attempt to adjust my bikes shocks with the added weight. Tonight I am sleeping outside Makhado in my tent. I am camping a distance behind a petrol station off of the N1.

I asked my grandpa about it( who used to work as mechanic as a young man) he didn’t want to touch the bike saying he doesn’t know much about bikes - but eventually he looked at it with me and I showed him my idle cable adjusters missing knob and he started making plans to replace the knob. As we were looking at this with flashlights in the dark I spotted these dark deposits around the carburetor which made me worry that it’s seals were bad. I then noticed that the clamp that was meant to hold the air intake onto the carburetor was completely loose!!! So we tightened this and oupa made me a new knob out of electrical connector blocks.