Duane_Bosch

Guys just some thoughts from someone who has been through the misery of having a bike stolen, paid out, recovering the bike and having the insurance company take the bike back. 1. Don't take the law into your own hands. Best case the oke selling the bike will lay a charge of theft against you for stealing your own bike. Worst case. Well use your imagination. 2. Don't buy the bike back. (I did this) All you're doing is rewarding crime and you're also telling the scumbags what the bikes are worth 3. If insurance has paid you out THE BIKE NO LONGER BELONGS TO YOU. Inform your broker and the police but that's it. 4. Would you really want it back? It's kind of like having a partner be unfaithful. It's just never the same again. I had a motorbike stolen and recovered and when I got it back the love affair was over. 5. The person selling the bike is unlikely to be the thief of the bike but he's probably a hardened criminal. See point #1. 6. It's easy to be bok on a keyboard but actually getting in your car and driving into gang town to recover a bicycle is a whole different ball game. Sorry for your loss @Lee.M

Ja you also make valid points. I don't think there's a right or wrong answer to this whole bag vs cardboard box debate. It all comes down to what works for you. For me the cost and storage restraints of having 2 bike bags/boxes (my wife also rides) plus the advantage of the ability to rent road bikes in Europe make it a hard no.

I'll never take my own road bike to Europe again. On our Mallorca trip we tacked on 2 days in Paris and on our recent Spain trip we tacked on 2 days in Istanbul and 2 days in Tangier which would have been impossible if we had lugged 2 huge bike boxes across.

Unpopular opinion incoming. I've done multiple Alps trips, Italy, Mallorca and last year Southern Spain so this is a somewhat educated opinion. For international road rather rent. No hassle of bike boxes. which makes moving around a million times easier. Also your bike won't get wrecked and your rental bike is already there so no stressing about will my bike actually show up? As far as bike boxes go I'm generally against them unless you travel with a bike A LOT! They are massive so storage is a big issue for something you use at best a handful of times a year They tend to be super heavy Not to mention expensive For me carboard boxes from the bike shop are the way.

How often do you fly/are planning to fly with a bike and to where? Local/International? Roadie/MTB?

I don't carry a phone when I run but there was a guy phoning the cops from a safe distance when we ran past on the way down. I live 400m from chappies so we're often there to run/ride/walk etc. It's a beautiful place but the amount of dodgy **** that goes on up there is quite scary. And that's in the day time.

Someone i know who is a police reservist reckons they have these bit blitzes around the 16th of December and there's a bunch of fanfare and noise in the media to scare the people into hopefully behaving themselves and then the cops are effectively on skeleton staff because they also have kids and want to go on holiday in December. I have nothing to back this up. Just what i was told from someone who is a reservist cop.

This morning my wife and I went for a run on Chappies. And at one of the lookout spots there were 2 cars and a group of +-6 people drinking and HEAVILY inebriated. Party still happening from god knows when. There didn't look to be a designated driver so they're going to get behind the wheel of those cars on chappies. Blows my mind.

Just to clarify. That cheap as chips DH bike has done a Morzine trip and was just great.

I got a cheap as chips DH bike that only comes out when the hellsend shuttle days happen. Totally worth it for me.

I don't think so. He'll get a factory ride in WSBK quite easily if all the good rides are taken in Moto GP.

RIP to the riders who have lost their lives. Slightly off topic. In my family when we go out for dinner the standing agreement is the payer (usually me) gets to have a few beers. Use it, Don't use it.

Same. Watching that video was horrifying. I've ridden that road hundreds of times. Time to sell the wife's and my roadies and get back into mountain biking. When we were in Spain in September even on the busy B roads we felt completely safe. Like COMPLETELY 100% SAFE!

I can only post from my experience on this. My wife has a bike she never uses so I posted an ad on here 3 days ago. Within a few hours bikemarket messaged me with an offer. Was it lower than advertised? For sure. But here's the thing. I'm not in the business of selling bikes and I really don't feel like spending weeks dealing with oil rig workers and randoms querying if the bike is still available to then fall off of the planet. So off it goes to bikemarket. I'll stick to my job and I'll let them do theirs. I honestly hope they sell it for a tidy profit.

The stolen bike. Read my previous comments. All very stupid on my part. Oh and my then wife gave me ALL of the gears.

I bought it back. Nils Hansen spotted it being ridden in Woodstock. He bought it from the oke riding it who wasn't the thief. I then paid Nils. It was honestly a series of stupid and expensive mistakes on my part. I should have just let the bike go and not retrieved it. I did bid on the bike at the auction (it was a blind auction) but by then the love affair was over and I was happy to not win the auction.

Ok then the bike belongs to the insurance company and not you. The right thing to do is to report it to the insurance company. I made a HUGE mistake a number of years ago when I made an emotional decision to retrieve my stolen Morewood Makulu which was a much loved bike of mine. I'd already been paid by the insurance company and had already bought a new bike. Long story short I told my broker about the retrieval. She in turn had to inform the insurance company who came and collected the bike from me and sold it at auction. It's 3 years later so it's highly unlikely that the person selling it now is the original thief or even knows about the theft so going in guns blazing to retrieve a bike that doesn't belong to you will likely get you arrested for the very crime that you were a victim of.

Roczen has withdrawn from the series. Reportedly because he fulfilled his contractual requirements to race the majority of the series. So 3 out of 5 races completed. Cheers I'm out of here. Piss poor from him IMO. But the rider lineup is still stacked and with him gone there should be more of a dogfight for the title. Let's be real here. It's definitely a second tier series at this point but if you want to see the factory rigs and a 20 rider gate you're going to have to fork out big money and go to the US.

In 12 sleeps World Supercross is coming to CAPE TOWN!!!! This is a vanishingly rare opportunity to catch a world championship motorsports event in SA and even more rare to get it in Cape Town. My tickets were booked the day they came on sale. Super Amped.

It's not Moto GP but in 12 sleeps World Supercross is coming to CAPE TOWN!!!! This is a vanishingly rare opportunity to catch a world championship motorsports event in SA and even more rare to get it in Cape Town. My tickets were booked the day they came on sale. Super Amped.

We live in HB so we're fortunate enough to have chappies within easy walking distance. My wife and I once went for a saunter up there on a Sunday afternoon. The amount of people that were CLEARLY in no condition to drive but were perched behind the wheel of a car boozing and smoking copious amounts of weed was terrifying.

There's always a well publicized "blitz" of road blocks and some public arrests for drink driving around the 2nd week of December and then it all goes quiet. All the traffic police also want to go on leave over Christmas.

Don't kid yourself. You live in one of the most violent and dangerous countries in the world. Depending on where you look SA ranks between #3 and #6 in the world for murder. We're also right up there when it comes to house robberies and car hijackings. And rape seems to be our national sport. Add to that a totally ineffective and massively underfunded and under staffed police force and millions of un vetted foreigners and a political elite who blame all of the countries failings on a single minority ethnic group. Oh and the armed response guy you entrust your life to when you press the panic button at 2am..... He earns 9k a month. He's not going to put his life on the line for you. If you live in a leafy high end suburb with security cams or a walled off estate you are paying for the illusion of safety. Nothing more.

Why do you need SAR insurance? I can only comment from my perspective. I'm part of a group called K9-SARA. We primarily use our dogs to search for missing people. If you'd followed the collapse of that building in George you would have seen a few of our members and their dogs also assisting in that tragedy. For the most part we are self funded and completely voluntary. We fall under WSAR (Wilderness Search and Rescue) If you hurt yourself on the mountain and WSAR is called out you are not billed. See their website for confirmation of this. https://wsar.org.za/