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The Van, we played tetris
Leaving Cape Town...
The Wagon Wheel, day 2
That's how we roll
!!POP!!
Nowhere
The cause
Some road kill
Whay are these rocks so black?
Tyler found the oldest tattoo machine known to man, the kameel-doring
Some creepy small town shit
Jesus was crucified with cable ties
open road
Tired
The Breakdown
We drove over some of those people from Orania, see their blood is not red
The Breakdown continues
Setting up the station
Gevaarlike Tjappies
Ancient methods
POP
Final
Hanging
The POPped tyre
Lee driving a broken truck with a popped tyre, dude has some skill
Old mind shaft in kimberley
Stylized letters in the road? isn't that against the law? the government is rap-spraying in the road.
Some round table, free masons shit... fuck this town
These are the real gangsters
Final destination - jo'burg
taxi, vibing!
Dancing feet!
Happy reading
Mission: road tripping from Cape Town to Johannesburg via Kimberley, have fun, skate, paint, tattoo and hustle!
Crew: Tyler B. Murphy (S.O.S), Lee Herbert (S.O.S), Marcello Lawrence (Truth Crew) and Me (L.H.S)
We started off on Tuesday the 25th of Oct. We where meant to leave Cape town late morning, but I had some difficulties with my panel van's roof rack or the lack of a roof rack, although this wasn't the reason why we only left at 4pm the afternoon, Tyler did a 5 hour portrait which he started at around 10 am and i proceeded to find a roof rack for the van. this was a essential part of the trip seeing that we basically packed up the whole of Sins Of Style to go and represent Cape Town in full force. Sonja came around later the day to give us some Sailor Jerry Rum for the trip...
We packed the van and headed out of Cape Town, next stop was Marcello's house to pick him up on the way out. Half way there we realized the wheels of my van was not really handling the weight and was scarfing against the body of the van... i tried to convince myself and Lee that is was the chairs we put in the back that was making the noise, Lee wasn't having it. i failed.
We arrived at Marcello's house after getting lost for about an hour... Plan B was to take Marcello's Land Rover, the ideal road trip van. All in and it seemed like the best plan!
Unloaded the van and proceeded to repack everything in and onto the Land Rover.
Finally 3 hours later we are on our way to Johannesburg, our first stop over is in Beaufort West.
5 hours drive later and allot of Tech 9 we made it to Beaufort West. Found some men in blue to guide us to the cheapest hotel in town, The Wagon Wheel... rad, booked in and ready to sleep!
Day 2
Got up early and went on the hunt for some food, needles to say we didn't find much, hit the supermarket and got some rolls, cheese and meat!
We got back on the road, heading for Kimberley, our next stop over.
Driving through South Africa is one of, if not the one thing that makes me feel content, once you hit the Karoo, you get cut off from civilization, nothing man made except the road for 100's for miles, South Africa is amazing. the people, the land the country... so much potential so much history, good and bad. fuck it, i love this place. i'm a African.
We stopped over in a little place called Hope Town, almost seems that all hope has left that place.. refueled, checked water and oil and wile waiting me and Tyler had a little skate, popped up this sweet little 8 brick high wall and just rolling around, with the old South Africa prominent in this town, without mention we had fun pissing people off just by skating around, and needles to say the tattoos gave us some frowns! Just small distance from Orania... do some research...
back on the rod and heading to Kimberley, driving about 120km's a hour on a straight open road we felt something weird, car started swerving a bit followed by a loud POP!
Trying to figure out how this happened we walked back about 150m in the direction we cam from, found a big bolt in the road that was solidly lodged into the tarmac, around the same spot was evidence of probably 10 other tyres that burst on the same spot... found some road kill, big iguana! Wheel fixed! drove for about an hour and stopped due to road works, as we pulled away the car stalled, bit worried but it seemed like it was the battery, started the LR with a battery packed, back in business we wen on our mission, about 100km's before Kimberley the car cut out. Opened the hood and it overheated... thermostat and head gasket fucked. Phoned roadside assistance, luckily this was covered by Marcello's insurance, so now the wait begins.
Tyler found some Kameel dorings, and came up with the rad idea to hand poke us all tattoos "POP". This is something that Tyler is getting pretty good, he hand poked all Ninja's tattoos form Die Antwoord... he ended up only hand poking himself with the thorn... but we all got "POP" hand poked at the convention but lets save that for later
After waiting for about 2 hours the tow truck showed up, Tyler and Marcello got in the truck and Me and Lee stayed in the LR on the back of the truck... Lee drives really well!
We arrived in Kimberley at the 24 hour mechanics, pretty fucking hardcore dude, clearly with the force of Orania strong in them and not liking us city boys we had a bit of a communication barrier... seeing that i can speak the Taal best out of us 4, i did some talking and its INSANITY to see how a language can brake a barrier...
so the LR stays with them for the night and we will get a quote for repairs in the morning.
So off we go with Pieter the tow truck driver to book us in at the Formula 1 hotel, a glorified pigeon hole, you can, if you want, and i'm not lying, have a shower while taking a dump. ingenious. Sleep
Day 3
Wake up in our pigeonhole and ready to eat! we need to be out of the hotel by 12pm so we decide to go on a mission to find breakfast and walk to the other side of town to go and look at the biggest man made hole in history, Kimberley se Gat!
We missioned through the town and realized that there where no youth present anywhere in this place, and there was a abundance of workshops, repair shops and engineering factories... the city of diamonds. We arrived the Gat to find it was closed for the day, and it was guarded by some seriously big steroid fueled dudes. It was closed due to a "function".
Being one of the richest diamond spots in the world, i strongly doubt that it was a "function", more than likely a international sale of blood diamonds... do you think we are that fucking ignorant? these sales are normally held under extreme secrecy, but so obvious at the same time seeing that they blocked off all the roads around the Gat with some serious roadblocks and highly over paid war mongers... or maybe i'm just being silly? maybe, maybe not...
so after the disappointed of not being able to see the biggest made made hole, made by years of slavery and greed. we decided its time to eat!!
after some food we went back to the hotel to get our bags to head back to the repair shop and find out what was the deal with the LR, seeing that it was 12pm and we still haven't hear a word, we needed to be in Jo'burg by that evening seeing that the convention starts Friday and its still 5hours drive from Kimberley. While walking with all our luggage along the main road some dude drove past us and hooted, i flagged him down and he pulled over, good people still exist.
Tumi is his name and he restored some of my faith in humanity.
He gave us a ride to the repair shop only for us to find the hoof of the LR wasn't even opened yet, but lets not get into that. Tumi took us to AVIS car rental, they wanted to charge us R5800 to rent a car to drive 5ookm and then pay them a additional R2000 to return the car from Jo'burg to Kimberley, can you say WHAT THE FUCK?
Tumi knew some people and he hooked us up with the Taxi bosses of Kimberley, needles to say they owned the town. B.I.G Notorious and Biggie Smalls, enough said. We know people that own Kimberley and a couple of taxi's.
We drove to Jo'burg in our rented taxi with a trailer...
We arrived that night...
Convention update to follow, this was only getting there...
