Do you remember photo albums?
We always bought them, but either never got around to putting more than one batch of photos into it, or after a few years the sticky transparency over each page lost its stickiness and all the photos fell out.
These photos were then put into shoe boxes, inside books or drawers and usually disappeared over time or got eaten by fish moths. Occasionally a few photos reappear reminding you of long forgotten good times.
These pics appeared while I was hunting for a packet of curtain hooks !
Although I sometimes feel old enough to have had a pet dinosaur, this is me at Sudwala Caves 33 years ago. An epic 9000km trip around South Africa on a motorbike.
This photo was taken when cameras and phones were never mentioned in the same sentence,and it cost a fortune to have all your pics developed when you came home… and you waited about 7 days for 18 great pics and 18 duds.
Those were the days of petrol restrictions, you had to plan ahead as petrol stations closed at 6pm and did not open on Sundays.
This was the dream bike we did the trip on, ultra modern in its day, a Honda 1000cc CBX 6 cylinder. All that means is it was heavy, fast and chewed petrol. So far nothing has beaten the feeling of riding that bike down the Long Tom Pass, or shivering in the mist up the Swartberg Pass and emerging into the sunshine at the top.
Moving on a few years where children dictated the bike stayed in the garage and a second hand VW Kombi camper and tent was acquired. Fantastic inside with a double bed, cupboards, fridge and gas cooker, the engine was not so great and blew up on the second trip from Cape Town to Knysna. This resulted in a weekend in Swellendam as ATM’S did not exist, we had to wait until Monday when the banks opened to draw money for a reconditioned engine. ZAR 2200, in those days that was the equivalent of about 2 or 3 months combined salaries.
So the curtain hooks were not found, but I spent a few happy hours remembering good times and thinking about how things have changed.
Life was most certainly lived at a slower pace then, perhaps more planning was required, but the excitement of the start of a road trip is the same, time for another one soon I think.
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