2011-04 CMA Nationals

Basically I can summarise the CMA Nationals as follows:

Friendly locals. Rain. Hospitality. Rain. Great food. Rain. Good Fellowship. Rain. Good Hosts. Mud. New ablutions with sufficient hot water. Gum Boots. American volunteers and, of course, rain.

The host "City" was a little known place by the name of Clocolan. Don't worry too much if you don't know where it is, because I had to Google it as well.

Suffice it to say that it's in the Free State, just this side of the Lesotho border.

Thereza and I arrived at the camp site on the Tuesday before the Rally officially started, because we enrolled in the Leadership Training Seminar.

The seminar was held at the local NG Church in Clocolan and they prepared meals for us there as well...In typical small town style!

Made us realise how much we miss real hospitality here in the "big cities".

The photo on the right shows the American volunteers who were willing to spend some of their time to come help us by setting up the camp sites and prepare the venue for the rally goers.

Interesting part of this is the fact that none of these volunteers were actually under 40! In fact, and I say this with all due respect, most of the volunteers could have been my grandparents!!

Made me reconsider my take on "servant-ministry", I can tell you!

The camp site was on the show grounds on the edge of town. This meant there was a lot of open space around a rugby field, with some buildings and some trees...In fact, there were quite a lot of trees!

Before the Nationals, a team of people went to Clocolan and helped them build additional ablution facilities so that we could accommodate all the rally goers, as well as to add some value to the fact that we were actually going to "invade" the small town. (Mutually beneficial arrangement!)

The camp site was decorated by the locals, who provided food for us and the whole place had the atmosphere of a bazaar...Which was what happened, because the locals decided to combine their annual bazaar with our Nationals. (Some more mutually benificial arrangements.)

Food was good, wholesome, home-made meals and was great. Entertainment was in the form of evening praise and worship services in a big tent on the rugby field.

There were also ample opportunities to participate in outrides and other on-field entertainment, like the rider skills challenge.

You may have noticed the mention of "rain" a couple of times in the introduction? Well, suffice it to say that it rained so much during the week of the rally, that the local Co-op ran out of stock of gum boots (Wellingtons) for the first time in their history!

On the Thursday afternoon of the rally, I packed myself into the car and headed back to Pretoria to go fetch the kids, who were still in school up to the Easter weekend!

We left Pretoria early on Friday morning and the photo on the left gives you an indication of what Pretoria looked like at 3am after some more rain in Pretoria, as well.

Lovely trip back to Clocolan with the kids and myself enjoying music and some interesting discussions all along the way.


I had the opportunity of meeting up with a couple of the volunteers, like Uncle Johnny (left) and Mike (right).

It was so nice to swap stories and hear what's going on in the biking scene in other parts of the world. Experience I will not forget in a hurry!

Looking forward to the rally this coming year...Watch this space!