NAMPO – An agricultural show of epic proportions

It’s amazing where my job takes me. Never would I have thought of going to an agricultural show in the middle of nowhere, for even more than half a day. As part of my job of promoting the Can-Am Spyders, I support the various dealers in whichever way I can. Our dealer in Klerksdorp, Speed Bike, has a stand at NAMPO and has had for years. Once you manage an approval to have a stand there, you do everything in your power to keep it. Rules are strictly applied and the waiting list for stands is five years long. If you transgress a rule, you can be assured of losing your stand, so we were all read the riot act to make sure we toed the line.

“Piet Spoed” van Zyl, the owner of Speed Bike, doesn’t sell only two-wheeled bikes, but deals in ATVs and Spyders as well. For NAMPO, Piet gathers as many hands as he can get and I was one of the worker bees for the week. When I was told about the show and the scale of displays and the number of visitors, I wanted to know what they were smoking. And then when they told me how the farmers arrive at the show – light airplanes and helicopters – I wanted to smoke that stuff too.

I arrived at the show on Tuesday at around 10:30 – I stopped counting airplanes when I got to 20 because to carry on counting was pointless. There were eight helicopters, ranging from two-seaters to eight-seaters – I became a believer! From the minute I set foot on the stand I was busy, but at the end of the day was told that it was the quiet day – Wednesday was a bit busier. Well, THAT was an understatement! At any one time, there were 15 people at the Spyder stand, often more than that. Sitting down was not an option and I had to make do with one bottle of water the whole day. That night I fell into bed with just two Pro-Nutro breakfast bars as supper, I was just too tired to eat anything more complicated.

Of course the organisers could not have foreseen that the Wednesday was to be election day, so everybody was thoroughly unprepared for the number of visitors. By 10:00 the queue of cars was 35 km long and they had to close the gates, letting in one car only if one left. There were a total of 44 000 visitors through the gates just for the one day. I later heard that a bull at auction was sold for a record R8m. Unfortunately I didn’t have time to take a photograph of the number of airplanes and helicopters, but I was told that there were 45 and 25 respectively. The show was truly on an incomprehensible scale.

The show closed on Friday at 17:00 but I left at 14:00, stopping off for some North West biltong at a place called “Moerse Lekker Plek” which advertised “Flippen lekker biltong” – you just have to love the Afrikaans language!

NAMPO is known throughout the world, from the USA http://www.buyusa.gov/northdakota/nampo.html  to Australia http://www.austrade.gov.au/EventViewBookingDetails.aspx?EventID=2756 . To read more amazing statistics about NAMPO, go to www.nampo.co.za .

Would I go again next year? You bet I will! Despite working so hard, I would not miss it for the world!

Two of the "smaller" tractors....

Big daddy of the lot....

A little delivery truck

Our Spyders at the stand....

I’m SUCH a show-off!!

So the guys have been trying to get me on an RT-S for ages, playing on my ego and teasing me about not wanting to look old! I just plain refused because I love the Hindle growl and fun factor of Pynkie.

However, it’s part of my “job” so I hoiked up my skirts and got onto the RT-S a few days ago. Besides, the mileage on Pynkie was climbing and I’d like to sell her with less than 10,000 kilometres on the clock. The problem is that most people think that if a bike has more than 5,000 kilometres on the clock, it’s over the wall. But bikes only loosen up properly around 20,000 kilometres and the motors get happier as the miles pile on.

The demo RT-S I’m riding is the top of the range – heated grips, on-the-fly suspension adjustment, heaps of packing space, and best of all, a radio with kick-ass speakers! So off I go to Centurion but there is an accident on the highway so we all sit and try to ignore each other, pretending we’re having fun! What better time to play around with the radio? I’m thoroughly tired of the pop music on playlists on all the radio stations and there are no independent DJs playing the good stuff. So the only other station of any use is Classical. Fortunately they were playing some upbeat music so what can a girl do but play Mozart full blast on the highway, sitting in a traffic jam?

Listening to music on the bike is quite addictive and I’ve missed it since not having my GPS on the various Spyders. The RT-S has two jacks – one for an MP3/ iPod/ CD shuffle and the other is a power outlet. I’ll be installing my GPS for the trip but I will have to find myself another music source so the hunt is on for something decent. The Interphone F4 blue tooth helmet unit has a six hour constant play-time battery, so I will be running out of music quite quickly – I need a backup!

So yesterday I strolled into Dion Wired and asked for a portable CD shuffle and the salesman had to contain his laughter – CD shuffles are apparently very 90s and iPods have taken over that market. Shows you how “up” on technology I am – I honestly thought shuffles were still available… oh well, so we learn.

The Spyders draw a lot of attention, but with the radio full blast, people look before they can see it. And once I load the MP3 with my selection which ranges from heavy Classical through Alternative, Blues, modern Country and out the other end with Heavy Metal, I think they will pay lots of attention!