Muddin’ – South African style

When you are from the South, you grow up with traditions that people from other areas of the country don’t have. For example, grits, mint juleps, wearing ties to college football games, and muddin’. For those uninitiated few, muddin’ is basically driving your truck around in mud puddles after a good rain storm. Sounds boring and redneck but its really pretty fun…and decidedly redneck. In the spirit of cultural exchange, last week I took some of our South African crew on an impromptu muddin’ adventure.

To give a little background, one of our field sites is basically 2.5km straight out into the bush. No roads, no tracks, nothing. We drive off the road and through the bush to get our field equipment out there. Richard, the other postdoc, usually takes the GPS and walks in front of the truck to make sure we don’t run over thorn bushes that puncture tires as easily as popping a balloon with a sewing needle. In all it usually takes us about 30 minutes to weave our way back and forth over rocks, logs, stumps while avoiding tire poppage.

This past week, we had to go out to this field site to make some fencing repairs. It looked rainy at the start of the day, but it never rains here when it looks rainy to begin with – that’s one sure fire rule I’ve learned here – so we decided to make the trip out with hopes that our rule held firm. Well, as Murphy would have it, we were just to our field site when we heard the first thunder and saw the first lightning and the drizzle started. After a little debate back and forth about whether the rain would come or not, I decided to turn the truck around and whoever didn’t want to get stuck in the mud could come with me and those that did could stay put. With Richard leading the way on foot, we try to follow our tracks through the bush back to the dirt road. We hadn’t gone 200 meters when someone turned on the tap. Rain so hard that I could barely see the guys leading me back to the road. They leaped back in the truck while I leaped out to lock the hubs on the wheels so that we could have 4X4 to give us a chance of making it back to the road. I hop back in and gun it for the road.

Damn the bushes, damn the small trees, damn punctured tires. No swerving, no dodging rocks. Just driving. If we didn’t haul it back to the road, we would be stuck 2km into the bush in a driving rain storm meaning we would have to leave the truck there and retrieve it days later once the soil dried out. Since these soils are heavy on clay content, the smallest rain turns the bush into a quagmire. Unfortunately, our navigator was having trouble reading the GPS and directed me south instead of east before I realized it. So I snatched the GPS out of his hands, made a tough, slow turn and puched it for the road. I could feel us fishtailing as I dodged the trees and large logs that would seriously ruin our day. Meanwhile my directionally-challenged navigator is trying to convince me that he can get out and lead us through the bush because the rain is letting up. My response “You can get out but you’ll have to drop and roll because I’m not stopping”, as the heavens open up again. Our key to getting out was to keep the tires on grass and avoid heavily grazed areas that have little grass cover and also avoid the pans which drain poorly and fill up with water after the rains. If we hit a pan, the truck would sink up to the antenna and we would have a miserable 5km walk back to the nearest tourist road to catch a lift.

After about 7 minutes (the trip usually takes 25-30 minutes) of serious switchbacks to miss pans, Acacia trees, and minefields of sicklebush, I can see the dirt road that we have to get to. A couple more quick dodges of trees and we are there. I fishtail out onto the road which has turned into a rushing torrent, but I lose momentum. Now I’m grinding uphill on the road trying to get the tires out of the main ruts and onto the grass to get traction. Eventually my tires grab hold and we are off again, essentially swimming upstream against the runoff that is draining down the road to the nearest river. Water is spraying over the top of the truck as the tires cut through the ruts in the road. After a tough 10 minute grind on the dirt road, we are finally back on a gravel road with good traction. The muddin’ adventure is over without getting stuck and, amazingly, with no popped tires.

We finally make it back to came, and Richard and I get out to unlock the hubs on the front wheels. I click mine into place and notice that it is now LOCKED as I heard Richard say “Oh I must have forgot to unlock the hubs yesterday after I drove through the riverbed.” So when I leapt out in the bush to LOCK the hubs, I actually UNLOCKED them meaning I did all that muddin’ in 2-wheel drive instead of 4-wheel drive. Must have been all that Mississippi muddin’ experience that helped me through. After getting over the disbelief that I did all that driving through the rain-soaked bush in 2-wheel drive without getting stuck, I have this conversation..

Dave “Did you see the rhino that you almost hit?”

Me “I almost hit a rhino!?!”

Dave “Yep, you missed him by about 5 meters. Glad you took that hard left”

Mississippi muddin’ it ain’t.