Bali Swank Rally is Back! Deus SlidetoberFest 2023

Can’t believe that it’s been four long years since we pulled the tarp off the Deus Slidetoberfest. Day one, and plunging headlong back into it, we held the Bali Swank Rally, sure we’d had more than the odd moment of trepidation about how it’d play out, though we needn’t have worried. Everyone was well ripe for what was undoubtedly an incredible time.

Speaking of tarps, it took a few weeks of spit, polish and bloody hard slog by the ‘Benkel Boys’ to get what we had in the shed into running order. Four years of gathering dust had taken its toll. And if you’d poked your head in the garage a couple of days out you’d have seen a slew of bikes with heads off, tanks in corners and parts still in the post. They turned the lights out at four in the morning that Friday. Massive thanks to the Boys.

We were back at Pantai Abian, a beach 40 minutes by bike up the north coast from Canggu, it was where we’d held the 2019 Bali Swank. We erected our little carnival of tents, BBQ, bar and a shop with some Deus Gear on the edge of a field scattered with a few coconut palms and a thick river running along one side, a road on the other side of the field led the way in and down to the point. Cross the road and you're in a knot of huts where a clutch of individuals collected and graded the black sea stones that litter the beach, sorting them into sizes, before shipping them out. We ran a hell of a tortuous route through the middle of everything we could and then down an improvised ramp married onto the steep concrete stairs straight into another river you had to cross, we applied a liberal layer of zig and zags through another coconut field before being plunged the riders back onto the black sand beach that was more round rock than sand in parts.

Pantai Abian is still what you'd call, beautiful Bali, 'Indah' as they might say here, it's remote enough that only one or two villas poke their heads out of the trees and coconut palms. That’s changing though and we’ll lose this spot in a year or two. Make rice while the sun shines we say.

Here is a little flick and a murder of captures they may in some small way go to show how beautiful the place is and how much undiluted fun and enjoyment we had at the 3rd Deus Bali Swank Rally.

The Bali Swank Rally had two divisions, Vintage and Open. The vintage, from our side, was the now rebuilt GL Pro’s and DT’s, we'd been holding onto, the Open is very much a ‘ride what ya brung’, though we did put a cap on CC’s to keep something of a level playing field.

We couldn't have done it without assistance from our friends over at Motul Indonesia and Island Brewing. The first one lubricated our bikes, the second our bodies.

Film by
Andre Cricket
Yoga Santiyasa
Akbarqkahom

Photos by
Ram Matteo
Didit Prasetyo
Mirza Nurman
Kelibow

This is how it stacked up at the end of the day…

Vintage 2 Stroke Class
1 Ditha - Tasix Adventure Racing Division
2 Donny Kusuma - GTT Bali
3 Aik Logo - TS 125 Riders Bali

Open Division (4 Stroke Max 250cc)
1 Quinten
2 Agus Mahendra
3 Toplex - Tasix Adventure Racing Division