Archive for Off-road
Catch Up
Posted by: | CommentsThe last post was basically to check that
A) I still knew what a keyboard was for and,
B) That I still had access to this blog.
Apparently OK on both counts!
So – After just about 9 months, my busted scapula and the associated nerve damage were obviously a lot worse than I ever imagined after my first few hospital trips. I fairly soon gave up on the NHS – it’s never done (been able to do) anything much beyond simple first aid for me in the last 15 years I have had occasion to visit. Fortunately, I am in a position to take myself private when the occasion warrants and my shoulder was certainly one of those occasions! I paid to see one of the most highly rated folk in the country and after lots of CT scans (I think I glow in the dark!) and several consultations, I learnt that basically, surgery was out (too fucked up to risk it!) so time and physiotherapy were the options.
Time of course has been the great healer (plus an attractive South African physiotherapist – who has been well trained in massage which albeit painful, worked wonders). So here I am 9 months later, able to ride a bike on the road, with perhaps 90% movement in my shoulder and strength that varies from 10% to 90% depending on what I ask it to do. Naturally that calls for a celebration, so I am off to the USA for a 4000 mile trip through the USA and Canada with my buddy Jed whom I met on the trip to Tierra del Fuego.
GPS stuff and preparations for the Autumn Equinox Rally
Posted by: | CommentsIt’s a whole year since i went to Wales with the ADVrider.com folk for their Autumn Equinox Rally. I made some good friends there and have enjoyed riding with them since, especially in Italy this year. I am going to take the TTR on my new trailer this time and I set off tomorrow morning. It’s the ideal bike for greenlaning and as my wrist is sore, I shall appreciate the lighter bike to handle.
Stemming from my promise to lead some of the Knobblies crew along the Kent lanes, I have been investing a lot of time and money on maps and GPS stuff. (OK I am a gadget freak and I know a real man would look at the clouds, the sun and find his way anywhere but I need all the help I can get and I just love the neat stuff that’s available now. After toying with several ideas, I finally plumped for a Satmap Active10 GPS unit to use off-road. It’s the only one to display real OS maps on a screen that is of a decent size. You can plan routes and track your position on the screen just as if you were working with a paper map and it’s bloomin’ marvellous. You can program routes on the PC and retrieve tracks etc as with most units and this works perfectly with the included software – provided that you have a Windows PC. There is no Mac software for it yet but I find it works just fine with Windows running under VMware. It’s not a cheap unit and the maps are expensive, especially in the 25k series but it beats the Garmin offering hands down. Garmin Topo maps are crap in comparison and whilst one could happily navigate with the Satmap as one’s only aid, the Garmin requires a paper map to make sense of its screen presentation.
An ancillary purchase has been the Columbus V900 GPS data logger that can record umpteen million track points. I got this because it was very well reviewed and I was fed up with my regular GPS units (Tom Tom and Garmin Street Pilot 2820) losing data as they filled up. The Columbis is tiny and is small enough to fit in a breast pocket and remain quite unnoticeable.
I shall try to find time to write up my conclusions about this stuff properly and in more detail as I think they could be useful to someone and I did spend a lot f time and money on the hardware I have bought and the time taken to investigate what was available and useful. This weekend will be a good cgance to give the new purchases a workout and please don’t blame me for taking a bunch of OS paper maps that I also bought recently – I have always been a bit belt and braces when it comes to travel.
Another “incident”
Posted by: | CommentsOut with the TRF again and the TTR was performing brilliantly – so well in fact that my riding was definitely entering the exuberant category. Unfortunately, I chose the moment to be particularly exuberant as I skidded round a bend on a forest track only to encounter (would you believe it?) – a tree! Classic object fixation followed and I hit it. Bike not hurt, tree only lost a bit of bark, I damaged my right wrist in a manner as yet unknown. I did carry on riding for a bit but I am not sure this was sensible (two weeks from now and I am still hurting!). Still the riding was fun and the TR guys are good value so no real complaints. This accident has caused me to add “Injury” to my list of categories for Blog Posts!
Ride with Kent TRF
Posted by: | CommentsI went out for my first ride with the Kent TRF guys today. I took the TTR250 and had a great ride that covered 140 miles. The work that Perry Leask did on the bike proved its worth. The front end handled very well and the bike felt much more controllable.
Suspension work
Posted by: | CommentsThe TTR has been with Perry Leask at HM Racing for the last couple of days. Earlier rides had shown the front end to be a nightmare – bouncing all over the place so much so that I wondered if the forks were completely buggered. Well, Perry sorted it out perfectly. The work involved new seals, oil and adujsutments plus a lot of measurements but no great drama with new parts etc. Perry’s workshop reminds me of the suspension shop at Lotus – it has the necessary pressure vessel for nitrogen charging etc. and is very clean. I have aprintout of the various settings before and after and to my untutored eye, it doesn’t say a great deal apart from the fact that I could have messed around my self or ever without getting it right.
The service wasn’t especially cheap but it has turned the bike into a usable machine which it wasn’t really before and in my view it wasn’t just money well spent, it was vital.
Catching up
Posted by: | CommentsGood grief – two months nearly since I last posted! I’m obviously one of those bloggers who gets caught up in a fit of enthusiasm that eventually recedes like the tide, leaving all sorts of beached detritus around the web. Well, the tide has turned, at least temporarily - so here goes with what I have been doing bike-wise for the last couple of months.
First, Slovenia didn’t happen but the Dolomites did. It was always the plan to start in the Italian hills, then to re-locate to Slovenia but the time available to the group I was with just didn’t permit the double location so we stayed in Italy. This was no real hardship, the Italian trails were really good and the scenery is simply magnificent. I had a great time in super company and thanks to Giorgio Betteto, our local ADVrider colleague and guide, we enjoyed some fantastic riding and food along the way.
After three days of quite hard trail riding, my damned finger was swollen and giving me gyp so I bailed out to ride gently to the ferry at Calais, intending to meet my pals there after they had spent the last two days riding the trails around Pieve di Cadore (our base in Italy). I took a couple of days, riding via Venice, Torino, Annecy, Gerardmer, Compiegne where I met up with another of my group (Clive who had also left early). We had a great evening doing a bit of a pub crawl before finishing in an Irish bar across the street from our hotel. Despite being an Irish bar, it turned out they were having a Salsa night and it was fun for us two old fogies, watching the young and good looking girls strutting their stuff.
A few pix – first Clive on his GS1200 showing just how deep the gravel was. Then a few pix of yours truly enjoying himself.
!
New tyres
Posted by: | CommentsThe healing process has progressed far enough to allow me to do a bit of light physical work – just as well ‘cos I am getting fat – and so today I used my new bike lift to remove the wheels from the TTR which I then took to Watling Tyres at Swanley where I had the TKC80s replaced by Michelin AC10s. The price was pretty good and fitting is free so I was a happy bunny. Alan Clark who runs the Swanley depot is a long time motocrosser and enduro racer himself so he knows what’s important to a biker.
The lift makes a potential awkward job very easy and the TTR is well designed to facilitate a simple job like removing/replacing the wheels.
The new tyres look businesslike!
Bike Fixed!
Posted by: | CommentsYesterday, I got a call from Mark Holden to say that my parts had arrived. I elected to have him install them as I wanted to see what kind of a job he did. I took the bike over in the afternoon, went into Bromley for a coffee and about an hour later got a call on my mobile to say that the bike was ready. Everything seemed fine and the price was reasonable so I am happy so far with Mark’s service. It is a big plus point for me that I live not far away so it is much less of a hassle to go there than to visit South London Motorrad.
I just hope the next couple of outings on the bike leave it in good shape for my trip to Slovenia in June! The first is a novices’ run I am joining on Salisbury plain so that should be OK (a good test for my wrist..) but then in May I am heading for Wales again with UKGSers and those Welsh trails can prove demanding! If I succeed in my mission to get a pogo before then I might well take that instead.
Finding a pogo is proving harder than I expected. The Honda CRF 230 sounded ideal ut they have stopped making it and newones are like rocking horse manure whilst used ones are few ab]nd far between as well. I have therefore been considering new bikes but first, finding one that sounds as though it would suit me has been tricky, as they are all virtually designed for racing and as such have what sound like peaky engines and potentially tiring characteristics. Of the new ones, a Husqvarna TE310 has caught my eye as the most like to suit but so far I haven’t seen one in the flesh. I have (I think but so far with nil feedback) booked a trail ride with Husky Trails that would allow me to sample the TE250.
Another problem with competition focused bikes is the demanding maintenance schedule with many requiring oil chages every 500km and piston/ring changes every 100km or similar. I have no wish to take up bike maintenece as a hobby and although I realise that some is inevitable, I’d like to keep it to a minimum.
Bike repairs and thoughts of a new bike..
Posted by: | CommentsI rang South London Motorrad but was told they only had two techs (out of four they were supposed to have) and couldn’t look at my bike until the end of next week. This was too late for my liking as I am planning more off-roading on the 19th April and I want to be sure to have the bike ready for that (I’m assuming/hoping/praying that my wrist will be OK for it!). Accordingly I rang an independent service shop (Mark Holden Motorcycles) who could see me straight away. I took the bike over there pronto and that was easy as it’s only a couple of miles from my place. The workshop isn’t inspiring itself but Mark Holden the owner seems to know his stuff and after a few phone calls seemed pretty confident of having the necessary bits by Wednesday of next week. Replacing the broken bits should be a very easy job so I am looking forward to having my bike as good as new in short order – albeit at considerable expense because BMW parts are NOT CHEAP!
The cost of the bits has reinforced in my mind the merits of looking at a small bike (a Pogo) that will be a lot easier to ride on the more challenging trails I’d like to try. It would also be a lot easier to pick up being lighter. The bike I am very close to ordering is a Honda CRF 230 F which has a very good reputation and although perhaps best known as a beginner’s trail bike is also apparently very competent in more experienced hands as some of the Youtube video attests. I am not that experienced but equally not a beginner anymore so I want something that will satisfy me for a while. Other possible contenders are the Suzuki DRZ 400E and possibly the Yamaha WR 250R but I like the idea of simplicity too and the Honda has an aircooled motor and a spark plug that is actually accessible, so even if it gets drowned in a water crossing, it ought to be easy to sort out..
It doesn’t come road legal but I have found a place online that will convert them and ship them, so that is not a problem. More of an issue is understanding what mods I might need from the start, there are all sorts of possibilities ranging from stronger handlebars to a new front suspension. I shall do some phoning around next week and see what I can find.
March Moon Rally
Posted by: | CommentsI had a great time at the weekend in North Wales with the folk who frequent ADVrider.com.
The occasion was the March Moon Rally which saw 60 riders and their very varied choices of bike gathering at the Three Pigeons in Graigfechan near Ruthin. Many of us camped at the pub while others chose the soft option of a B&B somewhere nearby. I rode up early on the Friday, leaving at 6 am to be in good time to pick a decent spot to pitch my tent – not a problems as it turned out for the available space was quite large enough and there were no flooded areas (unlike last year’s foray to Ireland!
When a few others had arrived, we elected to go for a road ride around various of the Welsh lakes (Bala and Vyrnwy amongst others)a very nice introduction to the Welsh hills.
Friday night was cold – as Terry could testify the next morning
But it soon warmed up and we had some great riding on the lanes
Although it wasn’t always smooth sailing..
I like the puddles – when I stay upright
But it’s a bugger when I don’t
This tumble put an end to my day’s outing as I sprained my wrist badly and had to make for the campsite without further ado – I am thankful my wrist wasn’t broken, it felt like it at the time.
Getting home on the Sunday, my bike was clearly very dirty
But sadly, also the worse for wear
So I shall be seeing what the dealer says about the repairs later this week..
