Going offroad

I did the beginners course in off-road motorcycling today which turned out to be great fun but not exactly as easy as it looks on TV. The course was at Swartkops raceway which sounded a bit wierd because it is know for track and not off road riding. Riding there there was an unusual number of Ferrari's overtaking me and as it turned out, it was the annual Ferrari club track meet, there must have been at least 100 Ferraris roaring around the track for most of the day.

Once we got together there was a very brief lecture session before we headed out for a day of practical riding lessons which I am going to try and recount so that at a later stage I can practice the exercises.

Rules
1. Helmet, jacket, pants, boots and gloves are a requirement, not a luxury. The boots and gloves in particular need to be of the offroad variety.
2. All off-road riding is done standing up with the balls of your feet on the footrests from which the rubber inserts must have been removed.
3. If you're going to be doing any distance offroad, raise/rotate the handlebars so that the levers are manageable with your wrists straight.
4. ALWAYS look up! NEVER look down and definitely NEVER fixate on an obstacle. You are guaranteed to hit it if you do.
5. Slide your clutch hand along and operate it with only two fingers, this gives you much more control.
6. Operate the front brake with a single finger, this helps prevent breaking too hard with the front brake.
7. Your hands must be light on the controls and your arms very relaxed. Don't fight the bike, you aren't going to win.
8. Don't try and stop the bike falling, just let it go.
9. Relax on the bike and let it dance between your legs, particularly when in soft sand or gravel.
10. If you haven't ridden an obstacle before, walk it before you ride it.
11. If you're going to fall on a hill, stall the bike in gear. That way there is no way of it going anywhere. When you need to remount, spin the bike around to face 45 deg down the hill and pick it up from the top.

I managed to drop my bike on the very first exercise which we attempted but thereafter I managed to stay upright the entire day. We did the following exercises:

1. Walk the bike in circles while using the clutch and accelerator going in both clockwise and anti-clockwise directions.
2. Walk around the bike without letting it fall only holding it at one point at any give time. You shouldn't need more than 4 touches to completely circumnavigate the bike.
3. Ride in slow tight circles on grass concentrating on putting pressure on the outside foot to balance the bike. When you turn the steering, your whole shoulders turn as well, not just your arms. It is amazing just how tight one can turn even on slippery grass or dirt simply by leaning on the outside foot peg.
4. Ride with booth feet on the left, the right and then knees together on the saddle. Once one is comfortable with this weave from side to side.
5. Riding up a slope, lean forward so that your centre of gravity is in front of the rear wheel and your arms hang down to the bars. You shouldn't be hanging onto the bars, that means that you are too far back on the bike. Have just enough speed to get to the top without spinning the rear wheel.
6. Going downhill, let the bike run against compression and use a single finger on the front brake to control your descent. Move you bum backwards so that your centre of gravity is behind the font wheel
7. If you are descending or ascending across a slope put all your weight on the downhill foot peg. Like skiing, this is counter intuitive but it really does make a difference.
8. Turn the ABS off and get into second and put the power on and feel the rear slew around behind you. Great feeling.
9. Turn the ABS off and get some speed in second and lock the rear brake while changing down unti you are at a standstill.
10. Get some speed on a downhill and let go of the handlebars and steer the bike using pressure on the footpegs.
11. We didn't do this but it seems like a very good exercise, ride in tight circles on a slope.
12. Find some deep sand or fine gravel and keep the power even while the rear fishtails around. Great fun, this was probably the part of the day which I enjoyed the most.


The rest of the day was spent practising the above on actual trails and it is difficult to emphasize enough that one must look up and not worry what is directly in front of the wheels. I found that what I struggled with the most was throttle and clutch at low speeds, I stalled the bike several times at very low speeds so I am going to have to work on this.

Virgin no more

Well, it had to happen sometime! My bike is a virgin no more, yes, that's right, I have dropped my brand new bike within the first two weeks. In my defence I was trying to ride offroad, diagonally up a steep grassy embankment and the rear wheel just slid out from underneath me on the grass. This encounter with the dirt proved two things, one that the foot brake is super malleable since it was really easy to bend it back into shape and secondly that I really can lift the 200kg bike relatively easily. I've been dreading the moment of truth when I find out if I can lift it, I had nightmares of struggling to get it back on its two wheels in a busy intersection with cars all around waiting and sniggering at my efforts to right the iron beast.
I have also filled up with my first tank of petrol. R75.00 for a full tank of fuel, ok my range may not be quite what a car would get on a full tank but 300km is pretty good going I think.
Every day when I get to work I have a look at my car which is looking a bit neglected. I think I had better take it for a drive this weekend and get it cleaned just so that it knows that it is still loved.
Why, you may ask, was I driving diagonally up a grassy embankment? The answer can be found at http://www.openstreetmap.org and what I was doing was trying to map my suburb with my GPS.

Bike Ahoy

My days and weeks of waiting are finally over and I am now the proud owner (well the bank is in reality) of one shiny new BMW 650GS motorcycle. Purchased to commute to and from work although I have to admit to having entertained ideas of touring through southern europe on it. Going to have to work on Caron so that she will ride as well, she hasn't said no which is a good start.

This is what she looks like.



and again here ...

Of Spiders and Motorcycles

We welcome two additions to our household this week. The first is Richard the Rain Spider, as pictured below, who has taken up residence in the kitchen. Seems fairly demure so we are letting him live there, hopefully the cat or the maid doesn't get him. Kinda out there having a wild spider living in the kitchen. I wonder what the famdamily is going to say when they come over for supper on Saturday.


The second addition to the family hasn't actually arrived but her arrival is inevitable.

I was sitting in the traffic on tuesday and after 45 minutes I was only 1/2 way to work which is just such a waste of time and it was the straw that broke the proverbial camels back. The time has come to move to two wheels. Instead of going to the office I went to the local BMW dealers and bought a BMW F650GS which is a on-road off-road, single cylinder thumper. This move is not as sudden as it might seem as I have been toying with the idea for a couple of years but the timing and frustration levels weren't right. There are actually a few of reasons that I have bought a bike, firstly so that I don't have to spend so much time in the traffic every morning and evening. Secondly, they pollute the evironment less than cars, thirdly, I want to see whether we can move to a one car family and fourthly, they are great fun. At the moment, we will be keeping both cars and seeing how it will work out but if I look around me in the traffic, almost without exception, each car only has one person in it, the driver. And these are all the people that complain about the traffic when they themselves are responsible for the problem in the first place. I would definitely be in favour of some kind of legislation that penalises cars that only have one person in it. I find it ironic that the cars which are creating the actual pollution and congestion problem are also preventing its solution. Most people commuting would be able to cycle to work and if that doesn't suit them, ride a motorcycle to work but a large part of the reason that they don't is that it is too dangerous because of .... the cars.

It is over a decade since I last rode a bike on a regular basis so I am a little nervous about getting on my brand new, scratch free, beemer but there isn't any other way to do it than just jump on and go.