Still Mountain Biking?

With all these motorcycle related posts lately you might be wondering if I am still mountain biking. Well, the answer is yes! I am still doing what I can, though the volume is down a bit in the last month or so.

I did get out today to help move rock onto a new trail that is being built by contractors for us here on the eastern edge of Cornubia Forest.

What 28 tonne of rock looks like.

Three of us moved about 15 tonne (33 000lbs) of rock 500m down the new Gramzow Road trail. Not a bad effort but I will admit I did need an hour snooze after lunch but I am feeling pretty good for an old bloke, all things considered.

The pile was under half the size once we were done!

I organised a gourmet morning tea for the volunteers and the contractors (the grant budget doesn't really stretch to cover the build costs so we are helping in more ways than one) courtesey of  The RATS Cycling Club.

Subs and coffee milk. Yum.

Trailworx, the contractors are going to some trouble to retain this trail as it is on quite a steep hill, in a narrow road easement. This means there are 24 switchback turns in quite a short horizontal distance. Good fun riding down but hard yakka coming back up!

Starting the retaining.

First course complete.

This is going to be like no other trail we have around here!

A huge thanks to Shane and Mitch for coming along, on short notice and on a week day to help out. There is no way I could have moved 15 tonne on my own.

Done....

and dusted!!

Cheers.

McCoy's Cafe' Coffee Run

I managed to get out for a spin yesterday with a mate from the Netrider forum. I had noticed on social media that Steve Waugh's charity foundation was conducting a bicycle ride called The Captain's Ride and they would be calling in to McCoy's Cafe in Cooyar for morning tea. 

I hatched a plan to make sure we were there in time to clap them in but it would involve an  early start for us. Mike and Steve were up for it so at 0530 (on a day off work) we were stands-up and dodging the "tradie" traffic on the way across town, headed for Mt Glorious.

250km each way

Adult Education

Now, with such a catchy title you may be wondering what I am banging on about this time around? Well, as this blog is pretty much PG - with a little MA15+ from time to time you can rest assured that it isn't anything racey........

As I get back into some motorcycling, I have been thinking that I really should do some rider (re)training to freshen up my base skills. Heck, the last training I did was back in '93 or '94 when I completed a few training days at Eastern Creek, Oran Park and Amaroo Park raceways with Stay Upright and Roadsense. I got a lot out of those sessions and blind Freddy could see that I would benefit from a freshen up.

Young Pups And New Tricks

My kids are growing up. Yup, it happens.....all too quickly. 

The saying goes something like 'the days are long but the years are short" which seems to be more true each year as I have one (Lucy) who is into her last month of school and another in Year 9, so just three more years to go for Will.

Family outing on the BVRT in 2013

Motorcycle Training - British Army Style

Welcome to Friday dear reader. I thought I might help ease you into the weekend with a short instructional video from the British Army. 

Yes, you joined the army, now we OWN you and YOU ARE GOING TO learn to ride dirt bikes......

Those familiar with the IAM method of teaching (or any method for that matter) might see some slight floors in the instructional technique but being able to order punishment push-ups when the student bins-it-like-a-rag-doll must be priceless!

Grab a cool drink and enjoy......

Oh, how I laughed!!!

Cheers.

Far Riding

I am sure that most motorcycle riders have heard of an organisation called the IBA. The Iron Butt Association is an American invention (I think), consisting of riders who like to cover large distances in limited amounts of time, for no real reason other than to ride.
As well as the IBA, we have a derivative group here in Australia called Far Riders. I remember seeing their details about 15 years ago and promptly forgot all about them.
Now, getting back into motorcycling and having an endurance mountain biking background the logical extension must be doing some long distance motorcycling in as short amount of time as possible, right?

Touring motorbi-cycles.....(190/50-17s were hard to find in 2003!)

Leveraging

Thanks to a “new bike update” from the chap at Confessions of An Ageing Motorcyclist, I decided to try some updated, modern, ergonomically designed control levers for my R1. I had been avoiding changing much on the bike as I want it to be pretty standard but honestly the standard clutch lever is stupidly long in reach as well as length. I mean, for the ridiculously low cost of the levers, even if they were rubbish I could hang them in the shed as “art”.

They came from the land of eBay and the tracking communications from the seller were excellent with messages at every stage of the delivery process. Within hours of the delivery message (I was on the other side of the country at the time) I had another message asking how I liked them and asking for a photo of them fitted...now if you please!
Steady Mr Wong!!

Well, I had to get home from work then wait until the weekend to find the time to fit them. I really didn’t need much time though. Finding the key for the bike took almost as long as fitting the damn levers!

New and old.

I went for the all black levers. Blue was an option but I have seen colour matched grips before and hate the look, so thought of colour matched levers in the same vein. Thinking about it now, titanium pivots with black levers would have looked good too.

Old and new.

They are reach adjustable, folding plus they have a length adjuster as well.

I honestly don’t know how they stack up against the genuine Pazzo levers for quality as I haven’t seen an actual Pazzo up close (that I can recall) but at $30.84US versus $281AU (about $180US) for the Pazzos, the price alone warrants a look at the eBay levers. 

 A quick test ride and they feel fine. I need to adjust the clutch cable slightly as the knock-off levers must pull the cable a smidge differently and there is currently almost no slack between letting the clutch lever out and the clutch clutching. 

Easily fixed though.

Cheers.