New ADV Rubber

 

With the rear Pirelli Scorpion getting down a bit in tread depth and me eyeing off a proper ADV ride soon I thought it was time to put some decent off road tyres on the Desert X. I have umm'd and ahhh'd for weeks about which tyres to choose. I liked the Motoz Tractionator Adventure on the rear of the Africa Twin but it did get pretty "buzzy" on the blacktop as it wore and while I would like to try their Rallz on the rear, it is even noisier as it wears. Then I stumbled on a tyre I had forgotten about, the Heidenau K60 Ranger. The Ranger was meant to be an 80% dirt tyre that was a bit more user friendly on the blacktop (especially when wet) than the K60 Scout. They were still quoting impressive life for the Ranger and I just like the look of it with it’s meaty, chunky tread blocks. 

So that was the rear decided on. For the front I did like the Bridgestone AX41 on my Africa Twin but I thought I might go for a more aggressive front tyre. I was torn between a Pirelli Scorpion Rally and the Motoz Adventure Rallz, both tyres I hadn’t tried before. My main concern wasn’t for their dirt prowess as I was confident they would be fine in that respect, more how they would affect my bike’s sweet road handling.

So, I decided to live dangerously and pulled the trigger on the Motoz Rallz. Better to pull back a notch or two on the blacktop than to go wanting for grip with a loaded 220+kg ADV on snotty dirt roads I reckon.

 

Tyres For Bikes has a huge selection of tyres under one roof so I grabbed the tyres there. Unfortunately I keep having bad experiences with them actually fitting said tyres so I elected to go to my local bike shop to have them fitted. If I supply the wheel sans bike they will do a change for $25 AUD per end. Worth the coin to get a professional, quality and balanced tyre fitting in my view.

So, all fitted up. Now to go get them dirty.

Cheers.

ADV Tracking Link

 

Ok, so I've got some more unpaid time off and I thought "fcuk it, I'm going to ride my bike. But first I need to fit up the Barrett pannier racks that came with the bike AND I need to sort out these contaminated brakes......oh, and if I'm going to do a few thousand kilometres loaded up, I am probably going to need a new rear tyre. ($$$$$$$)

I am trying a(nother) Bridgestone AX41 Adventurecross (the bike came with one on the rear) on the rear as that will match the new front I put on a few months back. We will see how they go on proper gravel but I have been happy with the last one so far.

I really hope these new pads and a good scrub of the discs with brake cleaner fixes their issues. 

The "old" pads were virtually new by the look of them. Shame they are contaminated.

I probably should have rubbed the discs with wet and dry paper as well but as it was my daughter's birthday yesterday, I just ran out of time.

New shiny pads!

It is also time to try out the new tent that I bought in mid 2019 after my last ADV camping ride. Yes, it has been that long since I did one of these and the poor tent has just been sitting in the cupboard. I bought this tent as it is a little more spacious than my bikepacking ones and still quite light at 2.4kg. It came recommended by one of the regular tourers from the Netrider forum and is a bit different as it is assymetrical - sort of.

So, I am finally all loaded up and she be a mighty, portly beast....

and only 2-3 hours late in leaving! Oh well, I have 8 days until I need to be home so no rush!

This here post also contains the link to my Spotwalla page and the Ride With GPS route I created. The tracker goes live from 6am EST (Thursday 29th April) but I probably won't actually hit the road until 9 or 10am. (edit: see above for timings!)

I have some cool "new to me" backroads planned as well as some old favourites so I hope the tracker(s) work! I have used Chris Wiltshire's tutorial on how to load a base map onto Spotwalla so lets see how it goes.

Spotwalla Link 

Cheers.

The Road Ahead

 

Welcome to 2021. 

After posting the following quote at the end of my 2019 "summary" blog post in January last year -

"Lets hope 2020 is a bit more interesting than 2019 was because frankly, 2019 just felt like going through the motions. Apart from a few key events it took a lot of sifting through photos to find anything much of note......"

-it looks like I got what I wished for! 

Oh, the irony because I oft advise others to "be careful what you wish for"......rookie error!!!

Vic Divide trail.

Anyway, suffice to say that 2020 started out interesting with February seeing my Vic Divide 550 bikepacking trip successfully completed and training well underway for the 2020 Colorado Trail Race. From early March things took a serious nose dive as Covid19 escaped China and spread to almost every corner of the globe. Being in the aviation industry, if the economy sneezes, we catch a cold so-to-speak 😒.

 In that vein I guess you could say we caught Covid because after just three weeks of shutdown my company went broke and was put into administration/receivership. A few tears were shed initially as my income propped up the boss's business venture, plus paid for everything else. We held on for a bumpy ride for the rest of 2020 but with the mindset that it would turn out ok in the long run. Most humans don't handle change well (I am no different) however we kept telling ourselves that life would find a way ( a lesson we learned after surviving the Ansett collapse in 2001)  and we just needed to stay calm, turn off the endlessly repetitive, negative media stream and do what we could to progress our way forward. Lots of mtbing was indulged in during April and parts of May as it was zero cost compared to motorcycling.

May was pretty shit as Mum finally lost her battle with cancer. One small mercy was that Steve and I were able to be there with her and Dad as the lockdowns had eased (after the first wave) along with our families. 

I managed to get back down to visit Dad in July with Will. His little TTR made the trip south with us and he enjoyed some superb winter weather riding that had me jealous that I didn't have a bike to ride with him.

Some good mates helped with progressing our way, as many other industries flourished and I was given some paying work to keep the schekles trickling in. Flying started to become a little more frequent in July as Australia got on top of the spread of Covid but Victoria's major fcuk up in September threw the recovery (and country) into chaos again.....as did the carbon copy fcuk ups in Adelaide, then Sydney just prior to Christmas. 

 But I digress. We got through to the end of the year with some income trickling in from flying and the warehouse job. While the warehouse is hard, hot work that I feel I am getting too old for, I enjoy the interaction with the same group of coworkers each day. This is very different to the aviation job where I work with people for a few days, then may not see them again for a few years and in some cases, ever again.

The warehouse is not quite as sexy though...

Trail care trickled along throughout the year. There were a few missed months when larger gatherings were not allowed but what work we did get done added nice features to the trails.

Trail care is pretty hard yakka though and for a few reasons (such as organising, running, dealing with difficult land managers, dealing with opinionated, self entitled trail users who don't/won't grab a shovel to help and generally feeling like I am "done") I don't think I will continue in 2021. 

10+ years is enough.

December started out more optimistically and as such, I made the decision to replace my long departed ADV bike. Flying to Tassie, then riding back was a very welcome respite to a looong year and I LOVE the new bike! 😎 I am looking forward to some decent rides on it once I get it set up.

Christmas was a nice quiet affair, made better by having two weeks of proper leave! I relaxed and did a bit of riding around the Southern Highlands and central west NSW, as well as overseeing some more dirtbiking for Will.

 

 As I write this I am at work on a layover, locked in a hotel room in Perth for 36 hours. It is glorious weather outside and I do NOT do "inside" very well but Western Australia's "chicken little" approach to Covid control must be respected (I'm from a state that hasn't had a case of Covid in weeks). Grrrr.

 (But at least I have a job!)

Anyway, it has given forced me to take the time to write a post after so few last year. It has also forced me to look ahead at what I might expect from 2021. To be honest, I am not expecting much. Financially I will still be very careful as our industry is so fragile. I am keen to use the new motorcycle for some long distance rides, ala IBA style as I like the planning and documentation required for these types of rides. Some ADV camping rides are also on the cards.

As for cycling, I am not sure what to do. After riding every.simgle.day. of last year I have sort of enjoyed not having to ride my bike for the sake of riding my bike. The down side is that my belt needs letting out a couple of notches..... I definitely need a challenge to train for here.....

If you have made it this far down the page, well, thanks for indulging me. Hopefully normal programming will be restored shortly.....😳

Cheers.

Beautiful One Day, Perfect The Next

That line - beautiful one day, perfect the next - has been the tag line for Queensland tourism for as long as I can remember. I recall it as a boy, growing up in country New South Wales so it goes back at least as far as the early '80s. While it might not be strictly correct every day of the year, it certainly describes Autumn here in South East Queensland. We have cool mornings, in the region of 13C(55F) and getting up to a very pleasant 25C(77F) during the day. What makes it especially pleasant is that the humidity is gone, making it feel 5 degrees cooler. 

Perfect riding weather!

So, after an early start where a mate and I bashed out 60km on our road bikes (bicycles), I came home and wheeled the R1 out of the shed. It had been (quite) a few years (5+!!) since I had rolled down to Tyalgum in northern NSW for a coffee and today was too good of a day not to ride.

I had a quick faff around with my new GoPro 6. I took it off charge and it decided that it wanted to keep turning itself on after about 10 seconds! After 30-45 minutes of searching the interwebs for a fix and some swearing at it, the little bugger was sorted! Bloody half baked technology.....

I would be taking the Advancetown road from Nerang as it is a sweet, if heavily policed, slice of motorcycling heaven. I planned on just tootling along so the prescence of mobile revenue collectors didn't worry me too much.

Once off the motorway and through Nerang it was a pleasure to tip into the never-ending corners that weave their way around the western side of Hinze dam. The surface is mostly good and while I was a little rusty, skills wise, I wasn't anywhere near boy-racer mode so really enjoyed the cruise.

I stopped in Numinbah for a quick photo outside the local hall and noticed that the cafe' seems to be operational again. A good reason to come back.

Crossing the border into NSW, the little parking area at the viewpoint was chockas with bikes and cars so I continued on down the mountainside. This section of road is narrow and bumpy and it was still wet (as usual) after overnight showers. This section of NSW gets the highest rainfall with 2300mm (92inches) per annum on average. Hence, the strip of green moss in the centre of the lane....... I was being extra careful !!

After a bumpy but fun ride I rolled into Tyalgum. There seemed to be more options for food than 5 years ago (was it really that long since I had been here?!!) but it was still too early for the pub (I don't drink when riding-hard and fast rule) and the "mumsy" cafe' didn't appeal. The general store looked very inviting so I decided to check it out.

It was a good choice as inside there was a little bit of everything from groceries to a cafe'! I grabbed a chicken salad roll and a coffee, then retired to the bench out the front to soak up the glorious morning and read the local newsletter.

I was having such a nice time on the bike I decided to extend the ride over to Murwillumbah, then loop around through Chillingham and then back over Natural Bridge and the Advancetown Rd to home. More glorious miles ensued.

Climbing back up to the border crossing and the little viewing area was clear, so I stopped in for an overview of northern NSW. It is a cracking view! (not really relayed in a photo)



Looking from QLD across the border into NSW, this is the view.

Retracing my steps from here I had a pretty good run with almost no traffic until I got to the sweet section of bends on the western side of Hinze dam, where I got stuck behind a caravan and several cars. Oh, well, it had been a mostly traffic free day, with zero mobile revenue collectors spotted, so I couldn't complain.

The 50km of motorway was over fairly quickly and painlessly and I was home about four hours after setting out. Another 260km (161mi) was on the odometer.
Funnily enough, it had been 2 years and 2 months since I was sitting at that border crossing lookout with my brother and his mates and come to the realisation that my suspension was shot and needed rebuilding. That process took about 6 months (long story) but the funny (sad) thing is that this is the first real ride I have taken the bike on since that rebuild! I have been worried, thinking I would need to set it up for me but I guess Teknic set it to my weight and specs when they rebuilt it because it handled really well today. I don't ride enough to know where it needs tweaking but for now it is good enough.
Good enough will do.........






Cheers.

Still Alive And Kicking

I have been a bit quiet lately and thought I had better say something lest you all think I have lost interest.

I have been pottering away going on the occasional mountain bike ride, 

helping out with trail building,

 riding with the kids,

even riding the motorcycle,

 but working way too much.

I have to pay a bike and a trip to the US off, don'tcha know!

I've even done some trail running while away on overnights. Rock hopping our way along Cataract Gorge in Tasmania on one recent occasion.

The kids have even tried a bit of trail running for something different.

Yep, keeping busy and moving along. But maybe I need a focus again...?

Cheers