Well its 5:30 am and I'm nervous (bike content)

[Jp.]

Its Easter sunday and my freinds and I have a tradition we started a few years back.

Easter we ride From Midland to Beverly. It starts about 30 km's out of Perth (West OZ) and takes just about 10 hours to complete the ride. All of this is pretty serious off road trail bike riding.

Christmas we travel 400 km's south of perth to a place called Albany to do a few days of Fishing, Dirt bike riding, Drinking, Camping and a bit of Boating.

Normally I'm never one to back away from trail riding, I love it.  But the Easter ride always results in (serious or small) someone getting hurt.

Here's the reason why I'm nervous.

Not owning a trail bike of my own for the past few years i borrow an old Honda XR600. Its big, Heavy, horrible brakes, hard to start and has really bad suspention. Not a problem, I can ride better than most of my mates and that means I can ride around most of the bikes "short comings"

Problem is, With having gotten married, honeymoon, now having a baby (Due September) and changing positions in my job I havent had time to do any riding at all whilst all my mates have.

Riding trail bikes is a lot like playing guitar. Try not practicing for 12 months and then wake one sunday morning and go a play a gig in front of a lot of people. ITS GONNA END IN TEARS :(

Difference is, you more than likely wont come home from the gig with a broken arm.

any way its now 6:00 am and I better start having Breakfast.

Happy Easter All

[sambo]

oohhhhh know what you feel like dude... nothing quite as extreme as serious off-road trail biking but still... best thing you can do is either give it your all or not do it all...

dont try and go into this stuff tentatively.... as im sure you probably no theres probably an even higher chance of it ending in tears if you do that...

but if your experienced then you should be fine dude... and you can always start carefully until you get into your flow man...


good luck and happy riding!

[_tom_]

Yeah have fun, sounds pretty dangerous to me, I stick to pedal bikes  :lol:

[Searcher]

I know what you mean about bikes and practice.  A lot of people come off because they jump on a bike after not riding for a while and then try to ride like they used to.

Well, I hope it all goes ok for you.

[PhilKing]

I get the same thing each spring, because of the extremes of weather over here, I long ago stopped riding in winter.  I have done one 20 mile ride since last October's 70 mile ride.  The difference is that they are my bikes, but I have to check over each one now before I start to ride in earnest.  Having said that, today looks like a gorgeous day to ride, so I will go out and try to get 20 miles in at least.

I'm a road rider more than off-road (though I do both), but my other problem today will be all the weekend drivers who don't see bikes!  I am pretty used to it (when I lived in London I used to commute by bike), but sometimes they really annoy me - liek when they come up behind you and blow their horn!  Do they think I don't know they are coming, I leave them plenty of room, but still they think that they should have the whole road.

[OD-Black_Fire]

Man up. Those are the only two words you need, ever. ;D