A Tough Day Out
WARNING ! The videos contain foul language and I'm embarrased to say it was myself (potty mouth)
Brilliant day out in the mountains, full crew attended including Mr P, durzer, very nice man, mills and myself
We aimed to set out at 11am but Mr P got out of bed late, don't blame him cos he was working til 6am
Once ready we set off for the hills on one of our usual routes, I was a bit apprehensive as I'd not ridden my 404 on this route and knew it was gonna be tough due to the bikes weight
Still it all started OK except that my bike was playing up a little, it kept stalling and was a bugger to start, odd that cos she's never behaved that way before, perhaps she was nervous too :da919:
It wasn't too long before I managed to claim the first off, this was really cool because usually (sod's law) my camera stops working before the event, this time at last I caught myself on camera :da919:
Watch out for that tree
Strange it's taken all this time to catch myself falling off and then like London busses, not 100 yards on there's another one
Further along the same trail there's a rocky stream crossing it at 90 degrees and going down to the right at about 40 degrees, I've done this loads of times but my mind was elsewhere and I forgot to stay left
Watch out for that ditch
One great thing that did occur was that on this route I have always had a nemesis, it's s moderately steep rocky climb, there's no ground between the rocks, just loose rocks of various sizes along an incline of about 1/4 mile winding upwards, To my frustration I have never cleaned this hill, and it's a killer when you stop half way up cos by the time you get to the top you can't even breathe
This time though I went to be the night before visualizing going up without getting stuck, fek me it worked, I cleaned it for the first time ever
Didn't get any footage of it as the connection kept coming out of the camcorder
The bike seemed to clear itself after about an hour and was running fine now thanfully as it was causing real problems for me, stalling as always at the worst moments
After a while we got into deeper woods, durzer in front of me and the rest in front of him, durzer suddenly cane to a stop forcing me to emergency brake, his bike had just conked out ?
On inspection he noticed his rear brake was on fire , then I saw that he had a large lump of tree wedged on his brake pedal, that'll be it then 
By now the others had got quite a way in front, as we caught up they were waiting the other side of a horrible looking bog, so we thought they got through then so can we...
Gave it a little more gas to get some steam up and sank like a fekin brick and I really do mean sank, I've been in some bogs before now but this was just silly, I got off the bike and I sank past my knees, it was all I could do to get myself out, if this was someone on their own they'd be saying goodbye to their bike cos it took four us and a LOT of struggling to get each bike out
What the others didn't tell us or signal to us is that they cut through the woods and went round the bog (bastids), still they won't do it again cos we all got absolutely covered in mud head to toe getting the bikes out.
After a short rest we went onwards, I had a few moments though cos it appeared that somehow my front brake disc had got seriously buckled and the only way I could use it was to pump the brakes, this meant that I had to keep my distance for the rest of the ride, like I said I'd already had some hairy escapes not being able to stop
We stopped at a burger van and filled our bellies
Time to head back now
Thought we'd start up the new craze of virge riding, well we're all gong to have to if we want somewhere to ride post NERC SMILLIE
Jus don't look down to the right, I said DON'T look down
Virge Riding
OK, I don't know if any of you guys out there are like this bu i ALWAYS seem to manage to pick the fekin hard route, all the other bastids seem to sail around like they're floating while I'm stuck somehwere thrashing teh shite out of my bike
Don't go to the right you'll get stuck in the rocks
These were very odd rutts, they were only the width of a bike tyre yet some wer more than a foot deep, trouble is you couldn't see which was which and worse than that they would change, they looked so damned innocent
Rutted
There were lots of challenges along the way, all different types of terrain and most of it littered with logs and wet roots
Here's durzer demonstrating how to "log hop"
Durzer
No thanks, I think I'll do it my way (with my eyes shut)
Here's an unusual event, our intrepid leader Mr P
Mr P tries out Durzer's technique
All in all it was a tough day, grueling sweaty, painfull and strenuos but as usual great fun and we'll be doing it again and again, may times I was wishing I was on the CRF or the Gasser but in the end I was proud I got round it on the heavy beast, though she does now need a little TLC.
Worst injury of the day...
My tongue
The coffee at the burger van was red hot and I took a big mouthfull, Jesus it's still soar now
Here's the trail video from the tough day out report
Here's the trail video
22 minutes and not too exciting, plenty of mud and water though
WARNING ! The videos contain foul language and I'm embarrased to say it was myself (potty mouth)
Brilliant day out in the mountains, full crew attended including Mr P, durzer, very nice man, mills and myself
We aimed to set out at 11am but Mr P got out of bed late, don't blame him cos he was working til 6am
Once ready we set off for the hills on one of our usual routes, I was a bit apprehensive as I'd not ridden my 404 on this route and knew it was gonna be tough due to the bikes weight
Still it all started OK except that my bike was playing up a little, it kept stalling and was a bugger to start, odd that cos she's never behaved that way before, perhaps she was nervous too :da919:
It wasn't too long before I managed to claim the first off, this was really cool because usually (sod's law) my camera stops working before the event, this time at last I caught myself on camera :da919:
Watch out for that tree
Strange it's taken all this time to catch myself falling off and then like London busses, not 100 yards on there's another one
Further along the same trail there's a rocky stream crossing it at 90 degrees and going down to the right at about 40 degrees, I've done this loads of times but my mind was elsewhere and I forgot to stay left
Watch out for that ditch
One great thing that did occur was that on this route I have always had a nemesis, it's s moderately steep rocky climb, there's no ground between the rocks, just loose rocks of various sizes along an incline of about 1/4 mile winding upwards, To my frustration I have never cleaned this hill, and it's a killer when you stop half way up cos by the time you get to the top you can't even breathe
This time though I went to be the night before visualizing going up without getting stuck, fek me it worked, I cleaned it for the first time ever
Didn't get any footage of it as the connection kept coming out of the camcorder
The bike seemed to clear itself after about an hour and was running fine now thanfully as it was causing real problems for me, stalling as always at the worst moments
After a while we got into deeper woods, durzer in front of me and the rest in front of him, durzer suddenly cane to a stop forcing me to emergency brake, his bike had just conked out ?
On inspection he noticed his rear brake was on fire
, then I saw that he had a large lump of tree wedged on his brake pedal, that'll be it then By now the others had got quite a way in front, as we caught up they were waiting the other side of a horrible looking bog, so we thought they got through then so can we...
Gave it a little more gas to get some steam up and sank like a fekin brick and I really do mean sank, I've been in some bogs before now but this was just silly, I got off the bike and I sank past my knees, it was all I could do to get myself out, if this was someone on their own they'd be saying goodbye to their bike cos it took four us and a LOT of struggling to get each bike out
What the others didn't tell us or signal to us is that they cut through the woods and went round the bog (bastids), still they won't do it again cos we all got absolutely covered in mud head to toe getting the bikes out.
After a short rest we went onwards, I had a few moments though cos it appeared that somehow my front brake disc had got seriously buckled and the only way I could use it was to pump the brakes, this meant that I had to keep my distance for the rest of the ride, like I said I'd already had some hairy escapes not being able to stop
We stopped at a burger van and filled our bellies
Time to head back now
Thought we'd start up the new craze of virge riding, well we're all gong to have to if we want somewhere to ride post NERC SMILLIE
Jus don't look down to the right, I said DON'T look down
Virge Riding
OK, I don't know if any of you guys out there are like this bu i ALWAYS seem to manage to pick the fekin hard route, all the other bastids seem to sail around like they're floating while I'm stuck somehwere thrashing teh shite out of my bike
Don't go to the right you'll get stuck in the rocks
These were very odd rutts, they were only the width of a bike tyre yet some wer more than a foot deep, trouble is you couldn't see which was which and worse than that they would change, they looked so damned innocent
Rutted
There were lots of challenges along the way, all different types of terrain and most of it littered with logs and wet roots
Here's durzer demonstrating how to "log hop"
Durzer
No thanks, I think I'll do it my way (with my eyes shut)
Here's an unusual event, our intrepid leader Mr P
Mr P tries out Durzer's technique
All in all it was a tough day, grueling sweaty, painfull and strenuos but as usual great fun and we'll be doing it again and again, may times I was wishing I was on the CRF or the Gasser but in the end I was proud I got round it on the heavy beast, though she does now need a little TLC.
Worst injury of the day...
My tongue
The coffee at the burger van was red hot and I took a big mouthfull, Jesus it's still soar now
Here's the trail video from the tough day out report
Here's the trail video
22 minutes and not too exciting, plenty of mud and water though
