Ola Hermanos

 

Carrying on my weekly rides at Motozone but the adjustment to riding with a bigger tank, and therefore more weight to the front, is taking longer than expected.  I am still not comfortable in committing to corner at high speed which seriously hinder my pace and confidence.   Lot more hours is required to become comfortable again.   

As the circuit racing season is coming to an end and won’t resume before October, I have also decided to spend more time on trails riding and exploring.   There has been something that I have wanted to do for a long time, that is GPS navigation.   So, I purchased a Garmin Montana 700I, as recommended by George (the Grand Master of GPX navigation) and started playing with the device.  

I thought this piece of machinery was intuitive, a bit like google map, and was already dreaming of stepping out of my house, punch the choose offroad track and then off I go.   But f… me, it is complicated.   When I see George, or even Itchy boots riding with it, it looks so easy, but there are a lot more work to do beforehand to use the unit:  you got to go to website, plan your route, enter coordinate, save yr track, upload your route to the device, etc, etc….. I agree, I am not a computer geek, but I am ok with technology, but after few hours, I ended up calling George requesting a tutorial.   And even with George’s hands-on demo, I am still struggling with it.   I guess I’ll just have to play with it or sale it back if I can’t master it or simply enjoy it.  Alternatively, I might be moving to tablet and use google map if I continue to struggle with it.   

So, as I was spending time on the PC, youtubing all Garmin videos, I also did some shopping.  I ordered myself a taylor made motocross kit as I am running out of clean outfit when I ride more than twice per week and my misses don’t do the washing…. 

I also purchased an Eastbound kickstand kick very useful to repair puncture and a Wera toll box which turns out handy after few hours of offroad to tight everything up.  

I also surfed the net to look at travelling van for my next life when I would need to take my Rally bikes to various rally around Europe or Africa.

On the following Saturday, I decided to attend the Wheelie workshop organised by an Italian stuntman called Andrea.   The man has lifted every bike he has ever put his hands on.   A real daredevil.  Personally, I never had wheelied before.  Have done the occasional lift the front wheel up to cross obstacle but never a proper wheelie.  So, I went.   Whilst I did not learn anything that I already knew, doing it with proper equipment and under the supervision of someone was recomforting.    Turns out, I lifted the bike on the first try and by the end of it, I felt quite comfortable.  I am still unsure to do this on my T7 but will have to try sometime. 

Then, I contacted Hadi, the new Kove dealer in Dubai to try their rally bike.   Had heard some very positive feedback from people that had tried it, so I gave it a go.   

Outcome was actually very positive, took a few spins around the shop on road and off road.   Bikes handled well and I think it’s a good compromise for a Rally Raid beginner like me.  The clutch was less sensitive/responsive than my CRF but nothing that can’t be fixed.   Have discussed with Allan from Vendetta Racing who also confirmed he had heard good feedback on it and that: had the Kove been on the market when they started racing, they would have probably chosen that option to start with before upgrading to the KTM rally replica.  There are still few things to make it Rally raid ready such as the tower and few bits and pieces, but all can be found at very reasonable cost on unclewang.net, so for less than 12keuro you can have a Rally Bike to compete with.  Hence, need to get rid of few of my bikes to free up some cash to purchase the Kove but also to entertain my expenses for the upcoming rallies.   Apart from the T7 which I use as daily commuter and trail adventure, and the 450 crf that I use for sand, I have put all my other Dubai’s bikes for sale (the racing Ducati included).   So far, no one has shown any interest in buying any of them.  And I am also thinking of getting rid of the 450crf and go for 450 Excf from Ktm which is versatile enough to do both desert and extreme enduro.   I would really like to get the “6 days” model.

Talking about expenses, DUUST Racing Team cancelled by Road book navigation training so hope they’ll reimburse me soonest so I can use that money for another training.  

I also went on the track at the Dubai Autodrome to ride on the international layout circuit.  I had ordered some new slick tyres and was looking forward to seeing how I/they perform.   

It was a blast.   The Ducati handled very well with them.   As I am still working to improve my technics, I did not push myself to the maximum, but I could already feel a huge difference in the grip.   

If you have heard the news, then you know that Dubai had massive rain fall, the biggest in last 50 years.   It rained as much in one day as it did in the last two years.   The amount of water that came down was simply unbelievable.  

So, before going out, I changed the tyre of the T7 to Heidenau Rangers and with few guys from GOT, we went on an exploration journey on our adventure bikes to see the damage caused by the weather.  All I can tell you is there will be a lot of road construction to be done over next few months. 

  But from a maxi trail perspective, it was great.   Sand was compact, mud was deep enough, trails were technical, so I had a blast.   And the Tenere 700 was a beast.  

I had not taken it yet to extreme grounds since its purchased but was very impressed how it handled.   Had done a few rounds at MX enduro training park and had mixed feeling – ie it wasn’t as smooth as a GS and not as aggressive as the Huski 701 or the KTM 690. 

But that all changed after this weekend.   She handled perfectly and was aggressive enough when required.   The only thing that I did was to lower the tyre pressure to 22 and 25, and all went smooth even in the hardest and more technical part.  

 

Then on Thursday, I headed to Café rider for post Dakar briefing organised by GOT (Get Out There) with 4 riders that competed in 2024 Dakar Rally.  

Oran O’Kelly and Brian from Vendetta Racing, and Benji Melot and Charli Hertz who happened to be training in Dubai that week.    Both Oran and Benji alternated their presentation and shared their experience.   It was a great turnout and very informative evening. 

Then the following morning, met with Benji at Mx Ride for my first Roadbook Navigation training. 

After Benji mounted the Hesapart prototype on my CRF, he gave me 45 min of academic class on the PC and off we went for my first roadbook navigation ride.   The roadbook prepared by Benjamin consisted of 30 km of special with 2k liaison at the beginning and the end.   It consisted of lots on information condensed over a very short distance.   The first indication was fine as we moved from the base site to the desert, but then as soon as we left the main road and hit the desert it was another ball game.  

First, it’s a bit tricky to constantly look at the roadbook while driving in unstable terrain.   At first, I could only read the first and second column and only from one line to the other, and only focusing on direction and distance.   I skipped the last column on the right because I simply did not have time to read it while concentrating on riding.  

And even then, my first mistake came only after few minutes into the ride where I followed a track while I should have taken another direction.   So, after Benji caught up with me to let me know I was going in the wrong direction, I had to do some gardening (term used to go back and search for your route).  Then I missed another track and another track.  Then I lost track of my odometer versus the indication on the roadbook, then I missed a WP, loss my riding cap in the dunes and got a penalty for speeding in limited speed zone.   And all of this within 45 minutes of riding.   Really promising!!!!!

Up till this training, riding in the desert for me was only focusing on riding technics and speed.  This was a totally different type of riding where navigation felt more important than my speed or riding skills.   But all and all a very nice experience and very comprehensive and pedagogical training given by Benjamin.   We had few issues with the prototype which had glimpses at time so had to manually scroll on the tablet but that forced me to slow down and really looked at the all the indications written on the roadbook and read the last column which contains critical data.  The main point is to slow down, read and digest the info so you can go on with your ride and within the correct direction. 

And as I was ready for my weekend consisting of track day and the finale of the enduroCross season, I got flu symptom and was bedded for 2 days.   That’s all folks for April. 

as usual, some random shite below