Levin Trail ride

 Last Sunday was the latest of my trail riding adventures on the RMX and yes, there was adventure!

When I left home it was fine but the forecast was threatening rain later in the day - I didn't care, I just wanted some more fun on the RMX.

I'd left early so on my way through Shannon I stopped to buy a coffee.  While lined up I was talking to a few guys and one asked what I was up to.  When I sadi trail riding, he mentioned that years ago there used to be plenty of them but he thought that their popularity had dropped off.  What do you think?  Yes, people were still arriving when I took these pics...

At just before 10 we were given a rider's briefing including warnings about the first river crossing and not going hard on the little bit of gravel road we'd be on.  And then we were off...

The first bit of the loop took us up this beautiful track through some forest.  It was a great climb and a very easy ride.  I took it easy on the first lap as we'd been told not to rip up some of the tracks but on my last two laps I fair snotted up it - going hard in top gear even - so much fun!

Then the track popped you out onto farmland which offered some really cool views.  The below pics were taken on lap two.

Looking down on Levin

On the first lap the grass was still a bit dewy and fairly slippery so a bit of care needed to be taken on the descent.  Once again, after the first lap to get my eye in, I rode a bit faster.

After a slightly steeper and greaser bit at the bottom it was time to cross the road and tackle that first river crossing.  There was a bit of a hold up on the first lap as people waited for those attempting the crossing to make there way across.

The water was reasonably deep and flowing quite steadily but the biggest issue was the large rocks to get over/around and once you stopped it could be tricky to get going again if you were hung up on a rock.  There was much splashing and revving of motors.  On my first attempt I got across no problems (except water in the boots straight away) at all but there were still more large rocks on the beach to deal with as we rode up the river a bit to where the track then turned onto farmland again.  Overall, I'm not in favour of rocks...

From that point on there was some great dashes across paddocks, up and down banks and into and out of the river quite a bit until being spat out onto the gravel road.  I particularly enjoyed riding with others who were roughly the same speed - seeing if I could keep up or perhaps even overtake...

I could have avoided some of the gravel road if I'd attempted an A loop but I'm fat, old, unfit and perhaps just a wee bit unskilled.  So, I stuck to the gravel until once again we turned onto another forest track which was fairly quick and took me up the hill again for a blast across the ridge.

Eventually, the track started to descend and into perhaps the trickiest (except maybe for the first river crossing) part of the loop.  The track was fairly damp and there was some pretty slippery bits along with some decent ruts to keep you focused.  I certainly wasn't as fast as the young dudes who just attack everything...

Popping out the bottom got me into a big paddock for the return back to the pits where I made a quick stop to take on some water - I'd had my camelbak on the whole way around but never really stopped or had time to take a drink.

And then I was back out into for round 2...

As I mentioned above, after my sighter lap I went a bit quicker everywhere and once again got through the river ok except for having to stop and then get going again.  But then, after another good squirt across the paddocks and the last of the river crossings I made a whoopsie before a sharp left hander.

The corner (for me anyway) required a downchange to first before turning up the hill and I think during the downchange I hit a rock with no drive and got biffed off the bike.  I landed pretty hard on my left shoulder (possibly on rocks too) and stayed down for a few seconds while I wondered if I had stuffed my good shoulder.  Yeah, it hurt a wee bit.

Anyway, I got back up and out of the way of the other riders while I caught my breath.  A minute or two later I was off again like it hadn't happened but I'm still sore now...I think I may have something a tweak and that something didn't really like it...

Back at the ute it was time for lunch before heading out for what would be my last lap and with the odd spit of rain falling I charged up the hill chasing after some quads.  Everything went well until the river...

Yep, you guessed it.  I joined a few others in being unfortunate enough to dunk there bikes.  I never completely submerged the bike but it got low enough for water to enter the air box and that was all she wrote.  To say that it was hard work pushing it over those rocks out of the river is an understatement.

Out on the beach I joined about 4 others (and even they weren't the only ones) pulling their bikes down to get the water out of them.  One of the others was a rider I'd met at the Bush riders trail ride and I was able to lend him some tools to get his Yammie going.

It took me a while to remove seat, plastics and tank to get to the spark plug and remove it.  I pumped some of the water out of the motor using the kick starter and was just getting around to lifting the bike up to drain the air box when a ride marshal came over to help.  He helped me drain the airbox but then suggested that we just load the bike up on the trailer and he'd run me back.  I was pretty sure (especially now I have the bike back together and running - see next blog) that I would have got the bike going again but I went with the program and it was probably better than running the bike with some "dilute" oil in it.

When we left the riverside there were three bikes on the trailer...

Here's some more carnage from the river crossing.  Check out the three photos of the red bike taking a number of different lines across - it wasn't easy...

Oops, stalled...

So, not the best ending to a ride but I did really enjoy it.  The route was really cool with a bit of everything and mostly pretty easy to ride.  The dunking sucked but I've now done that and appear to have gotten away with it...

Bring on the next trail ride!