I hate this one

Actually, I didn't hate it too much.

Seeing that it is December, it's probably past time to write-up the last ride of November...

Way back last month I loaded the RMX onto the ute and joined Colin, Graeme, Geoff and Geoff's son Liam on a quad ride in the Maungatuks.  And it went fairly well with just a few little hiccups.

Number one hiccup was the battery on the RMX.  It's a wee lithium jobbie which lately hasn't been living up to their normally good reputation for holding a charge.  Last time I rode it the bike needed to be kick started for the first start of the day but then quickly came back to life for the subsequent starts.

Loading the bike up (I idle it up my ramps, walking beside it to load) definitely required a kick and then so did the initial start in the carpark which wasn't unexpected.  Unfortunately, I also need to kick it all day which did present some issues later in the ride...

Leaving the carpark we started our way up the hill and it was a little exciting in places as they'd had some recent rain, and the clay down there is of the slippery when wet variety.  This is where the application of torque must be undertaken a wee bit carefully.

At our first stop the gang split into two with Colin and Graeme wanting to do some more tricky stuff (stuff I've done before on the 450 but didn't really want to given that recent rain) while I joined Geoff and Liam on a more "scenic" route.  Along the way we stopped so that Liam could have a bit of a blast around and we could check out the views.

Once Geoff managed to get the quad back we carried on dropping down the hill before entering the pine forest to splash our way closer to the Orange Hut.  I led but actually took it pretty quietly as there were a few slippery bits on the decent.  I even managed a styley stall just before a large puddle along the way...

I also took the opportunity for a quick cool off...

We ended up beating the other two to the hut, there were some excuses like "big puddle", "winching" and "upside down" but we still haven't seen any pictures...

After a munch and a bit of rest we carried on up the road with a 450 breathing down Colins neck and the odd bit of excitement along the way.

Next up came this bit:

Yeah, come to think about it again, I hate this bit!

Yeah, I hate it.

This crossing is reasonably long and happens to contain some reasonably large, slippery rocks.  I often take a couple of bites at it but this time I started off reasonably confident - and then I stalled the bike.  And had to kick it over in the river.

I then ended up a bit too far left in some deeper water and the front hit a decent rock.  Normally I'd just put my foot on the bottom and hold the bike up but you can't do this when your foot goes out from under you on a slippery rock.  What happens next sucks!

Pushing the bike out of the river sucks too!  My boots were full of water and the bike weighs about five tonnes when being pushed over slippery rocks.  Basically, it sucked.

Graeme not getting wet feet supervising...

Geoff not getting wet feet either...

Yeah, thanks Geoff...

Next up was seeing how much trouble I was in.  We started with removing the air filter and mopping out the airbox (it can hold at least a cupful of water) and then we tipped her to see if any water had got up the exhaust.  We then quietly operated the kick starter to turn the motor over.  Luckily, it turned over (slowly does it) nicely with no evidence of hydrolock.  But would she go?

After kicking it over too many times, I discovered that kicking didn't work.  In another piece of luck, Graeme had some jumper leads (I like Graeme) so after removing the seat, we hooked these up and the bike fired up pretty quickly and sounded ok - phew!

With that excitement behind me (and only a dead battery to deal with occasionally), it was back into some great riding on the awesome trails (see super-long video at the end) and no more over-excitement.

So, perhaps a bit more eventful than I'd planned but everyone got home safe with smiles on their faces, and there's a new battery waiting to go in the yellow bike...

And now for that video, but first some comments on the DJI Osmo Action 5 after its first decent day out:

• It went every time I pushed the go buttons and stopped every time I tried to stop it - unlike my GoPro
• I could even hear it starting/stopping with helmet on and RMX making a ruckus
• I only recorded at 1080p but got at least 1 hour, 20 minutes of video with 58% battery life remaining
• The sound recording is pretty good - I am going to play with the noise suppression setting when I try it out on one of the "quicker" bikes.  Will be great if it can catch bike noise without all the wind noise.