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.

Xmas Trail Ride

 Yesterday was the Bush Riders Xmas Trail ride.  Today I am sore...

Totally worth it!

The ride was just 40mins ute drive from my place and by the time I got there, there were plenty of vehicles parked up and bikes being unloaded.  I parked between two very flash utes towing even flasher trailers, one of them had led lighting and a fridge was keeping the drinks cool.  I had ice in my camel-bak...

After the rider briefing (where we were warned of wet slippery grass), we were led out on the opening 15km+ lap and I can confirm that the grass was slippery - for those that don't know, a 450 goes sideways on this stuff when you think of touching the throttle or changing gear.  Yes, it is still fun.

After a pretty quiet first lap, I didn't stop back at the pits but carried on into my second lap with the grass just the a little bit less slippery - a couple of hundred bikes had kinda fixed that.  As I made my way around I kept an eye out for a decent spot to take some photos, have a breather and kill some gorse.

BTW: the chap in the first two pics below must have been in his sixties and he's riding a TS185 that was probably over 40 years old too!

Ending lap two, I pulled into the pits for a more decent breather.  It was definitely hot work out there and I needed to get my breath back a bit.  This stop turned into an early lunch where I was more interested in getting water in than the tucker.

Back out onto lap three and I was riding a lot better and was pretty quick on the quick bits and not making too many mistakes elsewhere but I was already starting to feel it a bit.  There was one really bumpy hill climb that you really felt through the arms and of course my legs were tiring too.  But I was still having fun.

After that lap I had a quick stop again in the pits, using fuel as an excuse.  I only put about 4L in the bike so it was a pretty flimsy excuse as the bike carries just under 10L with it's upgraded tank.

Anyway, I made it a quick stop as I found that the longer you stayed stopped, the more things start hurting.  Lap 4 was a cracker with some good pace but by the time I had dealt with that hill climb and some of steep descents I figured that was enough for me.  Probably just under two hours riding all up.

Back at the ute, I quickly loaded up so I could then get out of my hot, sweaty gear and start rehydrating in earnest.  It was hot.  And it was a hot drive home to a hot house and an afternoon consisting of not much...

Still, awesome fun.  Love these trail rides and getting out on the yella terra!

Working out

 So after a sedate cruise on Saturday, it was time to get dirty again on Sunday.

Colin was keen to cut loose on his quad again so reasonably early on Sunday I loaded up the RMX and cruised down to his place where there was coffee. 

Arriving at the Maungakotukutuku Road carpark we unloaded and then took off up main track.  We had plans of investigating a number of different tracks but arriving at the top of the hill we hit a road block (if we'd really tried we could have actually hit a Dodge Ram) and important people in hi-viz.

On our way to disappointment

We soon discovered that the tracks were closed to public access as there was a silly bicycle race on.  Would have been nice to have had a sign at the carpark...

Disappointed, we about-faced and trundled off in search of some other tracks that we might be able to access.  Instead of looking for a track, Colin just turned off into the scrub...

Well, actually, it was an old overgrown track and we set about investigating where it went.  Eventually it got quite overgrown and pretty tricky for Colin to maneuver in so he sent me off to check out whether it was worth pursuing.

You can see some of this exploring in the first video below.  I eventually stopped after crossing one log safely (but hitting the bash pad on it) and then coming to another much bigger one that would have been difficult to get back over if I needed to turn around.

I then had to somehow turn the bike around in the scrub.  This involved getting it hooked up on trees, nearly dropping it, stalling it and some vigorous sweating.  Adding to the fun was that the starter didn't seem to want to play ball all day so I had the added fun of having to kick over a hot bike...

After making my way back to Colin, we decided to take another track off in a different direction.  Once again this got fairly gnarly and not long after passing Colin the poor old bike started getting a bit hot and bothered so I parked it up and we had a breather for a bit.

After our breather we continued on down and things didn't really improve.  After crossing a muddy ditch I looked ahead and only saw trees so turned around to go and find Colin attempting to squeeze through some fairly small gaps.

It took a bit of effort (and some forest realignment) to get the quad turned around and then we high-tailed it out of the mess.

Getting out on the main track, it was great to try out a few more gears and get a bit of breeze over me and the radiators but Colin did lead me off onto one more side track.  This one was a bit shorter and ended in a very steep descent where someone managed to stuff up, stall and dismount their Suzuki.  Never mind, at least I was able to crash start the beast...

Back at the carpark, we turned back up the road and went in search of some other tracks along the river.  It turned out there were quite a few that led you in and out of the river and into some mud holes etc.  A quick play in there and it was time for lunch...

Ah yes, I brought along my own chef...

Coffee and sizzlers scoffed we got back into it, following the river and searching for more tracks until we ran into the law - well some council blokes I 'spose - who discouraged us from riding in the river.  No probs, we weren't there to destroy the place, but also no signage and plenty of tracks...

A quick return blat down the gravel road and then the bikes were loaded up and we were outta there.  The only thing left to do was to go see a man about a water blaster...

Always take a chef and experienced blaster master with you on dirt rides...

So, a bit disappointing that we couldn't quite do the ride we wanted but a lot of fun anyway and a real workout in that tight stuff - my arms and shoulders definitely felt it and a hot shower was pretty damn good at the end of the day.