My first two day NAV ride

[Jeffrey SmithMember]

jtb2879 wrote:

BUT at least they didn’t put 45PSI in it like tha last mob. Was only 32 so let four out.

Sometimes you have to put that much pressure in to get the bead to seat properly, especially if you don’t use a lubricant. I would be looking to drop a bit more air out of too before hitting the trails, depending on how heavy your bike is I would be dropping to around the 20-24psi mark or less if the going is really slippery.

The first Nav ride this year I was running my old Tenere at around 28psi on the front and the front never felt right on the loose stuff, dropped it to 20 and it was much better

[Damien BonoraMember]

Thanks Jeffro, I was going to ask that tomorrow night (tyre pressures). I am used to running 14 – 16 but figured the bigger bikes needed more, wasn’t sure how much more

[Dwayne OMember]

I have mine up to 20 front & 24 rear can always drop a tad out if you feel the need then TR.
You will no doubt be feeling your way into it on Sat mate

See you there :woohoo:

[JohnMember]

Jeffro,

I’ve taken my tyre pressures from Mr TENERE himself… if it’s good enough for him it’s good enough for me. No rimlocks on the Tenere and super (butter) soft rims means I’m happy to run at 28. If I had rim locks I’d drop a few PSI, but would still be fearful of damaging the rims. They can put Takasago Excel’s on a WR450, don’t know why they couldn’t be put on the Ten’s. And no I don’t have the $600 odd to buy new rims for it (wish I did though).

The 45 was put in by the sideways cap wearing, pimply faced apprentice/work experience kid AFTER I told him I wanted 28PSI and he tried to tell me I needed 40, then 38 then 35PSI… Typical young farker, he knew better than me. But they forget that we all knew everything when we were 16 or 17 years of age.

[Damien BonoraMember]

EAGLE`02 wrote:

I have mine up to 20 front & 24 rear can always drop a tad out if you feel the need then TR.
You will no doubt be feeling your way into it on Sat mate

See you there :woohoo:

Need to calm myself down a bit mate if I am going to feel my way into it, as JTB said ealier IM EXCITED :ohmy:

Can’t wait, one more sleep :laugh:
You still looking at 6 – 6.30?

[GregMember]

Trailraider wrote:

Thanks Jeffro, I was going to ask that tomorrow night (tyre pressures). I am used to running 14 – 16 but figured the bigger bikes needed more, wasn’t sure how much more

Mid 20’s to hight 20’s on the DR mate for this ride. Eagle where we are going I would recommend mid 20’s to high 20’s.

TB

[Dwayne OMember]

Actually mine are sitting in the trailer on 28-30 psi (just topped them up 10 mins ago) and was going to adjust them sat morning,,,

Thanx mate for the heads up

[Dwayne OMember]

Trailraider wrote:

EAGLE`02 wrote:

I have mine up to 20 front & 24 rear can always drop a tad out if you feel the need then TR.
You will no doubt be feeling your way into it on Sat mate

See you there :woohoo:

Need to calm myself down a bit mate if I am going to feel my way into it, as JTB said ealier IM EXCITED :ohmy:

Can’t wait, one more sleep :laugh:
You still looking at 6 – 6.30?

Something like that mate, maybe a tad earlier depending on the traffic Ace encounters after work :whistle:
I will be home ready by 2pm patiently waiting ,,,,,,,

Patiently my ass,,,, I will be pacing all night and tomorrow as well :silly: 😆 😆 😆

Cheers

[Damien BonoraMember]

Yeh I know how you feel, They are turning our network off at work tomorrow about 9 o’clock, then I will have to sit around for a couple hours not able to do anything…….. how slow is that going to go :whistle:
Might leave at 11 instead of 12 and go to ballards first
Need anything?

[Damien BonoraMember]

Sorry JTB, kinda hijacked your thread unintentionally, will buy you a beer on Saturday night

[JohnMember]

No probs at my end, gives me something to read!

Next week I’ll have too many photo’s and, I hope, some interesting tales to tell about two awesome days of riding in an area I’ve never ridden before on a bike I’ve done less than 1000km on following a computer gizmo that is leading me to the valley of doom, with 50 or so blokes , two of whom I have ever met before in real life! There’s nothing odd about it at all :dry:

Bags are packed. Few things to do in the AM and then head up lunch time’ish or just a bit later.

[Damien BonoraMember]

See you up there mate, look forward to meeting you

[JohnMember]

Where do I start? Loaded the bike and car up on Friday, went down to the local Caltex/Woollies place for fuel for the truck and bike. Enough diesel in the Prado, wife goes in to pay. I climb up onto the trailer, open the fuel cap, climb back down. Take Woollies finest premium unleaded nozzle out of the pump, climb back up onto the trailer and wait for the bowser to be turned on. Nothing…. nothing… nothing… nothing… I look toward the shop to see if Gupta is busy… I see my wife frantically gesticulating at me to put the nozzle back into the bowser.

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Maybe Gupta is new, and thinks I can’t get another pump going until we’ve paid for the first… I dunno… wait a minute and wifey comes back out. Gupta will NOT turn the pump back on unless I have one foot on the ground at all times. I’m 6ft tall in the old money, so I’m no midget, but it is physically impossible to have one foot on the ground AND be able to see in the top of the tank to know the bike is full… I said some thing about far can penis head… I’ll shop elsewhere for my expensive fuel… so we left.
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I dropped the wife off at home and continued to the next suburb which is home to one of the independent mobs, low and behold Gupta’s cousin Sanjeev works there! But Sanjeev just wants to please his customers… he turns the pump on and lets me go about the business of fueling my mudder bike in a trailer, as I have done many times before and will continue to do so…
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So I trundled up the F3 away from the mad crowd. Pulled up at Taree and waited for Bucky and Massey. I had the dinner that all Dakar champions eat the night before the big race…

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Rocked up at Brecken Ridge. Found Chuck, found our room, took our GPS’s back to Chuck which were expertly downloaded in seconds… then we wandered back to our cabin to unload the cars and set up.

My berth for the evening… very comfortable cabins I might add.

One thing led to another and the beers were opened and we ended up out under the carport talking bikes, it was a good thing as I got to meet Massey and learn about the tools he carries, though the list of tools he doesn’t carry is probably shorter. In his 12.6kg bumbag he does carry the worlds LIGHTEST tyre lever, I’ve got bottle openers that are heavier than this thing… that’s it centre right:

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KTM beer holder… well they’ve got to be good for something

Something I’ve never seen on a bike before…

A St Christopher (patron saint of travellers) medal! My grandmother gave me one that went in the glove box of my first car and has been in every car I’ve had since. Can never have too much help and guidance I suppose when you ride orange!
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My rear was so new it still had the tags attached!

[JohnMember]

We wandered over for the briefing. Adventure moto gave everyone a prize! A buff, maybe we were supposed to vote someone off the island?

Chuck gave a talk “The King and I are going riding tomorrow… you can follow us if you want to… I didn’t organise anything… I’m just showing you where we are going…”

Someone won a prize for being hard core enough to ride from Cronulla… that’s an adventure in its self I would imagine! More lunacy than hard core… but good one you.

The last prize went to Bucky for his Jay LENO impersonation, he just walked into the room and Chuck wouldn’t stop telling everyone how much he looked like Jay LENO! Jay loved his prize though…

Some bloke pretending to be Bucky!

The ponies ready to race… ummm, errrr I mean follow a friend and his loaned map through the bushes… notice the KTM is facing the opposite way to the Ten’s? Massey was instructed to do this by Bucky as there was a reasonable fear that the near straight through exhaust would shatter that window. If loud pipes saves lives, Massey performed miracles out there on day 1!

The magical hour of 7.30am ticked over, our friend (that we were following, but he didn’t organise anything) changed plans at the last minute and “suggested” we leave at 7.30 and not 7 as previously “suggested”. That 30mins gave Massey a chance to give me run down on the intricacies of following one’s friends map on a GPS device. I thought what the hell and decided to lead out to give this black art a good crack, first corner was OK, sailed straight past the dirt turnoff. But I was aware of it pretty quickly and over the next few hours refined the art as best you can in a few hours… we didn’t miss too many corners all day.

Bucky conquers his fear of the single (OK it was a side track around a puddle, but don’t tell him that… we told him it was a special test from the A4DE when it was run up there…)

Massey is pretty bright…

We popped out onto the Pacific Hwy for a little bit and back into the bush. Then we emerged into what I will hazard a guess was the King’s street, no doubt we passed the castle, but it was well disguised… then back onto the main and there in front of me is this:

The wife and kidlets were lucky enough last school holidays that I took them to that very spot down near the river (it was out of the wind but in the sun to try and keep warm) last school holidays when we passed through… it is the Kings river!

Bucky and Massey contemplating attending the garage sale held in the Kings honour…

Is this the King’s Castle?

Then back onto the tar for the run up the coast to Port Macquarie and a tour of the Settlement City shopping mall car park and some Richie Rich suburb where everyone has a boat worth more than my house, tied up to their own personal wharf…

Our “friend” whose map we were following neglected to tell us about a “fee” we had to pay to use a ferry, lucky I’ve got a man (or two) on the inside who tipped me off and I was able to have some loose change to pay the ferry man (before we got to the other side). But first we had to line up…

[JohnMember]

You can see Massey here, he came to a stop, went to get off and promptly dropped it in front of half of Port Macquarie.

The fabled “other side”

The ferry man brings the ferry back. We ride on. Massey stops his bike and gets off… what happens next? He drops his bike in front of all the cool kids from the OBT forum who just happen to be following their mates map as well!

After the pick up…

Off the ferry and turned right… and welcome to the Sandy whoops section, brought to you by KTM… because the blokes I saw on 690’s just nailed this! This is a smoother less sandy section.

Bucky showing good form

At the end of the KTM sandy whoops section… paradise beach (no that’s not it’s name)

Bucky loving it!

Adventure riding by the sea!

There was a tar section and a nice little single of a tar side road… followed these lads in and their No.1 promptly had a rest in a tight muddy patch and was pinned under the bike. He copped the usual spray from his friends and someone went to get him out. He then promptly filled in the bloke behind him as he left.

Followed this track further along to a black puddle, it smelt like poo so I’m sure what it was. Every one got through OK but Bucky had his first “off” on his new bike (less than 1000 kays on it). His bike celebrated too by spitting off the side stand spring… so we trawled the puddle with sticks trying to find the spring. A top bloke found it and gave it to Bucky… Bucky was so grateful he tried to give him $100 for his trouble.

Bucky cable tieing his side stand UP, Massey’s multi meter was of no use when trying to put a spring back on a side stand.

We got going again and came to a right turn, that’s what my friends map said on my GPS. I asked Massey what his friends map said and it was the same. Only problem was this huge fark off tree that was blocking the track. There was a red enduro arrow attached to the right hand end. There was a smaller branch in front of the main trunk on the ground… someone had been over that log. I couldn’t see any way around it and rode the Ten over it, with out even a stutter! Massey took the mighty Kaboom over and Bucky just rode at it at speed and launched himself over!
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A few more lefts and rights, ups and downs and we pull up at the servo at Kempsey… it was chaos. Bikes and blokes everywhere! This was taken after it had slowed a bit…

Massey got fuel and moved his bike off the servo driveway and out of the way, considerate chap that he is. He turned his bike off, got off… and what do you think happened? He dropped it, right there in front of his brother adventure riders from the interwebs! But it was OK, Lionel had spotted all this happening and swayed and staggered over to Massey. But he was too late, because by the time he covered the 20m to get there Mass had three blokes help him get the bike up and was in the shop ordering a Chiko roll.

Bucky told me to eat what Marc COMA eats during a race:

These blokes were wasting away and needed a good feed to replenish the carbohydrates and “stuff” they had burned on the ride to the servo:

This is Lionel (on the right). Lionel used to race in marathon offroad racing events, now he works for the “gubment”. His tip was to keep hydrated, just like he was…

And we were off on the afternoon session… we went into some seriously dusty tracks. Worst part was some of it was rutted quite badly and if you went off line you could have some drama’s. During the earlier part after lunch we came across about eight houso’s spread across five 2 stroke 80cc bikes, couple had helmets on, no one had goggles on, dressed in shorts and T shirts… I hope no one literally ran into the pricks.

All was going swimmingly until Bucky decided he’d already dropped his bike once today so he would bin it again just for fun. This is where he went in…

I was all over him like a rash just before it happened and as he came into the corner I thought to self “Gee’s Bucky, you’re going in pretty hot… that looks like it tightens upohshitfarkpusscarn’t!” He went down really hard, I managed to follow the same line as he did but stay upright and not touch his bike. He was a little dazed/shocked and had the wind knocked out of him.

We stood around telling each other how it could have been worse and the [strike]sweeps[/strike] I mean the blokes who got up late caught up with us. We got going again and I decided that I’d give it a good go as Bucky had the sweeps and Massey following him out… problem was, every time I turned around to check there was Bucky sitting where he always sits on my wheel… he tried to tell me how much it was affecting his speed, he was full of shit. He was riding just like he always does.

Didn’t take any photo’s after that. But while I was riding decided that this was just like a state round enduro I did at Buladelah back in the mid to late 90’s, overgrown fire trails with a single track running down them with big ascents and descents and drop offs over the edge you had to see to believe… except there were no arrows and I had a map a friend had given me for my gizmo on the handle bars…

It also started to rain just after Bucky’s off, so that layer of dust turned to a layer of mud. But it also kept the dust down for a while too…

I must be getting old but I like to see some of the scenery and a lot of this section was just looking at trees either side of the track. We came down out of the mountain onto a fast and flowing farm road that followed a river for a bit, excepting the dust it was great fun and I could see from the wheel tracks that others had also enjoyed themselves too.

By the time we came out onto the faster stuff my right leg was cramping above the knee, up towards the groin area, caused by having to lift my leg every time I wanted to use the rear brake (pedal was damaged before this ride and left as it was) and my left hand was killing me from using the clutch and I had blisters starting to form on both hands. I am reasonably fit, but have very little (motor)bike fitness. In the past 12mths I’d be lucky to have 600km on a bike and 450km of that was done in one day on a trip several weeks ago. We pulled up and had a meeting roadside just west of Willawarrin.

The decision was made to cut our losses and go back to Warchoppy, load up the bikes and head home. As it turns out I am very happy with this, because by the time I got to the car I was flat out pulling the clutch in. No way in hell I would have comfortably finished Day 1 let alone day 2.

Disappointed I didn’t finish, but glad I went. Probably won’t get to another this year (if there is one) as I play and coach cricket… but you should never say never they say!

Thanks for sharing your map with me Chuck and thanks to the blokes who got up late and the other bloke who was 4wd’ing with a trailer everywhere we went! :whistle:

So when and where is the next one? :ohmy:

[Author]

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