K60 Scout by Heidenau

I am busy preparing my BMW F800GS for a transalpine off-road and on-road adventure (details to follow later). However one of the questions that has perplexed me up until now has been tire choice. There are many blog threads, tweets and much other noise about which tire is the best off-road/on road mix. The majority of the information on the web is American where they tend to go for full knobblies, the bigger the better. However big Enduro bikes, also spend a deal of any trip loaded up with a lot of gear and travelling on tarmac, and most, if not all off-road tires don,t handle as well on the road, make a lot of noise and the riders feel a definite buzz through the handle bars. After much reading and searching I have opted to try the K60 Scout by the German brand Heidenau, they are a true 50/50 tire especially designed for big Enduro GS machines. They have just arrived today and they look great, deep tread but with enough rolling edge to suggest they with be cool on the road as well. Only time will tell and I am told I do need to run them in but these tires mark the first significant step towards preparing the bike for a high altitude late summer adventure.

Here is a short promo Video for http://www.andaluciantrailtours.com/ Trail World, run by Andy Secker. The Six Six One Helmet is mine. A very fun three days and I learnt a lot. 

When Push Comes to Shove. Part 1

_{When was the last time you did something that pushed you, I don’t mean being the out of breath, marathon running, mountain climbing, singing in public thing, or those that involve physically pushing for a few hours or so, nope, but a really big one; A difficult humbling, back too square terrifying one. Its not as though I do not occasionally scare the bejeebers out of myself, I rock climb, downhill mountain bike, snowboard in big mountains and whilst these things do pinch away at my ideas of self preservation and safety. But I know them, they are a familiar frisson, they have become part of my life and therefore are not unusual. I guess I have reached a level of comfort within the limits of these activities, they no longer require great mental effort. I have found myself am looking for the unusual, the edgy the unknown, something new.}

_{I am lucky enough to spend some time every year living in the lovely French mountain village of Samoens. Its all very twee and saucisson on the surface, but lurking in the forest only to appear when the tourists slob back to the cities, out they come, helmeted Trials Moto Riders. The valley has a long history with the two-stoke blue smoke thumping machines. They are occasionally heard on the forest tracks or glimpsed slowly descending the out of season mountain biking trails, the stink of motor oil and Pastis mixing with aromas of the forest and wild boar poo.}

_{For two seasons I have been one of this bunch, of bar owners, farmers and ski instructors who find fun in the forests and dusty trails. But I have a problem, I can only legally ride a 125cc bike and it labours under my 89kg bulk, I need to graduate to a 300cc thumper but have no motorcycle license.  Hence the story, but this two-wheeled graduation has been and continues to be, a real test.} 

When Push Comes to Shove. Part 1

_{When was the last time you did something that pushed you, I don’t mean being the out of breath, marathon running, mountain climbing, singing in public thing, or those that involve physically pushing for a few hours or so, nope, but a really big one; A difficult humbling, back too square terrifying one. Its not as though I do not occasionally scare the bejeebers out of myself, I rock climb, downhill mountain bike, snowboard in big mountains and whilst these things do pinch away at my ideas of self preservation and safety. But I know them, they are a familiar frisson, they have become part of my life and therefore are not unusual. I guess I have reached a level of comfort within the limits of these activities, they no longer require great mental effort. I have found myself am looking for the unusual, the edgy the unknown, something new.}

_{I am lucky enough to spend some time every year living in the lovely French mountain village of Samoens. Its all very twee and saucisson on the surface, but lurking in the forest only to appear when the tourists slob back to the cities, out they come, helmeted Trials Moto Riders. The valley has a long history with the two-stoke blue smoke thumping machines. They are occasionally heard on the forest tracks or glimpsed slowly descending the out of season mountain biking trails, the stink of motor oil and Pastis mixing with aromas of the forest and wild boar poo.}

_{For two seasons I have been one of this bunch, of bar owners, farmers and ski instructors who find fun in the forests and dusty trails. But I have a problem, I can only legally ride a 125cc bike and it labours under my 89kg bulk, I need to graduate to a 300cc thumper but have no motorcycle license.  Hence the story, but this two-wheeled graduation has been and continues to be, a real test.} 

Bike Choice

Ok I am now what I hope is half way there, so its now time to look at steeds. Choosing a bike like a hair cut defines who and how the world looks to you and visa versa. Also as I am discovering it can well define ultimate what you do with your two-wheeled freedom.

At the moment I am swithering between true adventure bikes of the GS style or VStrom style road cruisers. A good start I suppose is to decide what you don’t want. I am quite sure Harleys are out as are big street speed triple muscle bikes one does not go around corners to well and the other just frightens me too much.

On a fortuitous trip to Glenmore lodge (Aviemore Scotland) I happen to offer a lift to a lady whose car in in the garage for a service. On the way to her rendezvous I discover she has a 2006 VStrom for sale and in the course of the 15min journey she has made and offer, which is too good to refuse. So I don’t. The 650 Suzuki seems like an ideal starter bike so on the condition I pass my test the bike is mine. It has very low mileage and has been sitting cleaned in a dry shed unused for 3 years. A few days later I have my first look at the bike. It’s immaculate but its full of old dormant fuel and oil, the tires are soft and the battery totally flat, but it’s in great condition. I have a bike to dream about.

CBT on the CB 500 Honda

The CBT seemed to initially to be have been designed to allow kids or those wanting to ride a small CC bike easy access to riding and learning on the go. Whilst 25 years ago this may have been a good idea and back in the day when a bike test was a quick ride around the block whilst your examiner stood and watched you ride buy, now its seems out-dated and ridiculous.

Kevin my great trainer from KDM training http://www.kdmtraining.com/index.html met me on the small square that pretends to be Nairn’s CBT training area and we walk towards two bikes, a rather beaten up 125 and Honda CB 500. Having asked me some questions; what do the brakes do? where is the oil filler? tire (tyre) tread questions, Kevin decides that starting me on the 125 is nonsense, and plonks me on the 500 cc bike.

Immediately the thing that surprises me is the weight of the bike, it’s unbelievably heavy and I almost drop it as I take it of the stand. My only experience of sitting on a Honda 500cc machine before was travelling though Edinburgh on the back of Judy Dean’s (I fancied her rotten) bike on the way from the grounds of Napier’s Photographic department, where we both studied, to my flat, where she refused to come “up for coffee”. So brief and frustrating it was and also a situation where the weight of the bike did not feature, as I was much too interested in experimenting with other unrequited things. Waist or Grab bars? Too late to decide now, I think.

Wobbling around doing figures of 8’s and mini cone slaloms soon saw me riding in the abandoned business park next to the CBT area. Quickly the mirror-signal-lifesave check routine was learnt and couple of emergency stops later, we headed off into the steamy metropolis that is Nairn. Having never ridden anything bigger than a 125cc Trails Gas Gas before, the sensation of speed even at 40mph was great, if not a little frightening and to start with but the oddest thing was changing gear whilst sitting down. The No-Seat trials bikes involve a mini-balancing act to be executed in order o change gear and the luxury of changing gear whilst sitting down was a pure pleasure. Having stalled the bike in traffic once, the afternoon settled down into a series of roundabout walk throughs and practise manoeuvres in the light town traffic. It was easy, the sun was out and the bike forgiving, but after a couple of hours I decided to call it a day, the old synapsis were just were beginning to fry. Back under a veil of screaming shite hawks (seagulls) Kevin sat me down in the back of his van and wrote out the CBT pass. Odd, I did not even know I was being assessed, "but hay", stage two completed.

The point is now I can legally ride a bike on the street, and I in no way did I feel ready or am capable of taking charge of myself in traffic on a bike of any size, this I imagine is the start of a very dangerous period…

New Challenges

I am surrounded by a pile of books and DVLA DVD,s and in the presence of these official publications, I feel guilty. A bit like a small boy in a classroom full of kids, where the pickpocket is asked to come forward and even though your totally innocent, you feel the pang of some deep seated culpability. It’s the humiliation of the L Plate and I have not felt this for over 30 years, it’s a rare meeting between state and confirmed individualist. I find myself here more by accident than design. A few years ago, I moved to the French Alps to a village where every third person seems to own a Trials bike. The hills in the off-season echo to the sounds of two stoke growling and gunfire, where the hills and trails and sheared between the wild boar hunters and the riders of the single cylinder blue smoke thumpers.

Opting to join the Gas Gas culture rather than the gun culture, the dividing line between an early morning Pastis or a petit café, is an exiting revelation for a once confirmed mountain biker rider and downhiller. But six months into this journey, the 125cc I have been riding is beginning to die under my weight, its high pitching whining, a sound often ignored in other aspects of my life, has to be respected. The owner of local bar, having chucked himself down a ravine attached to his 300cc machine has decided discretion "is the better part". His pride and joy, so easily given up, now sits in my shed. It waits for me to be able to (legally) ride across the short stretch of hardtop that annoyingly stand between my house and the mountain trails. Little did I know that this simple 200m stretch of frost cracked tar, was going to lead me into a world of GS’s and GPS, and a brave new world of Adventure bike riding.