I love a good “adventure rally”. Why? Because nothing is
coming the other way.
When you are 45 and you have a spouse, multiple teenage kids
to feed, a couple of credit cards, a mortgage and a stressful job then you have
all the fuel to fire a major mid-life crisis. Thankfully, clubs like the Trail
and Enduro Motorcycle Club of WA are there to save us from ourselves.
Let’s face it, if it weren’t for the annual KTM Adventure
Rally we would all be getting our backs, sacs and cracks waxed, drowning
ourselves in fake tan, buying a ’68 ‘Stang, a pair of Wayfarers and cruising
the sunset strip with Don Henley cranked to 12 on the wireless.
The KTM Adventure Rally is our mid-life anti-crisis; our preventative
medicine.
At 45 responsibilities weigh heavy when we are out riding
trails. I don’t know about you, but the faster I go the more I worry about who
is going to manage my business on Monday morning if I am in traction. And that
is exactly why I love the Adventure Rally: Because nothing is coming the other
way and I can immerse myself wholly and completely in my ride.
Adventure rallies are non-competitive so, providing you can
temper your own ego, the only thing you need worry about are the A-grade enduro
riders that will use solely for the purpose of gaining additional traction out
of a corner. You don’t need to worry about having a head on collision with
another bike, quad or buggy, as you would every time you ride in one of those
fish bowls that local governments call a ‘designated riding area’. You don’t
need to worry about being harassed by rangers for riding in a catchment or
quarantine area and, best of all, there are little signs along the entire route
that tell you where to go and when you are about to encounter a widow(er)
making obstacle. All you need to do on the KTM Adventure Rally’s is breath;
ride; repeat.
No better way to see a sunrise than through the haze of exhaust smoke! I think there were birds singing. Not sure, actually?
I have
attended several. More often than not, my bike won’t start in Park Ferme and I
am OK with that as there are more than 250 other riders that can give me a
bump. I ride a bike that is brilliant once it starts, but it is an electric
start with no kick start back-up; who can guess which bike I ride? And herein
lies one of the greatest attributes of the rally: It does not matter what you
ride because it is not a race. You can be on a 130kg KTM 500 Adventure tourer
or a crusty old Maico or XR. Your bike can be as reliable as sunrise or as
fallible as…..well, let’s not name names. And that is why I come back year
after year. So you can only imagine how disappointed I was when my digestive
system decided to explode 15 minutes out from the start of the event. I don’t
even know what it was I ate the night before, but it wasn’t pretty.
Nevertheless, I buckled up my duds and got on with it.
It simply does not matter what you ride: whether it weighs a tonne like this KTM500 set up for safari (136kg at the curb) or it it is old, gnarly and ready to rip your arms off like this insane 2-stroke Maico 490
Once you get
going there are two loops (the first being 65 km and the second being 35 km) to
keep you entertained. And if you are better than me, which most people are, you
can ride the second loop multiple times. This year dust was an issue, but more
often than not it is boggier than Shrek’s back paddock. Nevertheless, it was
pretty easy to find a gap among the riders where the dust had cleared and you
could more confidently put the hammer down.
Unfortunately
for me, after less than 5km my back brake faded to nothing and I was compelled
to ride like ‘Miss Daisy’ for the remaining 60 km of the first loop. I think I
may have been passed even by the local fauna.
Remembering
that this was not a race, I resigned myself to relax and enjoy the tootle
through the scrub. Will I be back next year? Of course, I will.
No comments:
Post a Comment