Trail Bike Adventure Magazine

A Wet Week

Sunday, 16 November 2008 23:30

It's Sunday arvo, and I have to confess to having had a good week.

It's a common misconception that bike journalists spend all their time riding. We actually spend most of our time lounging around watching bike videos and waiting for free bikes to be delivered.

But once those bikes get here, it's work time, and we'll ride our brains out until the bikes run out of fuel or need a new tyre or something.

This last week I've been working on issue #25's Right Fists Of Fury feature, where we grabbed a few small-bores and set out to establish whether or not they were any good as weekend trailbikes. There wasn't any doubt in my mind before we started, but it was interesting to hear some of the other riders saying it was easy to forget how much fun the small bikes were.

The point of that little anecdote is that I rode every day this week, except today. The Husky TE310, the KTM 125EXC, the Yamaha TTR250 and, best of all, my XR250, back on the pipe and going hard.

Not only were the bikes brilliant, but the blokes I rode with - Dan Ralph, Ozzo and Tony Bishop - are three of my favourite riding mates. And on one of the days I went to Boris Everson's and spent a little time in his shed. Boris is another bloke I'm happy to ride with anywhere, any time, and even though we didn't fire up a bike, just sitting with guy and soaking up some up his enthusiasm for everything - especially the Longest Day ride - is very uplifting.

Watch this to see what I mean...

Speaking of Expo, I went to start the DR650 when Ozzo brought it back. As usual, it looked as though it was straight from the shop floor, after I'd given it to him looking like it'd been dragged behond a D9 for a few kilometres, but the battery was dead flat, so that's something that'll need to be attended to before it heads off to Moto Expo, along with fitting the 18" rear wheel.

The XR, on the other hand, is running like a wet dream. I'm not looking forward to fitting the new pipe and going through all the nausea of re-jetting, but it'll have to be done as well.

The CRF is going direct from the Melbourne Expo to the Sydney Expo, courtesy of Honda, so I haven't laid eyes on it for some time.

That's probably about all I can tell you this week.

I'll try and blog from the Expo, so check in each night from Thursday and I'll try and show you some of the awesome bikes on display there.

TF

PS: Above are a few pics from a great week's riding and photographing with good mates. TF