I manage to annoy the neighbours - Day 4

Odo 135

I took a ride out today to a mountain bike track. I got waved down by one of the neighbours who informed me it wasn't for motorbikes only for mountain bikes. I was polite but did say “well it's barely a motorbike”. Perhaps the lack of engine noise won her over and by the end she just asked me to ride carefully (which I promised to do).

Oh well, the mountain bike track was too hard anyway! The switchbacks were too tight and needed 3 point turns. Not much fun. Was ok on the single track or slightly more open turns.

So this afternoon I headed out for some nearby firetrail action. It's a trail that I'd never bothered with on the KTM, too easy. Well on the DS it was easy, but so enjoyable! Not far from home and suitable for an after work bumble round. Riding slow seemed to heat up the motor a bit, but 20 km/h seemed ok. After about 20 minutes I saw something that I'd never seen in 20 years of dirtbike riding. A Dingo on the track! I was stunned. I've only ever seen one wild one before when walking.  Normally the noise lets them know you're coming and they're off long before you ever see them.

The track started to go underwater. At about 150 mm deep I started to think perhaps I should turn around. No problems there except I got my feet wet. As this was Claytons trail riding (the trail riding you do when you're not going trail riding) I was wearing running shoes which are not the most waterproof of riding gear.

I had ridden out about 10 km plus about 10 of light trail riding and I still had about 80% charge showing. So it was flat out on the way back, see what she will do. 107 km/h was it, absolutely flat tack. I think it must have been a voltage limited thing as lying flat on the tank made no difference. So after 10 km slow, 10 km sandy trail, 10 km flat out I still had 2/3 of the charge showing! I'm impressed. A very pleasant afternoon out and no servicing to be done on the bike when I got back other than washing it. I did discover that the plug needs some sort of cover. I'll need to figure something out for that before the next ride.