MooN

rode to Sens, an hour north of home for an "off road training day" 1st exercise, using the centre stand, now my bike doesnt have one ( though i've done it a million times before on previous bikes) so I used the instructors bike, GS1200. I now have a dislocated left shoulder, have ridden an hour home one handed and am now waiting for Madame Moon to come home and take me to A &E. Bugger!

working tomorrow, last day with multiple clients I think, so will probably start decomissioning some of the boats as well as they won't be going out again this year. Sundy, off road riding course. If you don't see me again I fell off and died...

Yeah, but no. I'm a one bike man I guess, I am happy to do as much as I can do with my one ride, I just don't know those limits yet with the tiger. I explained to the guy whose doing the training ( he's a full time instructor for the police nationale motorcycle school in Sens just north of here and has set up a company doing this at the weekends) that I want to discover what i can do with this bike as it stands... with what I've got, kit and tyres.

the idea is to know enough to not get into a situation you can't get out of. Knowing your own limitations is probably the most important skill when you ride alone. the plan is to be with a professional when I go looking for those limitations...

no tats here either. Madme Moon has a couple but not my idea of cool.

I thought it might be an I phone. thanks.

that's one of the reasons I 'm going on this "big trailie" specific off road course Pete, I'm happy enough on these easy trails with the Tiger but I find myself looking at other trails and thinking " i would have tried that on the tralp" so I'm hoping this will give me either more confidence with this bike or some handling tips as it's a very different beast.

very little time for riding in august and the one or two short trips I did to blow away the cobwebs were tight timewise so rarely stopped for pics. here's what I did get

nice pics Pedro. What camera are you using? the pics are really sharp.

I think that was this one

don't have many dirty pictures, and still haven't got tigrou really dirty yet but here's a couple from the transalp days. going back a bit though cos still on yellow plates.. .

you bloody animal you... ?

s'funny I was going to say just that...

Bonjour...

only Winnie the pooh fans will get that one... Just popped in to say that I'm not dead yet, just been flat out at work, the French have taken to heart the idea that holidaying in France is neccessary this year so they have, massively, but for the French "holiday" means July or August, nut June and not september, so we have been at running at full capacity from 10th July to end August (which though excellent is not going to make up for the other 6 months of running at either 0 or 5 %... ) with just myself and the company owner working rather than him, me and 3 techniciens. needless to say I have nearly as many hours overtime owed as I have holiday still to take so It has been" work, eat, sleep, repeat" for the last month and a bit. It has now gone quiet again so I'll be back with more tales of derring do from Burgundy shortly, Starting on sunday when I will be attending an off road motorcycle training session with a professional instructor, given as a birthday present from Mme Moon. it's going to take me a while to catch up with everything on here but normal service will be resumed as soon as poss. ?

that's t'other sid eof the rive to where I was, but I clearly need to look into that GR. thay'r not all accessible by bike, the GR 13 I think goes through vermenton but you'd be a bloody clever rider to take a bike trough it, most walkers give up and switch to the road

I'm an asocial git at the best of times and and rarely so happy as when I'm alone. I do though, enjoy fom time to time riding in company, if the company is good. there is a small group of riders here ( we're no longer an official club) who I am sufficiantly comfortable with to simply be. I avoid big groups like the plague, just not my thing.

you should see some of the stoopid places I got to with the transalp... but it was lighter, less pwerful and specifically MUCH less expensive in case of damage...I'm still being careful with this one, and haven't mastered it off road yet ( I had the transalp for 17 years and 120 odd thousand km's...)

done plenty more silly stuff over the years with the tralp Fred, but still building confidence with the Tiger off road, I find the throttle over sensitive and dosing it is less evident thaan the old tralp ( there's also twice the hp to deal with) and it's heavier, but I'm getting there.

despite having read various members inane babbels and rambling misconceptions of what defines a "biker" or not and what constitutes an "adventure" or not, I think I might have found the definitive answer to the definition of "adventure" riding. credit where credit is due, I stole this from the H.U. faceburke page and thought it might amuse

dunno if it's a GR Bob, It was once the river towpath I think, but obviously fell into disuse and unmaintained about 80 years ago, I expect cyclists, fishermen and dog walkers keep it as it is now ( that's why I only explore like this on weekdays cos weekends would probably get confrontational, whereas today I saw no one...

managed to wrangle a couple of hours off this afternoon and as it was only 25 odd degrees rather than the 35 odd we had earlier in the week I went for a short ride to explore a trail I had started discovered but not explored along by the river a while ago. it starts with a poorly paved road down to the river north of Joigny and the trail proper starts here someone was water skiing on the river a bit of limbo dancing allowed us under this one but the trail was getting narrower and gnarlier I was beginning to wonder how wise it was to continue on, taking into account that i'm alone, running road tyres ( ok it's dry so that's not reeeely an issue, but still...) i have a fucked back, left shoulder and left knee... i don't know if I'm even still capable of picking tigger up if I drop her. well that answers that question, I don't think I can get under that one Nope definately not. I did think about how to do it but before tring I walked forward a few hunderd meters to see if the trail opened out further down or not, and came across this and no sign of widening now I know Fred would have had a saw with him to clear the path ( there's also a potentially live electric cable to deal with...) and Bob would have fitted under anyway but given my lack of ability and knowledge my only reasonable choice was a turnaround. "Oh Cock" you might be able to make out from the above pic that the path is not wide, there's the river on one side and a large ditch on the other. How the F am I going to turn Tigger round? I had a long hard think about this cos I couldn't aford to get it wrong and would only have one shot, and didn't want to risk my back or shoulder which are, (quite seriously for a moment) dangerously close to rupture. Jacket, tank bag helmet and gloves were hung on a tree and I pushed the bike back about a meter or so where the path was marginally wider and a tree growing outwards from the river bank lessened the chances of throwing the thing in the river. with some pushing and pulling I managed to more or less spin the bike on it's side stand ( took 3 or 4 goes as it kept sinking in the ground and had to be repositioned each time) and after not a little sweating and grunting we got turned around and i rode out to a wider grassy section having cooled down I had a plaisant bimble back to the road and tus home via an easy trail shortcut that i know and love, as a reward for not having drowned us both in the river, and having taught tigger how to spin on her sidestand, trick which I've seen but never tried before. a couple of hours out in all and about 20 km off road I guess.

nice pics fred, that cave is very square, manmade surely?

that's USS Hawkbill I think, famous as the devils submarine. pedantic mode "ON" technically it's a "sail" , not a conning tower... Pedantic mode "OFF" nice pics ?