Grace (BikeHedonia)

It's okay, the clever ones have figured out that the way to my heart is motorcycle parts.

What did everyone get their bikes for Valentine's Day? I bought bike wash and a new oil filter, lucky girls. I also bought myself roses (because who else is going to) and was genuinely pleased with my ability to get them home safely inside my jacket despite hitting some high velocities on the super highway. Small delights.

They do annual inspections on bikes that are more than 5 years old. So I've got 5 years before I have to start bolting this stuff back on for the annual inspections! Yeah, they require things like horn, indicators, correct sized number plate; most annoying though, is that the colour of the bike has to match the original registered colour, so if you've stickered it or painted it, that's always a headache. Anyway, that's a headache for 5 years down the track

Loving it! Such a blast to get out on the trails (every time, it never gets old) and a strange feeling not to be totally shattered after as well!

The serious enduro guys all run tubliss conversions, so they go about 2-4 psi for hard enduro. For budget reasons, I still run tubes; heavy, I know, and I can only go down to about 8psi. Mousses are not popular here - a few guys tried them but they are a bit harder than 2-4 psi, not preferred for hard enduro; a few people also complained that they didn't last well. I haven't had personal experience with the mousses though.

Good idea buying the spare, they had a hiccup in the supply chain at the end of last year when everyone in their factory caught covid. Everyone out of stock for a couple of months around here. It seems to be the tyre of choice amoung the hard enduro guys in this part of the world

If you're bored and cold in the depths of winter, you can watch me talk about KLXs And how that all translated on the trails (high idle ftw)

Righto, I have stripped a lot of weight off the little bike and yesterday was her first run out. I could nitpick a lot of things like, suspension is not great and could do with some more power, but that would be the pointless moanings of someone who's been spoiled rotten with gas gas and ktm and technix suspension in the past. Overall it's a great little bike for the money and certainly something I can happily wrestle through some fairly gnarly stuff. Loving the bar position in particular - no risers, just replaced original bars with a renthal fat bar - and it's so much less taxing on the upper body than all the other dirtbikes I've ridden. Suspect this is what happens when you finally get to riding a bike designed for people of your own dimensions? Anyway I could go on and on but suffice to say that the bike is now dirty and I'm loving getting to know it. We're going to have a long and productive relationship.

Right! And even worse than seeing the bikes drown in rivers is what you see people do to them afterwards...i.e. try to ride them without even changing milky oil. WTF... I will never understand

I've never had a new bike before. I've ridden other people's bikes which were brand spanking new but never one of my own. It never made sense before - you lose so much value as soon as it rolls off the showroom floor - but the problem with buying KLXs second hand around here is that they've all been absolutely thrashed. Hm, I have said this before? I may be losing my marbles but who cares, I have a new bike

You're clearly doing things right Nothing sadder than pristine dirt bike, really. ...at least that's what I'll tell myself when I bin it for the first time

Exciting times!! Omg. Tomorrow morning I'm getting my hands on my GUIDE BIKE. Woop! You may recall my ambitions to transition from broke, unemployed vagrancy to slightly-less-broke, occassionally-employed vagrancy, by working with a company offering fabulous tours here in northern Thailand during the high season. Well, this is the bike I need to make that happen! For mixed and ordinary off-road tours, I have a KLX230 on its way from Bangkok right now... It will handle both off road and low-to-medium speed on-road, and will be perfect when my customers are riding KLXs and CRFs. For pure road tours I have the CBR, and for hard enduro I will (hopefully) have access to the Gas Gas EC300. I cannot wait to get my hands on this beautiful creature. It's brand new too - because basically all the second-hand KLXs up this end of the country have been absolutely rooted already. They're almost uniformly a bad investment second hand, because these mountains take no prisoners. So - a new bike - you can imagine how bad I'm going to feel the first time we fall down a mountain together. Here's a picture the transport guy sent to me:

Yeah, so the way to get up was by getting the bike up that hill to the left of that tree, then going around behind it. But this turned out to be easier said than done...! For once I accepted assistance without insisting on trying it myself first, and I'm not regretting it...

Sundays are ride days - headed out with a bunch of nice guys and got (as usual) absolutely destroyed. Arg, now it hurts move

I have eaten insects and bamboo worms (bamboo worms are frankly horrible) so am trying to avoid the grubs for the moment... Eventually I will probably get hungry enough though!!

Yes indeed - there's some footage and photos in this video of both the death railway and Hellfire Pass.

I'm the same, I cry in museums! I walked around the Vietnamese war museum in Dien Bien Phu with tears running down my face. The memorial in Kanchanaburi is a large, quiet field, leaving one with the privacy of one's thoughts (and sniffles). I also went to Hellfire Pass, one of the more renowned (read: awful to excavate) cuttings on the death railway. Kanchanaburi is the second hottest place in Thailand and I was ready to expire just walking along the railbed. It's so hot that we drove halfway across Thailand with a dirt bike and back again, without riding said dirtbike, because my friend wilted in the face of the sheer heat and said it was too hot for riding. This is the middle of winter. So can you imagine. I certainly spent some time imagining. It's incredible what people do to each other, and it's incredible what people survive.

I'm in Kanchanaburi, western Thailand, with a CRF450RL, dodging the unseasonal rain. I just came back from the Death Railway cemetery. It is this beautiful, still place under a tropical sun, filled with young men. They were so young; I look at their ages, 20, 21, 23, and I think they are babies. They haven’t lived yet. And they never will. To sit in the shade amongst endless headstones is to realise how much living you’ve been lucky enough to do, and that you might be lucky enough to do yet. I read the headstones of the Australians, some of them inscribed with tributes to King and Country. I wondered what they would have thought of my choices. That I left the beautiful country they fought to preserve, and came here to live in the place where they died. A waste? I like to think that a lot of those young men imagined they were fighting for a way of life as much as a country. That they would have approved of my wholehearted usage of the freedom and the years of life which I have been lucky enough to have. I sat with them for an hour, and then I went across the road and bought a beer. I cracked that cold longneck and sat and drank, just for a little while, in the presence of those young men. I imagined they would have fancied a beer too.

Some of my Thai riding friends hydrate with whisky. I don't know how they survive. I'll be four litres of water in, and they'll be one bottle of brandy in... I thought they were decanting extra petrol to take on the trip, then I realised it was a different kind of flammable liquid Here is the full story: https://bikehedonia.wordpress.com/2022/01/19/high-octane-sundays/

Your language is not only excused but positively appreciated. Thanks! Um, Fanette's blog is in French, but her facebook page is in English: https://web.facebook.com/Fanette-Cyclette-1993914844010391/ Cheers for the support!

The other day I saw a fellow female overlander getting roasted (on the internet) because she decided to drag loaded DR650 over a log instead of jumping it like Evil Kneivel. Which inspired me to write out an explanation of exactly how differently you make decisions when you're longterm solo overlanding, than if you're out with your mates on the weekend. It's not the same game. https://bikehedonia.wordpress.com/2022/01/18/risk-calculation/

Doin' it right

I do. Road and off road.

I am so excited. I finally got it - the holy grail! Also known as a multientry business visa for Thailand. Which means that I can finally make a dollar or two without getting deported! After two years of lean times, this is unspeakably exciting. Omg. So if you'd like any kind of motorcycling tour of this magnificent part of the world - on road, off road, hard enduro, whatever you like - I can make it happen. I have the most wonderful local friends and colleagues, including some of the best trials and enduro riders in northern Thailand, so quality and local connections are on point. I am so excited.

Update: The bike is going to be a GT550. I will be wearing leather.