Hey guys this is actually from a previous blog I used to have so the dates wont actually make sense but the content will....................................I promise.
Tuesday February 9th 2010 was a great day, one of the coolest ones I have had in a very long time, my whole life I have been a total nutcase for motorcycles...(except choppers and Harley's..of course).
Last time I rode something competitive was at least 4 years ago (excluding a minibike race in Sweden last summer). I have never ridden a trial bike before but started looking at some videos on YouTube and was amazed of the capabilities of the riders and bikes,check out this video
I meet Dani through a friend from a friend and he is also crazy about motorcycles and specially Trial bikes, him and his family happen to own a house in the mountain an hour away from Barcelona in a small town called Castellterçol.
Dani and his Arsenal
He is an extremely nice guy and invited me over there, i hesitated about the opportunity since I dint have a bike or gear, but he agreed on letting me use one of his brothers bikes and gear, so i jumped in the opportunity of trying this new kind of riding. The day itself I was really excited, I couldn't believe somebody would be kind enough in letting me use their bike and gear, But is nice to know that when you are a good person to the rest somebody will be good to you as well. I took the bus to the northern part of the city of Barcelona but forgot that at 8AM is rush hour traffic so was late to start with....damn it!! and the bus driver left me at the wrong stop...shit, I was late tired and pissed off, but its OK...we are going riding...Jeje!! The trip takes an hour to get there and we get to his house, which by the way was amazing and then we took the bikes and headed out for riding......until my friend realizes that his bike has run into trouble and we have to go to the mechanic to drop the motorcycle off and go back home to get another one.
Our weapons of choice SHERCO 250 and MONTESA 300
After an hour of going back and forth we get riding, only for another our until the chain came loose and jammed the driver sprocket, after some time using whatever we had, we managed to fix it...jeje..we win!, Walking home would have sucked.
Stupid chain decides to come out and jam when we were under the shade and therefore freezing while we were trying to find a way to unjam it, two wheel wrenches and a pair of pliers were enough to get it out and kept on riding.jeje!!
At the beginning the riding position feels really weird but once you start riding you get used to it, then comes the actual capabilities of the bike that are obviously connected to the ability of the rider, jeje. In my case the bike kept amazing and amazing me over and over again, these bikes are incredible, they can go up the most slippery of mud, get you out the bottom of de deepest rut and pretty much go up anything you have the courage to attempt. These bikes will take you places not even the latest high performance enduro bikes will, they open a whole new world to a rider.
The single most important thing that i learnt about riding this bikes is the use of body balance to move the bike anywhere you want, the center of gravity is set so low in this bikes that they will react to the slightest body movement and go..the way you want it to go.
After several trials and errors, I managed to get up a steep hill which was a lot harder to master than going down in super steep hills, with the grip of the tires, you go down them once you commit to it, if you hesitate half way and brake hard, you will take a nice dirt sample with your face..jaja.
Just like anything else it takes times to master but I am hooked, I don't think there is another kind of riding that would improve the overall performance of the rider in any other discipline, because you get to master your control on the bike. I am already dying to go again and I am already looking for gear. The trial gear is so comfortable, i really liked it and it allowed extensive movement, flexibility and it was so light. Hopefully for the next post I can document it with more photos, but for now look at some of the ones I got.
I dont like these stupid helmets, they make me look fat and more chubby than i am, jaja. You get soo much air with this helmets it is unbelievable
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