Our first go at off-roading

On Saturday Ness (looking sexy as! in her MX gear), Pete (of Pete's las Americas Trip) and myself popped our greenlaning cherries. We found a relatively easy old roman road near Boxhill to try out - see Boxhill greenlane 1. Well, easy until we got to the first large muddy bog about half a mile into the ride. My sportsbike trained brain identified the potential hazard well in advance, bringing me to a neatly controlled stop well before the waterlogged, bottomless ruts, cris-crossing the clay pit ahead of me. The rapidly waning excitement was being displaced by an equally rapidly rising fear. How am I supposed to get through THAT!? What if I get stuck in a rut? And fall? And get wet? Or MUDDY??? Errr... how am I going to cross the Himalayas??? With my sense of perspective restored, I dived in at the deep end (quite literally) and what do you know, I'm still alive! :) It's been a long time since I've had that feeling of "I can't!" suddenly followed by "I did!" - awesome feeling.

While Ness and I were on DRZ's with appropriate hoops fitted, Pete was on his 950 Adventure which was wearing road shoes. One greenlaning trip with a big mud pit later... and Pete's search for the right DRZ has stepped up a gear. I take my hat off to him for how he rides that bike. While I would have been happy to let him have a go on my DRZ, there was no way that I wanted to embarrass myself on his big KTM.

I learnt 2 important lessons on Saturday:

• 1st - when in doubt give more gas - see mud pit above (thanks Trent/Pete), and
• 2nd - relax, and the bike will sort itself out (I suspect that this one will probably need a couple of first hand illustrative how-not-to's before it becomes second nature)

I'm sure I have plenty more to learn, and I'm looking forward to it :)