Playing in the Dirt
I bought Tina a little less than a month ago, she's my Yamaha XT350 dual sport (also called an enduro) which is a dirt bike that can also be used on the street, depending on what tires you put on.I'm enjoying her aside from two small problems.
The first is she is kick start. Now, this shouldn't be a shock as she's older than I am, but its different than the electric start I'm used to. Meaning, I actually have to work. For those that have never had the honor of trying to kick start a bike, its all technique, and before you have it down, its all frustration. You sit there and crank, crank, crank, trying to figure out where top dead center is, where the start of the combustion cycle is, and how much gas to feed in.
The other issue is, well... I'm only comfortable on a nice smooth road, perfect riding conditions and not much traffic around. Which leads to at least a small bit of nervousness when you remove any of the above conditions and replace it with something a little worse. Say, rain.... or a poorly paved road... or a dirt track that's NOT a road. When I got my first bike, I had to force myself to get on it... I'd enjoy it when riding, but before hand the idea of cars around me, or learning to turn faster made me not want to ride. So to buy a dirt bike was a promise to myself to suck it up, and try more of riding that scares me.
Naturally with a bike that I have problems starting and not liking to ride on anything worse than, oh, Pennsylvania interstate roads, I decided to go hit up a local rock (too big to call them gravel) road to get some practice. That's the sane thing to do, right?
Rode down the "road" once, and found a nice paved road on the other side. Figured I might just take that road home, my practice complete. Then I realized that on the 65th anniversary of D-Day, heralding our entry into World War II, I was going to take the cheap and easy way out. After that I had a better idea, I'd ride back up the rock road, STOP (forcing myself to practice breaking on a poor surface), then turn the bike off to take pictures.
With that in mind, I rode back up the road, skirted some water, came to a stop, and flicked the kill switch. I have to say it felt good to know I wasn't going the easy way, and the silence was quite nice. I took 10 minutes to walk around, take some pictures, and enjoy the gorgeous afternoon. Finally I got back on, took a few stabs at starting the bike, got her going, and rolled on home.
Practice makes perfect, and I intend to practice as much as it takes to feel comfortable on the dirt and comfortable starting the bike, even if I'll all alone in the middle of no where.
June 7th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
I spent D-Day exercising and reading The Rommel Papers. I skipped about two years ahead to read the part about the D-Day invasion, but by that point we don’t have any of his narrative and it’s all comprised of secondhand accounts. Still wonderful stuff.
If you’re ever up for it I would appreciate a post on negation (لن versus ليس) and so on. I have acquired a lot of friends who speak good slangy Iraqi but most of their conversation is about food and beer.
June 11th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
[...] last post was about getting out on a dirt bike to do stuff I felt completely uncomfortable doing, for the [...]