Doing it in the dark!

Well what an experience this evening was! Martin warned me about going out on my own off-road, however with 15 days to go and an opportunity in my sights, I went for it. Had phone & lip gloss, no metal putty, no gear levers and other stuff, however figured even if I did, I wouldn't know what to do with them!

I used to ride my boy (16'2 throughbred) in the evenings and the funny thing I noticed immediately, is that a horse will tell you what's going on, maybe deer, farm work, a person; long before you're even aware of whatever it might be. On the bike, I felt oddly alone and more responsible. The sunset was absolutely stunning, pinks, purples, reds and blues - lost the back end slightly at one point, possibly due to cloud gazing!

Was on the KTM 400 - loving it, have I switched allegiance even if I can't touch the ground when it's upright! The Honda is still stiff (?) and has gone for some magic intervention from Martin at TorqueRacing.

In the flat light, I couldn't see the lumps, bumps and ruts and therefore truly relied on my training and belief in my ability.

It was fantastic, at one point I was aware that I was looking just ahead of where I was at rather than properly ahead and I remembered breakfast some time back with Ross Noble and he said " always make sure you look where you're going, that's where you'll end up and the bike will take you". At that particular moment I was traversing some yukky hard ruts and thought, okay let's plan ( as per Si Pavey's advice) and look where I'm headed, gave it a bit of throttle too, just because and voila! Huge grin in helmet, then a deer appeared, several bunnies, a hare and some spooky partridges.

Still not sure of my iron steed in the Pyrenees however slowly but surely, I might just be getting there......