Barkin' up the wrong tree.

Bendigo was calling over the weekend, and whilst a wet weekend was forecast all round, it never seemed to eventuate. With a hefty diversion in the morning to do a rider pickup, we were still on the road nice and early, and hit the trails before nine. With Matt being on home turf, we headed out the back to link up some nice fun trails.

The new man in blue was a dirt virgin this day, with a good deal of experience on the slick tyres, it was a whole new ball game for the dust and rocks of Bendigo. And there isn't really a nice introduction to off road riding to be had in bendigo, its straight into the singletrack and rocks. And we wouldn't have it any other way.

Laying down in the bullants yielded a couple of nice shots I thought.

Bermbusting one of the many little washaway dirt bike tracks that little the bendigo state park.

Doing the same thing for the 42nd time to humour the talentless cameraman...

New bike, new skill set, gettin 'er done!

Playing with the remote flash, slowly working it out...

I honestly think its nearly time for someone to lash out...

Turning left when the trail goes straight...

And finally, this happened...

WTF?? We came around the little track and over the small jump, unable to see through a cloud of dust. Stopping off track, the dust cleared and we see Bryce sitting up on the ground, doing the quick patdown check for broken bits, and his bike 'parked..' He cleared the checkist (fingers, toes, etc, ticking the thumb box for a tweak) and hopped up, only to find us pretty much in stitches of amazement really?! How the hell did this happen?!

Best guess is what we'd call whiskey throttle where the rider lands, the rear wheel hooks up and the bike accelerates under the rider and rips the throttle open suddenly. The usual results is rider and bike part company quite rapidly, as would appear to be the case by the wheel trench as it hooked up, and the fact the bike was parked halfway up a tree....!

Firmly parked, I might add...

 

As someone suggested later, could have done an easy oil change whilst it was there...! Fortunately it was all smiles once the adrenalin had worn off, bike was bent back into service and onwards we rode. Just another adventure really.

And finally we came across this little bit of random - an older gentleman taking his little RC boat for a hoon in a small dam. Was a pretty cool little thing, but given he was wearing gumboots, I don't think he was totally convinced of its reliability.