Learning to mount and ride SuziQ...

Starting in early Spring 2011, my plan was to explore the many island back-roads and off-the-beaten path attractions that Vancouver Island has to offer.  A spot of fishing, camping, geocaching, historical sites, beauty spots, aircraft wreck sites, and dirt biking would make this even more attractive.  Having been a street rider since I was 16, it would also be completely foreign to me and a new horizons to discover.  Also, my friend, Ryan is fully culpable for hooking me on his little Yam TTR125...He knew exactly what he was doing.  Resistance was futile.  For the first year, I decided I would start on local forestry service roads, and as confidence grew, I would expand out from there...

But it was daunting.  I'm not used to hopping curbs or having tires break loose under me on the street, let alone on trails like this.  Trails like this are simply not in my repertoire...

  Doesn't look too bad?  Now add H2O...

And that is why you need nobblies...Small hint: don't stop upslope or in a puddle...Don't ask me how I learned that.

Then there's riding on marbles.  When the logging complanies grade the forestry service roads, they tend to use round pebbles which are perfectly designed to kill 2 wheel off-road novices like me.  Riding while sitting is not an option if you want to get out of first gear and stay upright.  Stand on your pegs, lower the bike's centre of gravity (thanks, Ryan)...Stand on the balls of your toes, lean forward, grip the tank with your knees, rest a finger on the clutch, front brake and gently caress the bars.  Allow the bike to work and move with the wheel's gyroscopic motion correcting the tendency to fall by automagically steering into it.  It works!  Pressure on the pegs helps to steer the bike, with more pressure on the outside peg when leaning the bike into a corner.  The bike stays up, you feel "like you're on a magic carpet ride" (Ryan again), and you can make excellent time, which in my case is 60-70kmh rather than 20...Confidence grows quickly, and you find yourself asking if this can be the same person, bike, and road that was so uncomfortable and potentially neck snapping as before...



Why do this?  So you can visit and see things like these...

  

Yes, I was the only one on the lake.  The cutthroat trout were jumping everywhere, and, yes, they tasted great.  Something else: this lake is fifteen to twenty minutes from my residence situatated, as it is, in the middle of a very residential community within a city.  But only if you have a dirt bike.  No dirt bike: no fish.  And that's why every cast is a bite...Skunked?  Who cares, you get to ride the trails back!