wannaroo was the ceremonial start, a pr exercise really, but the real race began in geraldton. the first part was a prologue, a short competitive stage that determined the start order for the first stage but did not count towards the overall result.
after an early morning rise and a quick breakfast we loaded the bikes on the trailers and drove up to geraldton. then it was first time to suit up.
since i was forced to waste a lot of time working on fixing the antenna issue i had not really been able to test the bike setup and calibrate the nav gear. the liaison 20 km out to the prologue was a first opportunity to check everything.
the prologue itself was a brief 10 km loop around a paddock. the first few corners were good fun with good enough traction but quickly the track turned into an all slippery off camber challenge strewn with rocks, so i took it easy.
i also felt a bit uncomfortable and stiff. i had really wanted to make the neck brace work with the jacket and the backpack but i felt the combination was restricting my movement too much, so i decided not to use the brace.
i did not feel i did well on the prologue but i still ended up somewhere in the middle of the pack. i did not expect to be able to hold on to that position, the short, slow and slippery section did not allow the bigger bikes to get the power down as much as they would on the longer selectives.
we were not going to see such green pastures again either. red rock fields were the order of the day from here on.
next morning we started to settle into the safari rhythm – and that starts at 0500 in the morning. the first bikes get on the road around 0600, with 1 minute intervals to the next (2 min for the first 10 bikes to make it more interesting), so a slowpoke like myself would generally start around 0630. typically we had to ride a little bit of liaison first; on the first day that was a 130 km road section.
it was actually quite beautiful, with the sun rising under low scattered clouds, the road like a band through dense green bush left & right. navigational instructions were a little sparse, with tulips coming up every 50 km or so. i did scroll back & forwards a few times; on the tarmac you don’t get any tyre marks and you generally can’t see the bike ahead either, so if you got it wrong you could loose hours.
the organizers allowed us to settle in nicely, with a ‘short’ 90 km selective to begin with. i was going well but then made a silly mistake (typical for me): i was coming up to a corner, with two tracks going right and we had to take the left of the two. i saw a quad standing there and rolled up to him to ask if he was ok. he signalled he was fine and off i went … on the wrong track. it took me a while to figure it out and i probably lost 10 minutes there. not a good start.
next i had to learn a valuable lesson about the traction the front tyre was providing. on a little off camber diagonal crossing the front washed out and i had the opportunity to take a sample of the western australian soil. it was a low speed cash so other than some panicked messages from the rallysafe gear and a twisted handguard nothing out of the ordinary.
i did spend a few minutes at the next fuel stop fixing up the handguard; handguards are definitely not for show on the safari, with bushes and small trees close to the track.
the next selective was 150 km long and again not too difficult with a lot of pretty well maintained outback tracks. the course setters had built in one or two little curveballs that many of us struggled with, but i did not loose too much time, and at those spots almost everyone lost a little time.
late in the stage a car came through but they were kind enough to give me a little warning with their horn, and they were gone pretty quickly on a straight section, so i did not have to ride through the dust either.
i did find, though, that the gearing might have been on the tall side. acceleration was not really the issue, but especially in headwinds the bike pretty much topped out at around 110 kmh. that might have been a bit of a blessing in disguise as well, as many of the tracks were not quite as straight as they looked. overshooting corners could be a bit of a dangerous game, and it was then a question of picking the least solid looking plant or shallowest washout.
a guy from our team obviously picked the wrong one and attempted to take out what was apparently a fairly substantial tree with his upper body. the ambulance ferried him back to geraldton and they kept him in the hospital over night.
that day we were treated to a third special (the only day that happened i believe): a short 30 km into bivouac. my day ended around 1430 as i rolled into the red sandbox that was to be our campsite for the night – have a look at the picture above and you get a sense of what that was like.
have a look at the sky too: it never rains in the desert, right? wrong: we were treated to a few hours of showers combined with strong wind gusts. what else could you ask for when you are camping on red soil and trying to service a dusty bike …
after arrival at bivvi you try to get out of the dirty clothes, maybe get a quick drink and a bit to eat and start work on the bike. if you are lucky nothing is broken and all you have to do is oil / oil filter change and air filter change, and a quick run over the bike to check all bolts are still nice & tight. chain maintenance and a few other jobs.
then you have a look a the next day’s roadbook, read the route description (usually they make it sound really scary) and check for any modifications they advise you of. there are always a few, sometimes entire sections of the roadbook have to be cut out and replaced. on this particular day i did spend quite a while modifying the roadbook.
then you mark it up. every rider has a slightly different method, i generally like mark straight tulips green, turns in blue and cautions in orange. double or triple cautions get marked in the distance column as well.
marking up the roadbook can easily take two hours, then it’s time to find something to eat. the showers were pretty good and had warm water (most of the time), and the toilets were actually good too.
around 1900 everyone is expected to attend the riders’ briefing and the you try to get into bed as quickly as possible for another early start and long day.
on this particular day, however, it took me a bit longer to fall asleep. when i mounted the following day’s roadbook i found that the backlight of the new imo did not work, which was the reason i had such a hard time reading the display. i decided to swap the old imo back in the morning and set the alarm to 0400.
btw: many thanks to donat / ok photo for the amazing shots!
to be continued …