{"id":5309,"date":"2007-09-16T10:04:20","date_gmt":"2007-09-16T10:04:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zo-zo.com\/?p=5309"},"modified":"2016-08-11T10:16:41","modified_gmt":"2016-08-11T10:16:41","slug":"sunny-corner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/?p=5309","title":{"rendered":"sunny corner."},"content":{"rendered":"

i’m not joking: there is indeed a place called sunny corner.
\nsunny corner is about 2.5 hours from sydney, across the blue mountains, a few kilometers from lithgow. the little village – 5 houses and no pub as far as i could see – is situated right near the sunny corner state forest – must be coincidence – and i assume it is this proximity that is so attractive to scores of dirt bike riders. that, and the ktm sunny corner rally.<\/p>\n

\"sunny_2007_1\"<\/p>\n

the ride is a ‘fun event’, ‘simulating a real enduro’; there is a live band on saturday – i chose to spend the saturday with my family rather than crowded around a camp fire with, i suspect, a lot of rather well oiled fellow bikers – and free overnight camping.
\ni also missed breakfast, which is included in the registration fee, but i queued with all the other similarly grubby looking trail riders for lunch, which was a rather good steak in a bun. maybe next time i’ll be there for breakfast, too.<\/p>\n

\"sunny_2007_2\"<\/p>\n

the ride consists of 2 loops, each of them about 70 km long. i think so, at least, although the second loop was over rather earlier than i thought. maybe it was just me getting better on the bike.
\nthere is also a selection of ‘easy’ and hard’ sections. in the beginning i though i’d save myself the embarrassment of getting stuck in one of the hard bits, but as i grew more confident i tried a few of those, too. it did not go not too bad, really.<\/p>\n

\"sunny_2007_3\"<\/p>\n

both loops offered a range of different trails, from slow single trails winding through dense forests – like the one in the picture above, which incidentally also had a guy stuck about halfway down – to fast gravel sections. there were a couple of interesting uphill bits, too, and of course the odd downhill slide.<\/p>\n

\"sunny_2007_4\"<\/p>\n

the ground was dry and rather slippery. \u00a0i found that rather more often than i would have liked the front wheel had different ideas about where we were supposed to go.<\/p>\n

\"sunny_2007_5\"<\/p>\n

before the ride i changed the front sprocket, adding one tooth, and i must say that on the balance i am rather happy with the taller gearing. it helps in the faster sections, but i found it also to be a lot more comfortable in the tight stuff.\u00a0interestingly the 250 offers pretty solid torque off the bottom end, which is very relaxing when dodging trees.<\/p>\n

\"sunny_2007_6\"<\/p>\n

on the uphill sections the bike runs out of steam every now and then, but if you are not afraid to let it scream – it redlines at 13.000 rpm ! – it tears up the track no worse than the 400<\/a> did. actually i rather suspect that the 250 is at least as fast.\u00a0i also relocated the gear lever and the handlebars, and now find that standing on the 250 is quite comfortable.<\/p>\n

\"sunny_2007_7\"<\/p>\n

the 250 is a couple of kilos lighter, which counts a lot under difficult circumstances, and not as tall as the 450 or the 525; again a huge advantage when you need all the legs you can find to climb a particularly nasty hill.<\/p>\n

\"sunny_2007_8\"<\/p>\n

the rear wheel offers some good traction, provided you chose the right gear, which is still a bit of a challenge for me. coming off a bigger bike i am used to heaps of torque at any point through the rev range.<\/p>\n

\"sunny_2007_10\"<\/p>\n

all in all it was a very good ride. i was happy cruising along well within my comfort zone, and without getting too tired. the distance was about two third or half an enduro race, and i feel i still had enough breath to go for another round. i also managed to stand through about 90% of the ride, which is pretty good.
\ni think the braces helped. they are really comfortable and support the knee very well. what is even better, i did not have any pain in my knee after the ride; usually i can feel the strain for a couple of days. the only odd thing is that it takes me more time now to get myself in position entering and exiting corners. nothing a little practise won’t fix, i suspect.<\/p>\n

\"sunny_2007_9\"<\/p>\n

that was definitely a good day out; with a little more practise i should be ready to race in a couple of weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

i’m not joking: there is indeed a place called sunny corner. sunny corner is about 2.5 hours from sydney, across the blue mountains, a few kilometers from lithgow. the little village – 5 houses and no pub as far as i could see – is situated right near the sunny corner state forest – must… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5317,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bikes"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/sunny_2007_8.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7MvER-1nD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5309"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5320,"href":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5309\/revisions\/5320"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zo-zo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}