I’ve been hearing all these stories from a couple of my friends of how great their offroading and adventure riding experiences were. I kept seing all these pictures of remote places with beautiful nature and noone around. And finally my mind was made - I wanted to try it out.

One night I came over to Motodisiac’s house, we started browsing the web and found a good deal on a 2003 BMW F650GS Dakar. It looked really cool, had really good reviews on it. So the next day we went out and made a purchase. That is how I became a proud owner of this motorcycle:

I rode it a couple of times, only streets and freeways. The bike seemed to be fun enough, with a good amount of torque, comfortable seat and riding posture and seemed rugged enough to be taken offroad. It bears the name of the toughest race in the world - the Dakar Rally. Allegedly more people have died in the Dakar rally than people who tried to ascend mount Everest.

After performing some maintenance on it the bike was ready to go. We decided to go offroading on Sunday. I figured for the first run the only piece of gear I’d need is the offroad boots. With a huge help from the Advenure Rider community the selection has been made - the Alpinestars Tech3 boots.

We took off around 9am last Sunday. After an eventless 30-40 min freeway ride we arrived to the spot. After a brief do’s and dont’s from Motodisiac there we went - Motodisiac, myself and one of our friends.

The first half of our offroad trip could essentially be described by the picture below:

Being used to street riding I was using my front brake a lot which is a no-no in the offroad riding. The moment you apply your front brakes a little stronger than you should you bike wants to go down to the ground. And pray that you are not on a slope at that time. In our case it was mostly slopes. So one can only imagine how many times I had to pick up my bike. And that is 420lbs to lift each time around. Motodisiac was making fun of me as I was huffing and puffing. “Well, you thought you were athletic”. I wish I had his Suzuki DRZ instead, it weighs at least 100 pounds lighter.

After an hour of this gruelling workout I started getting the gist of it. The second half of our offroad ride did not see me drop a bike even once. Although there were a couple of close ones when I managed to stay on and maintain control of the Dakar. By the time we got to the paved road I was dehydrated, exhausted, frustrated and hungry. I did not have fun. I broke the LCD screen of my digital camera in one my spectacular falls, I was covered in dust, so was my motorcycle, I could feel every little muscle in my entire body and all in all did not feel like trying this ever again. The only up side was that we did see some beautiful nature scenery.

Riding back home on a freeway I actually was glad that I did not have the Suzuki DRZ. Otherwise my ass would have been in major pain. I kept seing the other 2 rides in our group (Motodisiac and our mutual friend) rise up and down and slide their asses to the side of their seats. Yeah, the Dakar seat is much more comfortable.

The aftermath of my offroading:

• sore all over the place
• dirty helmet (thank God I did not bring my new Arai)
• dirty riding pants (required thorough washing)
• dirty riding jacket (required thorough washing)
• soaking wet t-shirt
• soaking wet socks
• dirty bike (took to the self wash today’s morning)
• cracked LCD screen on my digital camera

Will I do it again? Time will show …

This entry was posted on Monday, June 9th, 2008 at 12:30 pm and is filed under Motorcycles, Offroad, Riding, Gear, Learning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.