Adventure Riders Festival 2022 by Glen Baker aka West Coast Wanderer
A couple of weeks ago was the Adventure Riders Festival 2022 and I took the opportunity to load up the 1190 and ride some trails to camp by the blackwood river for a few nights while enjoying the sunshine and festivities.
I took the blacktop from Perth to Harvey but after stopping for a pie and drink, I zig zagged my way down towards boyup brook on a combination of dirt roads, trails and fence lines for about 4 hours on some great adventure riding. The 1190 cruised along easily and comfortably, it was fully loaded but with the ride settings on off-road with the abs set to off as well it just handled the bumps with ease.
Once I arrived at the Harvey Dickinson's music museum everyone welcomed me in, I'd gotten there a day early to relax and settle in. The hosts made me a meal and I even got a full tour of the property as well as the stage and was amazed at all the history in this place. It's impossible to ignore the amount of passion and time devoted to this place. It's unique and hopefully will always be maintained but Harvey is getting older and it appears there's noone to really manage it when he's unable to do it any longer, so that was a sad realisation.
The weekend was under way and there was 4 of us there to give a presentation on our adventures around the world.
Ewen gave his first about the time he'd spent exploring the trans euro trail which was a great mix of stories and photos.
Mark then added to the presentations with a in depth discussion about his business, pre start checks and his ride in Mongolia for the GS safari.
I came up third, the last presenter for the night and showed my photos and some of the interesting things I'd seen and done during my time riding around the world, focusing on the north America part but a few images from Australia, Indonesia and India 😊👍
The next day was the motorcycle events! There was a combination of riding challenges like the off camber slalom, log ride, u turn, maze.. they were a lot of fun!! I'd never done any technical riding on the 1190, not like that anyway. The most challenging was the figure 8 challenge, tight circles in the dirt. It was fun to try though 🤣 .. the 1190 doesn't turn very sharp tho!
Ex Dakar rider Greg presented and shared some great moments from his racing in the desert, it was very informative and everyone thoroughly enjoyed it !! We had dinner and a few beers , but I think most people were exhausted and went to bed early hahaha I know I did.
Was a awesome weekend with lots of great people and really amazed how well Nelson organised the entire thing. Huge success for the adventure rider community and excited to see what happens next year in 2023! 😎
Cheers
Glen Baker
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