Trail Riding

In-between all the movies and cooking, we do still get out occasionally and do other activities. 🙂

In fact, almost two months ago we took a motorcycle safety course so I could get my endorsement to be legal to ride on the road. (Our bikes are dual sport, legal for the road, but rugged enough to ride on trails as well. GREAT combination.)

Don had to refresh his course certification also due to a new regulation with the military. I am glad we had an excuse for him to take it alongside me. I was crazy nervous; I’m not the best about learning new things. To my surprise, I really enjoyed the class (so did Don.) I learned a few tips and tricks that hadn’t come up in my trial-by-fire sessions on the trail. Don is a great teacher but he’s been doing it for so many years that some things come so naturally to him that he doesn’t think to spell them out for Miss Newbie. I also didn’t anticipate that everyone else in the class would have absolutely ZERO experience on a bike so the fact that I had been out a few times already on trails, and we had our own bikes to use in class, set us apart slightly. Most of our classmates treated us like we were both pros. LOL Little did they know. Pro? Don. Yes. Me? Heck no. But it made me feel good and we had a lot of fun that weekend.

Now, when we go trail riding we can cut back to the parking lot using the forest roads and main roads if needed. Don’s also eager to get me out on the regular road to get more experience on-road and with traffic. I must admit, I am a little nervous about that. But I’m sure it will be less intimating the more I ride, just like everything else.

We also have some new gadgets to go with our riding hobby as well – a GoPro Hero3 and headsets so we can talk while riding.

The GoPro is a fun accessory. It’s a tiny little video camera that you can mount to your hobby toy (kayak, surfboard, snowboard, helmets, bicycle, you name it) and you can take video as well as still shots with it. The first photo in this post is one of our first still shots we took with the GoPro the first day we took it out. There was a slight learning curve to use it but we got it figured out in a couple of trips.

Here’s a one minute clip of me riding; I asked Don to mount the camera backwards so you could see me riding from the front, rather than me riding in the lead and watching the back of my bike.

I like the different view but he’s a traditionalist and seems to like facing the camera front.

The headsets are not just a fun accessory, they are essential, and beyond awesome. It is such a relief to be able to talk to one another without having to stop, try to yell over the bike, and/or through the helmets. We don’t have to press any buttons or do anything while riding. We just turn the headsets on when we start out and we stay connected the entire ride. When Don is riding in the lead, he lets me know what obstacles are coming up which is a nice benefit. We don’t have to stop to check in with one another which lets us keep going for longer periods. It’s really incredible and so worth every penny. It enhances the entire experience to have constant contact with the other person.

And, it turns out, the GoPro even picks up our conversations. Nice.