morocco day 3 & 4 - the desert

headed out into the desert today, to our hotel and oasis for the next 3 days.

unfortunately 40km into the journey my rear tyre came off as i was travelling around a corner at about 45 mph, managing to hold to the bike upright as it fishtailed left to right i had to bring the bike around the corner to avoid the 3 foot high concrete wall on my right and a good 20 foot drop the other side....eventually the bike highsided and i flew across the road and slid to a stop. immediately up on my feet, i picked my bike up off the road and looked at the damage to my nice new bike!! BOLLOCKS!!

the convoy of bikes came to a brief stop, until patsy turned up and with the assistance of matt who was bringing up the rear in the support truck. zippy took the team on while patsy and matt replaced the rear wheel. soon enough we were on our way. they are such pros, i could only look on, slightly helpless and frustrated looking at my dented bike. fortunately zippy reminded me that these bikes are designed for this and that in the up coming rallies i going to bend and break my bike many times, it is part of the course of off-road biking....its a bit like scuffing a new pair of shoes, once it's done you don't care anymore.....

heading into the desert finally was awesome, but the heat was fierce, coming off the sahara as we are very close to the algerian border here. it must have been in the high 30s early 40s and with your helmet and protective gear it was a learning experience. it was only a 100km journey in total, 60km on metaled road and 40km off-road, but enough to get you into the swing of things and build up a healthy sweat before we arrived in our traditional moroccon hotel on the edge of an erg, a huge pile of sand, made up of countless dunes, almost pink against the blue skies.

we then headed out in the afternoon to circumnavigate the erg in small teams, so ben and i teamed up with matt, who lead us around the small dunes on the edge for 3 hours. awesome fun and great prep for our navigation day with zippy.

matt, me, ben














zippy took us through the roadbook over breakfast - scrolling list of information, sketches depicting wadis, danger zones, way points, destination, plus compass bearings, kilometers etc. you then have an ico that measures your distance and you can cross reference that against the distance marked on the roadbook. then we had a garmin 60 gps which has a compass as well as confirmation of where you are - but some events won't allow the use of this. then we headed out for a days riding and nav in the desert. we had a 180km circuit, 40km to the fuel stop and another 5km to the start. however, i had a little work to do on my bike.

en route, andrew and ben

last night zippy and pats advised while by street light and head torch i fitted a replacement clutch lever and new cable etc. in the morning zippy helped me clean the front left fork seals which i thought had gone, but in fact needed a feeler gauge to remove a few grains of sand which were allowing fork oil to seep out. i also had to bend the ico and roadbook back into place and re-fit the broken ico, using trusty black gaffer tape to do the job of four screws. all useful lessons.

we had an awesome days navigating, a few errors, but on the whole a better experience than i had anticipated. ben, andrew and i headed off, taking it in turns to navigate, approx 40kms each, getting used to the motorised roadbook, re-calibrating the ico at specific reference points. a brief stop in an oasis we ate our improvised rolls we made from breakfast, pouring fresh water from the well over our heads to call down, before zippy took me off to show me 'dakar' speed! that was fun, but ride at that pace for 12 hours a day, you have to be superhuman! my respect for the bikers who have ridden the dakar continues to grow.....this heat on its own is enough to sap all your energy.

lunch at a well, a real oasis














last leg over the dunes was fantastic, flowing up and down and around, it is like surfing, but on a bike, big smiles all round and then we were home, 6 hours after we left......straight to the pool, where after a couple of cold sprites and a cooling off i have been sitting by the poolside, chatting, listening to the pool dj and writing my blog. still bloody hot though : )