Editor Stuart Woodbury
Editor Emeritus J Peter Thoeming
Sales Manager Ralph Leavsey-Moase
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Photography, Half-Light Photography
ContributorsRobert Crick, Mike
Grant, Jacqui Kennedy, Robert Lovas, Phil
Gadd, Boris Mihailovic, Lester Morris,The
Possum,Guy Stanford, Stuart Strickland,
Michael Walley, Colin Whelan
Editorial
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PRINTED IN AUSTRALIADistributorGordon and Gotch
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We encourage you to keep or
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M
OST PEOPLEI ride/race with
consider me to be quite fast on
the bitumen but when I recently
went to the BMW R 1200 GS Rallye X
launch (in this issue) I felt a little out
of my depth. We were still riding quite
swiftly, but I did not feel in control to
the level I felt happy with. The reason
was that it had been quite some time
since I’d done any serious dirt riding
and basically lost my mojo in the dirt. It
also didn’t help that the route we took
was slipperier than a used car salesman
on Parramatta Road!
I tried with all my might to remember
how to ride off-road – weight the outside
peg and so on but it wasn’t helping. Both
wheels sliding around shiny red clay
corners were off-putting and it wasn’t
until the last hundred or so kilometres
of the launch that I actually started to gel
with riding off-road again.
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of the KTM adventure range, and by
now I was back in the groove and not
feeling out of my depth. I could attack
some gnarly sections without problem
and concentrate on what I was doing.
What am I trying to get at here, you ask?
Well, I’m trying to say that you need to
keep your skills up on either the bitumen
or the dirt and if you don’t, take it easy
until you get back to a comfortable level.
It’s really just common sense but we
forget at times that our skill level can
drop and going through that familiar
corner at the same speed as you always
do might not be such an easy task whenyour skills have dropped – something
to think about and to consider whether
that much time has passed that you
could possibly do with a freshen up via
a rider training school.
While I’m on the path of keeping skills
up, I recently saw a video of three
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control light. When the light turned
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normal fashion only to be completely
wiped out by a semi-trailer that didn’t/
couldn’t stop, from the right hand side.
It was quite a confronting video but
also reinforced that you should always
be aware and give it a second or so
before taking off from a set of lights,
because you never know.
That’s enough of the doom and
gloom! Oh? Hang on... Motorcycle
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down considerably compared to the
last couple of years. Was this due
to the extreme heat we had during
summer, or was it the consistent rain
that followed? I’m sure there are
plenty of marketing people across
the country scratching their heads or
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how to get people back to spending
their money. I think in part it has to
do with them focusing too much on
the interwebs and not targeting the
core market like you, our delightful
readers! We always get comments from
you guys and girls that you enjoy the
ad content as well as the high level of
motorcycle content we produce and
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new bike or product unless reading
about it in Australian Motorcyclist?
Enjoy!
Cheers, Stuart.EDITORSPEAKS
The words of wisdom
just bubble forth. True.