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Ride Report: BikeHedonia rides the world (one way or another)


Grace (BikeHedonia)

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11 hours ago, Mawsley said:

That's ace.

I spent a weekend getting totally fucked up with a Brit in Quito who'd sold up and settled there with six secondhand XR650s. He was living his absolute best life. Hope it kicks off for you, Grace.

Doin' it right

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The other day I saw a fellow female overlander getting roasted (on the internet) because she decided to drag loaded DR650 over a log instead of jumping it like Evil Kneivel. Which inspired me to write out an explanation of exactly how differently you make decisions when you're longterm solo overlanding, than if you're out with your mates on the weekend. It's not the same game.

https://bikehedonia.wordpress.com/2022/01/18/risk-calculation/

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13 hours ago, Grace (BikeHedonia) said:

The other day I saw a fellow female overlander getting spit-roasted (on the internet) because she decided to drag loaded DR650 over a log instead of jumping it like Evil Kneivel. Which inspired me to write out an explanation of exactly how differently you make decisions when you're longterm solo overlanding, than if you're out with your mates on the weekend. It's not the same game.

https://bikehedonia.wordpress.com/2022/01/18/risk-calculation/

Fixed 😄

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18 hours ago, Grace (BikeHedonia) said:

The other day I saw a fellow female overlander getting roasted (on the internet) because she decided to drag loaded DR650 over a log instead of jumping it like Evil Kneivel. Which inspired me to write out an explanation of exactly how differently you make decisions when you're longterm solo overlanding, than if you're out with your mates on the weekend. It's not the same game.

https://bikehedonia.wordpress.com/2022/01/18/risk-calculation/

Excuse my language but FUCK the keyboard warriors, anyone can jump a log from the comfort of their lovely padded chair :wank4az:

You're exactly right Grace, always weigh up your chances first especially things like river crossings.  Does Fanette have a blog or youtube channel, I don't have Instagram but I'd like to follow her as I have a DR650 myself.

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10 hours ago, boboneleg said:

Excuse my language but FUCK the keyboard warriors, anyone can jump a log from the comfort of their lovely padded chair :wank4az:

You're exactly right Grace, always weigh up your chances first especially things like river crossings.  Does Fanette have a blog or youtube channel, I don't have Instagram but I'd like to follow her as I have a DR650 myself.

Your language is not only excused but positively appreciated. Thanks! Um, Fanette's blog is in French, but her facebook page is in English: https://web.facebook.com/Fanette-Cyclette-1993914844010391/  Cheers for the support!

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Some of my Thai riding friends hydrate with whisky. I don't know how they survive. I'll be four litres of water in, and they'll be one bottle of brandy in...  I thought they were decanting extra petrol to take on the trip, then I realised it was a different kind of flammable liquid 🤣
 

 

Here is the full story:

https://bikehedonia.wordpress.com/2022/01/19/high-octane-sundays/

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7 hours ago, Grace (BikeHedonia) said:

Some of my Thai riding friends hydrate with whisky. I don't know how they survive. I'll be four litres of water in, and they'll be one bottle of brandy in...  I thought they were decanting extra petrol to take on the trip, then I realised it was a different kind of flammable liquid 🤣
 

 

Here is the full story:

https://bikehedonia.wordpress.com/2022/01/19/high-octane-sundays/

Bloody hell......that's just mad!

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I'm in Kanchanaburi, western Thailand, with a CRF450RL, dodging the unseasonal rain.

I just came back from the Death Railway cemetery. It is this beautiful, still place under a tropical sun, filled with young men. They were so young; I look at their ages, 20, 21, 23, and I think they are babies. They haven’t lived yet. And they never will.

To sit in the shade amongst endless headstones is to realise how much living you’ve been lucky enough to do, and that you might be lucky enough to do yet.

I read the headstones of the Australians, some of them inscribed with tributes to King and Country. I wondered what they would have thought of my choices. That I left the beautiful country they fought to preserve, and came here to live in the place where they died. A waste? I like to think that a lot of those young men imagined they were fighting for a way of life as much as a country. That they would have approved of my wholehearted usage of the freedom and the years of life which I have been lucky enough to have.

I sat with them for an hour, and then I went across the road and bought a beer. I cracked that cold longneck and sat and drank, just for a little while, in the presence of those young men. I imagined they would have fancied a beer too.

 

IMG_20220122_160921.jpg

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51 minutes ago, Grace (BikeHedonia) said:

I'm in Kanchanaburi, western Thailand, with a CRF450RL, dodging the unseasonal rain.

I just came back from the Death Railway cemetery. It is this beautiful, still place under a tropical sun, filled with young men. They were so young; I look at their ages, 20, 21, 23, and I think they are babies. They haven’t lived yet. And they never will.

To sit in the shade amongst endless headstones is to realise how much living you’ve been lucky enough to do, and that you might be lucky enough to do yet.

I read the headstones of the Australians, some of them inscribed with tributes to King and Country. I wondered what they would have thought of my choices. That I left the beautiful country they fought to preserve, and came here to live in the place where they died. A waste? I like to think that a lot of those young men imagined they were fighting for a way of life as much as a country. That they would have approved of my wholehearted usage of the freedom and the years of life which I have been lucky enough to have.

I sat with them for an hour, and then I went across the road and bought a beer. I cracked that cold longneck and sat and drank, just for a little while, in the presence of those young men. I imagined they would have fancied a beer too.

 

IMG_20220122_160921.jpg

Wow!

What wonderful words there Grace!

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Brilliant. Never been great at war memorial stuff myself, probably because of my own families history I find it heartbreaking, greed and insanity leading to so much death. I go I look and I leave quickly before tears embarrass other people. I went to the Holocaust exhibition and the imperial War museum and only got a quarter of the way round before I had to break into into a trot to get out ASAP. Got some weird looks and had a lot of tea breaks on that trip 😂 

On a lighter note. Glad you have the right helmet for the right job now and the hjc is a good fit for you, when I tried that brand I had enuf spare space for my sandwiches (insert own joke about sandwich short of a picnic) 😆 

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On 24/01/2022 at 18:50, Slowlycatchymonkey said:

Brilliant. Never been great at war memorial stuff myself, probably because of my own families history I find it heartbreaking, greed and insanity leading to so much death. I go I look and I leave quickly before tears embarrass other people. I went to the Holocaust exhibition and the imperial War museum and only got a quarter of the way round before I had to break into into a trot to get out ASAP. Got some weird looks and had a lot of tea breaks on that trip 😂 

On a lighter note. Glad you have the right helmet for the right job now and the hjc is a good fit for you, when I tried that brand I had enuf spare space for my sandwiches (insert own joke about sandwich short of a picnic) 😆 

I'm the same, I cry in museums! I walked around the Vietnamese war museum in Dien Bien Phu with tears running down my face.

The memorial in Kanchanaburi is a large, quiet field, leaving one with the privacy of one's thoughts (and sniffles). 

I also went to Hellfire Pass, one of the more renowned (read: awful to excavate) cuttings on the death railway. Kanchanaburi is the second hottest place in Thailand and I was ready to expire just walking along the railbed. It's so hot that we drove halfway across Thailand with a dirt bike and back again, without riding said dirtbike, because my friend wilted in the face of the sheer heat and said it was too hot for riding. This is the middle of winter.

So can you imagine. I certainly spent some time imagining. It's incredible what people do to each other, and it's incredible what people survive.

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50 minutes ago, Grace (BikeHedonia) said:

I also went to Hellfire Pass, one of the more renowned (read: awful to excavate) cuttings on the death railway.

Death Railway? Any pics of that Grace?

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12 hours ago, Slowlycatchymonkey said:

Great stuff Grace. So have you got round to having grubs or rat for dinner yet?

I have eaten insects and bamboo worms (bamboo worms are frankly horrible) so am trying to avoid the grubs for the moment... Eventually I will probably get hungry enough though!!

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1 hour ago, Grace (BikeHedonia) said:

Sundays are ride days - headed out with a bunch of nice guys and got (as usual) absolutely destroyed. Arg, now it hurts move 🤣

 

That sticky out root looked like a right pita! I initially thought he’d accidentally throttled himself into a tree 😂 

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24 minutes ago, Slowlycatchymonkey said:

That sticky out root looked like a right pita! I initially thought he’d accidentally throttled himself into a tree 😂 

Yeah, so the way to get up was by getting the bike up that hill to the left of that tree, then going around behind it. But this turned out to be easier said than done...! For once I accepted assistance without insisting on trying it myself first, and I'm not regretting it...

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Exciting times!! Omg.

Tomorrow morning I'm getting my hands on my GUIDE BIKE. Woop!

You may recall my ambitions to transition from broke, unemployed vagrancy to slightly-less-broke, occassionally-employed vagrancy, by working with a company offering fabulous tours here in northern Thailand during the high season. Well, this is the bike I need to make that happen!  For mixed and ordinary off-road tours, I have a KLX230 on its way from Bangkok right now... It will handle both off road and low-to-medium speed on-road, and will be perfect when my customers are riding KLXs and CRFs. For pure road tours I have the CBR, and for hard enduro I will (hopefully) have access to the Gas Gas EC300. 

I cannot wait to get my hands on this beautiful creature. It's brand new too - because basically all the second-hand KLXs up this end of the country have been absolutely rooted already. They're almost uniformly a bad investment second hand, because these mountains take no prisoners. So - a new bike - you can imagine how bad I'm going to feel the first time we fall down a mountain together. 

Here's a picture the transport guy sent to me:

 

transport.jpg

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2 hours ago, Grace (BikeHedonia) said:

Exciting times!! Omg.

Tomorrow morning I'm getting my hands on my GUIDE BIKE. Woop!

You may recall my ambitions to transition from broke, unemployed vagrancy to slightly-less-broke, occassionally-employed vagrancy, by working with a company offering fabulous tours here in northern Thailand during the high season. Well, this is the bike I need to make that happen!  For mixed and ordinary off-road tours, I have a KLX230 on its way from Bangkok right now... It will handle both off road and low-to-medium speed on-road, and will be perfect when my customers are riding KLXs and CRFs. For pure road tours I have the CBR, and for hard enduro I will (hopefully) have access to the Gas Gas EC300. 

I cannot wait to get my hands on this beautiful creature. It's brand new too - because basically all the second-hand KLXs up this end of the country have been absolutely rooted already. They're almost uniformly a bad investment second hand, because these mountains take no prisoners. So - a new bike - you can imagine how bad I'm going to feel the first time we fall down a mountain together. 

Here's a picture the transport guy sent to me:

 

transport.jpg

Nice one Grace! :dancebanana:

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7 hours ago, Grace (BikeHedonia) said:

Exciting times!! Omg.

Tomorrow morning I'm getting my hands on my GUIDE BIKE. Woop!

You may recall my ambitions to transition from broke, unemployed vagrancy to slightly-less-broke, occassionally-employed vagrancy, by working with a company offering fabulous tours here in northern Thailand during the high season. Well, this is the bike I need to make that happen!  For mixed and ordinary off-road tours, I have a KLX230 on its way from Bangkok right now... It will handle both off road and low-to-medium speed on-road, and will be perfect when my customers are riding KLXs and CRFs. For pure road tours I have the CBR, and for hard enduro I will (hopefully) have access to the Gas Gas EC300. 

I cannot wait to get my hands on this beautiful creature. It's brand new too - because basically all the second-hand KLXs up this end of the country have been absolutely rooted already. They're almost uniformly a bad investment second hand, because these mountains take no prisoners. So - a new bike - you can imagine how bad I'm going to feel the first time we fall down a mountain together. 

Here's a picture the transport guy sent to me:

 

transport.jpg

 Thats Nice Reaction GIF by MOODMAN

That first scratch is easy to get but hard to accept, i spent yesterday blowing a large dent out of my exhaust and welding on a new mounting bracket on a bike that's 5 months old 

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