“AUSTRIA – THE FORBIDDEN LAND”
After more than three years riding sometimes some off-road tracks here in Austria and depending at least on my own fault, I got confronted with a very upset landowner, which threatened me with a civil lawsuit …
Continue reading DAYRIDE 2019_05“A SCENIC TARMAC ROUND“
Like in my last dayride report Чернотa and I were still in Salzburg for a few days of holiday. On this beautiful early autumnal day, my black beauty and I rode a nice paved round through Austrias federal states Salzburg and Tirol. On our schedule for these days ride out: Kitzbühler Horn, Pillersee, Lofer Mountains, Hintertal, Hochkönig-Mountainrange and Rauris-Valley!
Continue reading DAYRIDE 2019_04“STUBACH VALLEY”
Autumn 2019: Having a few days off, I used my spare time to make short explorations in the Alps. This time I focused on the Stubach-Valley. It has a couple of men made lakes at its end. Here’s the ride report about a short trip into the valleys of Austrias high alpine Areas …
Continue reading DAYRIDE 2019_03“BACK PAIN”
I like the two simple words “Adventure Riding”: “Riding” with a motorcycle is in my opinion the modern incarnation of freedom and the word “Adventure” adds some enjoying small risks into the formula “Adventure Riding”.
This riding day no. 4 showed me well, that sometimes the “Adventure” can be bigger than estimated. In my special case it was a bit too big for my modest riding skills. But fear not, at least I managed the situation …
“SANDY TRAILS”
Part 2
The third riding day, which led me and my black beauty through Hungarys Puszta Plain, was a great one! Perfect weather, changing trail conditions and interesting things aside the route, made this day a great day of dual-sport-riding. Here is the second part of this days ride report …
Continue reading TET HUNGARY 2019-Day 03-Part 02“SANDY TRAILS”
Part 1
Since riding a dualsport motorcycle I haven’t made much experience with sandy riding conditions. My old girl Чернотa and I have been a few times within a sand pit, but there was never a constant closed sand surface for proper practicing. That was one of the reasons why I’ve chosen this part of the TET for this journey. On one hand side it is easy reachable from my hometown, on the other hand side it is providing a very long sand part. Here is the first part about solving my deficit in sand-riding on the third day of our journey along the Hungarian Trans-Trans-Euro-Trail …
Continue reading TET HUNGARY 2019-Day 03-Part 01“SPIDER BIKE”
Riding along the Trans Euro Trail, or generally riding along remote tracks means, that you have to deal sometimes with unexpected happenings. Often the riding conditions turn worse, a breakdown happens, or other things went odd which you haven’t thought about in advance. On day two of this ride, short after the early mornings entrance to Hungarys Trans Euro Trail, my black beauty and I have been confronted with a combination of bad conditions and unexpected happenings, which let us change the plan. It seems that it’s not possible for to ride a planned route in one piece. But hey, that is what makes my little ride outs adventurous …
Continue reading TET HUNGARY 2019-Day 02“HERE WE GO!”
(Part 02)
Day 01 – Part 2 of 2: The ride report about the journey to the Hungarian Trans-Euro-Trail continues. I went with my black beauty on along the calm hills and flat plains of southern Slovakia and northern Hungary to the far most eastern point of Hungary.
Continue reading TET HUNGARY 2019-Day 01-Part 02“HERE WE GO!”
(Part 1)
Day one of this trip to the Hungarian TET was planned quickly: Just a straight line from Vienna to the entrance point of the TET in far most eastern Hungary corner. With Чернотa I followed this line as close as possible on the given gravel tracks. Easy, cheesy, …
Continue reading TET HUNGARY 2019-Day 01-Part 01“OVERVIEW”
It seems like the TET-Virus got me in 2019! After doing the eastern section of the Polish TET in April, I did just two months later the Hungarian TET. Beforehand I can say, that it was a superb ride which brought me with my six-ninety two times on my own limits whilst trying to follow it. What I learned from this ride is the following thing: Never ever overestimate your own skills! Riding about one quarter below the own maximal abilities would be good personal posture for future rides. More about the origin of this inspiration in the incoming reports of that ride.
Let’s start with the plan behind this adventurous undertaking …
“THE INDUSTRIEVIERTEL RIDE”
Like my last day ride, the “WEINVIERTEL RIDE”, this day rides route is located in the state Lower Austria and went mostly through the “Industrieviertel” (= English: “Industrial Quarter).
I planned a good amount of the route along gravel, which wasn’t that easy, because the Industrieviertel is dense populated. But hey! Чернотa is a Dual-Sport-Motorcycle so its also able to handle some tarmac when necessary. So, here’s the report of this fine day of riding …
“STRUCKING HOME”
It was bucketing the whole night. In the very early morning also some distant lightning started and I woke up. A look at the weather forecast was predicting heavy showers all the day in southeastern Poland-the area I was currently riding. With the less knobby back tire such heavy mud like yesterday along Poland’s TET wouldn’t be a pleasure to ride, …
Continue reading TET POLAND 2019-Day 04“WET & DIRTY“
Already at the end of first day of this ride to Eastern Poland, I had an apprehensive look at the weather forecast. It announced for the third day of my ride incoming heavy showers in the area, which I was going to ride through. Often these forecasts are not reliable, but I knew from the Late Spring Ride 2018 and the Iron Curtain Ride 2018, that I’m not the luckiest guy, when it comes to the factor weather.
Also, on this riding day number three along Polands-Trans-Euro-Trail, the weather was a real pain in the ass …
“HOGS AND SAND”
Like the first night of the “Iron Side Ride 2018”, I was disturbed during these trips first camping night. Around midnight, I woke up because of a pack of wild hogs, which was rummaging around in the dry leafs around my tent.
The noises they’ve made like: grunting, sniffing and loud breathing had been very frightening to me! I haven’t had any experiences with these animals before. Horror stories of big teethed boars ripping my tent into pieces came up in my mind …
“RIDE THE LINE”
My plan for this trip was to make plenty of miles on the first and on the last day. Therefore, I created a route from Vienna to the Polands northeastern corner, which was as straight and short as possible. The sooner we would reach the TET, the better it would be! Because I haven’t planned any sights along this route, I was curious what this first day ride along many small and big roads and also some gravel tracks would bring …
Continue reading TET POLAND 2019-Day 01“THE DRAWING”
In the year 2018 I tried with a buddy of mine to ride parts of the Slovenian TET. Due to an accident of my riding buddy and bad weather conditions I was forced to abort this plan. A year later I gave the superb TET Project (Trans Euro Trail) a new chance and planned this ride to the eastern section of Polands TET-Trail. Here’s the simple plan behind this adventure …
Continue reading TET POLAND 2019-Day 00“THE WEINVIERTEL RIDE”
With the beginning of 2019 I found out, that I was slowly running out of gravel roads in my closer surrounding. Most of them I had already ridden. Hence, I made the plan to conquer new territories and had a closer look to the maps. The Austrian state “Lower Austria” is divided in four quarters, what seems to be a good idea to start with. One quarter is the “Weinviertel”, where I decided to make a gravel focused dual-sport riding day. Here you will find the report about this nice dual-sport-day-ride, which I call “The Weinviertel Ride” …
Continue reading DAYRIDE 2019_01MILEAGE: 80083km or 49700mi
Date: 25th October 2019
October 2019 – After doing more than 20000km last motorcycle season with my black beauty the ODO showed 80000km or 49700mi. So it was time for a big maintenance check …
When I started my first adventure trip to the north cape back ago in the year 2012 my former bike was looking like a low loader.
It was packed to the top like a fully equipped, so called nowadays “Adventure-Bike”, right out of a Bavarian advertising catalogue, with loads of stuff, which hasn’t been used once during three weeks of travelling. After a second-long distance trip (with even larger alloy side boxes) I was fed up with heaving around such a mass of weight through the mountains of Greece, Montenegro and Albania …
Being out in remote areas always contains the possibility of a motorcycle breakdown without the possibility of getting Quick foreign help. Therefore, it is recommended to have an assorted set of tools and spare parts stowed in the luggage to help yourself.
Continue reading TOOLS AND SPARESMILEAGE: 60320km or 37481mi
Date: 10th March 2019
It’s march: The temperatures are gaining and the odo shows in the meanwhile 60320km or 37481mi. So another big maintenance work was necessary. On last Sunday I used my spare time for a big check of Чернотa.
In the real cold winter time 2017/18 I was bored and thought about my current way of navigation DURING my RIDES. For about 2 years (+30000km or 18600mi) I was using a Garmin Montana 650T rugged outdoor navigation device for doing my off road adventures. It worked ok – NOT more or less. Its old hardware, THE sometimes buggy software, the bad display, processing time, etc. made the decision easy for me to get rid of it. In my opinion this device is antiquated compared to the features a smartphone offers. A look to other current / actual new motorcycle navigation systems showed the same. They are far behind in many properties a smartphone offers for off road navigation.
So the decision was made: In future I will use a Android smartphone for navigation!
