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It’s about the training...<br />
Coetzee Zietsman<br />
Photo byline - Coetzee Zietsman<br />
I’ve been riding adventure bikes for many years,<br />
mostly without incident. I’m by no means a champion<br />
rider and had to learn the hard way that riding a big<br />
adventure bike off road safely, you have to get proper<br />
training.<br />
Let me begin the story one afternoon in Lesotho, about 17 years ago,<br />
on a cattle trail between somewhere and nowhere. I was gunning my<br />
Suzuki DL 1000 down the road, standing up on the pegs and scanning<br />
the road ahead. A friend told me that’s the right way to do it.<br />
The next moment I was flying over the handlebars and landed in a puff<br />
of dust and on my left shoulder. To this day I don’t know what went<br />
wrong and it took me two years of therapy, after surgery, to get the full<br />
use of my left arm back.<br />
I realised, while working with a physiotherapist to get my shoulder<br />
moving again, that I should probably get some training to learn how to<br />
ride my bike properly.<br />
Friends and fellow riders suggested Country Trax outside Amersfoort<br />
in Mpumalanga. The then Yamaha marketing team helped by making a<br />
brand new Yamaha 660 Tenere available for the course. Three days later<br />
I could not believe that I ever rode my bike on dirt roads without this<br />
training. I was literally doing everything wrong before. After the training<br />
I could now start practising the techniques that would make me a better<br />
and safer rider. It was the start of my love relationship with adventure<br />
biking.<br />
VAN<br />
We<br />
12t<br />
2
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