Karen Ramsay - AdventureRiderMagazine

This entry is part 14 of 16 in the series Adventure Rider Issue #26

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Karen Ramsay is handy at reading a map,but she found plotting a route was a whole other kettle of fish.

It seemed simple enough: organisea surprise weekend riding for hubby Dave’s birthday.

Armed with Google Maps and the idea of trying to include some tracks he likes to ride on his birthday each year, I thought it’d be easy to plan a special couple of days.

That was my first mistake.

Karen Ramsay

Hard work

A map just looks like a whole lot of squiggly lines. There’s so many roads and tracks and trails out there. How do you know where to begin? Or to quote a C.W. McCall song, the roads looked like ‘a whole bunch a Zs and Ws’. I had no idea which ones were easy and which ones needed the skills of a super enduro rider to conquer.

When I’m riding places I’ve been before, it’s familiar and I can find my way around – or at least have a pretty fair idea of where I’m going. But trying to plan a route from a map is really difficult without a good knowledge of the tracks you’re planning on taking or being an amazing rider who can ride anywhere.

Karen Ramsay

KAREN RAMSAY

Following directions

Dave is known around our way as ‘The Human GPS’. He has an incredible memory not only for the different tracks he’s been on, but also ones he’s heard other people talk about or even ones he’s looked at on maps. Someone only has to mention a place and he can give them half a dozen different routes of varying difficulty to get there and back. He’s managed to put over 150,000km on his BMW F800GS in five years and the majority of that distance was done on weekends away. Occasionally we can get away for a week or more, but it just shows what’s possible when you have the time to get out and about.

In recent times, quite a few of those kilometres have been added when he’s out doing a recce ride. They usually consist of him taking a day or two off work, or picking a weekend when I’m busy, and exploring the squiggly lines on the map to see which ones are good, which are even better and how he can join them all up. He likes nothing better than sharing this with others and delights in taking people on roads in their own backyards they probably haven’t been on before.

Strangely enough, we don’t have a GPS. When you’re married to one, there’s no real need for an electronic version – although he’d beg to differ with me if we’re trying to navigate in the city and have to pull over every few blocks to look at a map. Or when we’ve taken the third wrong turn in a row looking for the track someone told him was ‘just past the crooked tree where the old hay shed burnt down a couple of years back’.

Good plan

When it came time for us to head off on Friday after work, I knew where I was headed but had no clear idea on how to get there. I gave Dave a couple of vague hints on where we were going and he instantly gave me a number of different routes of varying lengths and times to get us in the general southerly direction I was planning, even though I didn’t tell him exactly where we were going.

We headed off in the stinking heat, rode the edge of a storm, had a swim and watched the tempest roll in. Dave ended up having a great weekend, despite the fact he chose most – okay, all – the routes. Even better, it included some of the ones I really wanted to include but didn’t know how to join up.

Nature or nurture

Unfortunately, my lacklustre route-planning skills are matched by my bike awareness.

Just recently I rode nearly 60km, blissfully unaware I had a deflating back tyre. Something felt a bit odd, but the front tyre looked fine as I rode along so I thought I was imagining things.

It wasn’t until we got home we discovered the flat. Then, next time I rode after fixing the tyre, I never thought to pump the rear brake pedal. I found I had no rear brake initially as I rode down the driveway.

These sorts of things make me wonder if these are things I can learn or if it’s innate.

No excuse

It’s not just me who appreciates Dave’s route-planning skills.

A whole bunch of tough-as-they-come adventure riders recently put their hearts on their sleeves and let Dave know how much they valued his expertise too. Their kind words and readiness to show Dave their affection for what he does to share his passion for adventure riding and his love of the bush rendered him temporarily speechless.

It was a wonderful thing – as long as he knows this doesn’t mean he has a free ticket to skive off at any time to go for a recce ride. There’s a few jobs need doing around the house.

What I’ve learned

• Being a passive rider doesn’t improve navigation skills
• I need to add a basic mechanics course to my to-do list
• Plotting a route is hard
• Stop the bike to check tyre pressure
• Having a human GPS for a husband offers endless route possibilities

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