Sand, The Great Divide with Andy Strapz

This entry is part 14 of 17 in the series Adventure Rider Issue #43

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A while ago at the amazing Burt Munro Challenge, Mrs Strapz and I were mounted on a Yammy GT Tracer and the approach to the Oreti Beach Races divided the spectators into two camps:

onto the firm beach and the pussies who parked and walked in.

“Relax love. I got this,” I proclaimed with confidence (a little bullshit goes a long way).

True grit

We’ve done a bit of two-up dirt over the years and I’m comfortable standing with a pillion (sitting). The Tracer is on the R1 end of the adventure continuum but still got up on top of the sand. Luckily, there was only one gentle curve to deal with.

I can ride sand in straight lines, but cornering really does my head in.

In the early days the campfire advice was to lean back and gun it. It did work… until I found I needed to slow down or take a corner. A spectator might have seen me head bush, arms and legs a blur, like a skier crashing on a giant slalom course.

After a bit of training I learned to ‘get up on top’ of the sand and float across the surface with some style, but still the corners loomed and more outback Winter Olympics seem to follow.

Dr Z is naturally much easier to handle in the soft stuff and I’ll never whinge too much if we have a sandy section, but generally…yer can shove sand where it irritates the most. As a lapsed surfer I’ve had plenty of sand where the sun do and don’t shine and it’s never pretty!

Kudos

‘It takes all sorts to make the world go around’ my granny used to say, and I guess that explains the rich tapestry of adventure riders. Sand riding doesn’t seem to be a ‘take it or leave it’ situation, it’s a love/hate thing. You get it or you don’t.

That familiar saying ‘as slippery as glass’ comes to mind. Sand is pre-glass and I reckon nature is trying to tell me something. Its only plus I can see is it tends to be nice and soft.

Quite a few riders I’ve talked to after a demoralizing Simpson trip have expressed a variation of the “Musta had rocks in my head,” opinion. Dropping the bike and picking it up repeatedly is exhausting, and mistakes breed mistakes as we tire and struggle to keep up with hydration. The bigger the bike the more frequently I hear it.

Battling deep, soft, sandy, rutted tracks in Victoria’s Little Desert on a recent 4×4 trip with said spouse had me working hard enough. “Bugger doing it on a bike,” I bellowed. Moments later we saw bike tyre tracks join the snaking white, ‘bush beach’. We’re not talking about a couple of metres above the waterline here. It was more the cut-up, treacherous, top-of-the-beach stuff.

Hats off to those riders. That was an epic effort.

Andy Strapz

Tough call

My theory is the great divide between lovers and haters of sand is their back-ground.

I’ll lay a pretty sure bet the majority of sand haters are road-riding converts, while the lovers grew up on dirt bikes. Brother Tontine (the soft) grew up on a chookie in outback riverbeds and loves the stuff. But ask him to do it on his 1200GS and there’ll be more expletives than an Emergency Department waiting room on a Saturday night.

The word ‘confidence’ continues to come up when we talk adventure riding, and two-wheeled sand surfing is where we need it in spades. Pull the plug and it drains away remarkably quickly. Add the exhaustion that falling off and getting going again adds and a fun ride can deteriorate into a nightmare very rapidly.

It’s an awful feeling, stuck between a bog and a soft place. Being the mug holding up everyone and feeling like a complete dick only adds to the feelings of total dejection. The spiral only continues south. I remember it clearly and it sucks!

At that point keeping going or giving it away takes about the same dollop of guts and sense. Many a rider has pushed on into the back of an ambulance.

Managing self is another key adventure-riding skill and sand challenges us to put a Viagra drop in each eye and have a long, hard look at ourselves.

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