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Not being a fan of foootball i thought i'd go riding for the day instead.
With all the rain on Friday i thought The Black Range State Forrest would be a muddy swamp, especially when i woke up at 3 am and it was absolutely belting down.
Rather than sitting around eating, drinking and watching a heap of blokes kick a ball around a field 5 of us hit the trails at 8.50am ( an early start to an AMTRA ride!!! ) and headed off into PRIMO conditions! It really wasn't that wet or muddy and there was plenty of grip! I threw some of Black Ranges toughest tracks at the boys and 97% of it they took in their stride.
Rudi struggled on 2 hills and took the easier option after attempting the hard route, but for a bloke thats only been riding for 18 months, he goes very well, and i've seen blokes with years of experience not make those hills, so Rudi you should be very proud of yourself after todays ride.
I may as well make mention at this point that Seano didn't make it up one hill either  :o  :o and all of us had a lie down at some stage.
The weather was good to us for the majority of the day only really raining and hailing for the last 20 minutes of the ride, it was quiet an experience riding on ice and the forrest looked beautiful in a blanket of white, but i learned that hail to the face at speed on your bike f&@£ing hurts!! >:(  >:(
This ride will be on the calendar again soon, if you want to test yourself out put your name on the list.
I did say that i threw some of Black Ranges toughest tracks at the boys today, but beware i have tougher! ;)
Hopefully everyone enjoyed the ride as much as i did, because i had an absolute belter of a day!!
Big thanks to Rudi for doing tail all day.

I,m stuffed
I was thinkin of all the excuses on the way home about why I couldn,t get up that hill(ben had a lye down half way up and broke my momentum,tyre was out of life ,the list is endless)but there really isn,t one .The bastard had me beat :-[
Really big thankyou Nath I really enjoyed my day ;)
Another big thakyou to Rudi for tail  ;D
Riding on a white trails is very slippery and cold, lucky for us it was only at the end of the ride.
I had great day ,great company and great challenges. ;D ;D ;D
til next time ADIOS AMIGOS

What an awesome day's riding! Hills, fallen trees, overgrown 4x4 tracks, mud, hail, rocks, you name it... Rudi witnessed my fail on the fallen tree half way up that track with the creek flowing down it... fell about a metre and a half onto rocks and wacked my helmet on the ground so hard I was seeing stars for a minute or two, thanks Rudi for lifting the bike off me too...! Held everyone up there for a few minutes, but overall the ride flowed nicely. Great skills training that's for sure, looking forward to whatever Nathan throws at us next time. Seano and Ben I may have to trade up to a 300 for those uphill drag-races - more power, that's what I need!?!  Ben, looking forward to some video footage....!?! Nathan thanks again for another great ride....  Cheers, Simon J.

I feel like a walking corpse. :o
Started the day dressed for cold weather but Nathan had me boiling 1/2 hour into the ride.I was thinking "can i go home now?"
The choice of tracks was sensational with a good mix of terrain some hard, harder and hardest.
Thanks to all for making it a great day and thanks to Simon for helping me up the slippery rock ledge. ;D 
This was an awesome days riding,with a good bunch of blokes.
I reccomend this ride to those who want to improve their skills.

Well done Nathan i will see you on the next one. ;D ;D

A few shots from the day, didn't have much time for taking photos.... Cheers, Simon J.

In pictures 3&4 you can see some fresh chunks out of the log on the lower right side.
Think I might know how they got there ::) ;)