Training Day

Well today me and the big boy got together for a bit of a workout on the XT's but first we had to attend business at Sonic Communications. The incident that occured just before we left the nick is typical of the sense of humour that we share with our Road's policing colleagues.
DB was sat astride his XT660, helmet and gloves on with his bike parked nose in to a low retaining wall, just as he kicked up the side stand and fired the beasty up, Sgt Jeff Love was walking by. Quick as a flash Jeff ducked down behind DB's bike and took up a bracing position, just under the top box and rack, as DB started to back the bike out jeff pushed back, time and time again DB tried to push the bike backwards out of its parking lot, each time met with equal force from behind, he rocked it backwards forwards, blipped the throttle(Don't know why - frustration) but could not get it to move. After about a dozen goes he glanced my way to see me curling up in a ball on the floor and wailing with laughter! DB couldn't see Jeff in his mirrors until he stood up, Bl@@dy hell it was funny, I was still laughing when we arrived at Sonic 10 minutes later.
We collected our helmet Camera, and two radios with kidney pouches from Liam Thornton and were talked through the techie bits by Wayne. Cheers guys, and thank you again to the MD Mr David Bryan for arranging the kit to be made available to us(Same kit as used in Long Way Down so should be some good footage)
After that we made our way out to an undisclosed location that has some excellent tracks, ruts, slopes, woods etc. My thinking was to get DB back in the saddle on a bigger bike than we will be riding out there in SA, increase our confidence in that if we can get these brutes up the inclines we should be able to throw the little CR230's around.
DB, sorry mate I should have warned you about that big mound and not just expected you to follow me over it and down the other side, you did it though and went back the other way, good fun eh?
A second location provided us with a good long rough climb, to simulate the gorge in SA, plus some horrible ruts, the onew we could see were bad enough but the ones where the new grass had hidden them were to be my down fall, one minute I was there, the next I was chewing daisies! Oh how we laughed, flooded the bike enough to have to remove the plug and dry it out.
All in all a good day out and again credit to the Yamaha XT660R, they went everwhere we wanted them to go.
Tomorrow I think we are both shopping for bum cream and stuff the the trip, 11 days to go and I have to work for 5 of them!
More to follow,
Bob and Neil