Yup, the China trip is still foremost in my plans, just got to sort out some health issues and personal stuff. Shouldn't be riding at present but the thing about a bike on these tracks is you are to a great extent only risking yourself. Your idea of Indonesia down to Aus. is great, I must have a look at the routes possible. The good thing about Oz is that you can go tarmac in most directions on bad days, or shadow the run off-road or on the old droving and logging routes. Probably best to run the State to State bits (adds up to thousands of kms) on the tarmac with a few days to explore around each climate zone and bush conditions on dirt. Damn, I wish I was twenty years younger!

I did all my dirt riding as a youngster mainly on road tyres! This bike with knobbies is still a learning curve to me and I always get the feeling that gunning it a bit would improve the grip in bad conditions, just too wary of my old bones and inherent stupidity to let it rip. When I read the magazines, the smallest changes in type of tyre and suspension makes a lot of difference to the professionals. Would welcome comments about this tyre thing from experienced dirt riders. Of course knobbies are better than road tyres for many reasons, sidewall strength as well as grip but do they work best when cutting hard into a surface? ie, on slippy clay under water, do you go for it or pick your way slowly? I found that picking careful routes had me only just keeping upright, whereas gunning it got me through with the risk that the results of the odd skid were magnified, with less control and more narrow escapes.

Heck, that is probably the whole off-road riding thing in a nutshell, knowing the time for which/when!