So, how does it handle dirt?

Well, it doesn't. It doesn't handle it at all. While it would be an injustice to say that the bike fell to pieces - I reckon if I'd gone down the dirt road another 500 metres or so, it just might have. After all, that would have doubled the poor little bike's exposure to a corrugated dirt road... I can almost feel the bike shuddering at the thought.

But I don't really blame her. Before today the bike hadn't even heard of dirt.  Well, of course it had heard of dirt - all the young bikes hear of a thing called dirt while they're growing up in the factory.  Old Grampa Kaytee'em used to come around and tell stories about the day the bitumen ran out and give the pocket rockets nightmares about an asphalt drought.  But as the bikes grew up they recognised these tales for what they were: old bike's tales, and nothing more.  How could there be a road without bitumen?  What a preposterous notion!  Just look at their tires - if there were such a thing as a road without bitumen, why all the motorbikes would just fall over!  How ridiculous!

So anyway, I took the bike up to the end of the bitumen and onto the dirt part of Alendale Road, and immediately regretted it.  The bike bounced and shook and suddenly felt like it was on rollerskates, instead of the solid, connected feeling I get riding on the road.  I pulled over towards the side of the road, and the bike slid surrenderingly down the cambre into the soft dirt at the edge of the road.

Fantastic.  I am Ewan McGregor.  Quick glance in the mirror.  Actually, I'm Charley Boorman.  Who's let himself go a bit.  Anyway...

So we turned around and made it back to the bitumen.  Went for a quick lap around the area, up past Wellers Restaurant and the Kangaroo Ground general Store, across to Wattle Glen, up through Diamond Creek and then back home to Eltham.  I really do live on the doorstep of Motorcycling Paradise, even though most of the town names on the roadsigns around here have been wiped out, or at least tormented, by last Saturday's fires.

Odometer: 318.4 kilometres