Pic: Bastian Brusecke
Pic: Bastian Brusecke
Pic: Bastian Brusecke
buddy for the duration of the event.
A note on Bosnia … It is beautiful out there. Mind
blowingly so. The one thing that really struck me was
the lack of fences. The land was open, free. When you
fly over the UK and look down out of the window you see
a huge patchwork, a vast network of squares and rectan-
gles divided by fences, walls and hedgerows. There was
none of that in Bosnia. It was more open than my other
home back in Australia, plus it had mountains!
I was buzzing with anxious excitement.
As I wandered around on the first day, which was
designated for registration and bike scrutineering,
feeling out of place and a little awkward, I watched as
everyone began unloading and prepping their big shiny
bikes. Lots of KTMs, lots of BMWs, lots with the full rally
kit (roadbook holder, fairings, layers of stickers indicat-
ing all the other rallies they’d been to etc). I wandered
around, checking out the rides, playing it cool and blurt-
ing in my brash Aussie manner ’sick bike mate!’ … ‘aww
that looks fun!’. It attracted vague confusion from these
rather serious looking German men.
Not having a bike of my own, I had organised to rent
a Yamaha WR 250 from the organisers. It was one of the
smallest and lightest bikes in the village, and I was happy
with that. I was confident in the fact that occasional-
ly that bike would end up rubber side up, so I wanted
something I could pick up by myself. This was a good
choice. Plus, I had no idea what I was actually doing.
Better that I had the bike set up for me, roadbook hold-
er and all and, also maintained to a high standard to be
able to withstand the beating it was about to receive. It
was a lazy option, but alone and with limited mechanical
knowledge, I was grateful to have a wonderful team of
mechanics keeping an eye on the state of the bike.
By the end of the day I had buddied up with Egle, had
a quick blast on my steed, sunk a large beer to calm the
nerves and sat through the essential evening road book
training session … presented entirely in German!
I felt so displaced that I just thanked myself for
watching a couple of YouTube videos on how to read a
Roadbook and figured I’d just wing it and learn on the
go. For me, that’s the only way anything really ever sinks
in. I just have to go and do it ... thrown in the deep end is
when the learning really takes place.
So, how does a roadbook actually work?
Basically, it consists of a long paper scroll with a list
of directions which correlate with the kilometres at
which they occur. A trip metre tells you where you’re at
distance wise, and as you pass each ‘waypoint’ you use
a thumb control mounted on your handlebars to scroll
to the next direction and so on and so forth. Ideally
you learn what all the different symbols mean (rocky
outcrop, river crossing, main road, single track, rut, hill
TRAVERSE 12