— OFF-PAVEMENT FORMATIONS —
—
STANDARD — Read about this formation described on the PART 1 page; designated sweeper, leader posting a navigational guard at each course change. We make much use of this formation both on & off the tarmac so please, familiarize yourself with it.
PACE-LINE — The lead rider pulls to the side after every challenging section / water crossing, or just after a mile of riding. The rider who was second continues as leader. The previous leader watches to see that all riders come through the tricky section, and then joins on at the back, becoming the last rider. The riders never pass each other, except to pass the leader who is on his way to the back. To do this well, each rider needs to keep track of how many riders are behind him at a given time.*
This formation arranges that each rider is observed during challenging sections, the ride flow is not interrupted by repeated stops, it makes the ride itself feel more like a team effort, and each rider gets to experience leading, following, and sweeping. We use this formation in small groups when the route is well known to all, or there are very few intersections.
*You should always do this when off pavement: It is a common courtesy on narrow unpaved or challenging roads to alert oncoming traffic to how many riders they should expect to encounter behind you. You do this by holding up a hand with the right number of fingers extended (if there are more than five riders following you… improvise). If, by the way, the road is so challenging that you can’t spare a hand to alert an oncoming rider, it might be best for you to slow down or stop for the rider to pass.
PACE-LINE — The lead rider pulls to the side after every challenging section / water crossing, or just after a mile of riding. The rider who was second continues as leader. The previous leader watches to see that all riders come through the tricky section, and then joins on at the back, becoming the last rider. The riders never pass each other, except to pass the leader who is on his way to the back. To do this well, each rider needs to keep track of how many riders are behind him at a given time.*
This formation arranges that each rider is observed during challenging sections, the ride flow is not interrupted by repeated stops, it makes the ride itself feel more like a team effort, and each rider gets to experience leading, following, and sweeping. We use this formation in small groups when the route is well known to all, or there are very few intersections.
*You should always do this when off pavement: It is a common courtesy on narrow unpaved or challenging roads to alert oncoming traffic to how many riders they should expect to encounter behind you. You do this by holding up a hand with the right number of fingers extended (if there are more than five riders following you… improvise). If, by the way, the road is so challenging that you can’t spare a hand to alert an oncoming rider, it might be best for you to slow down or stop for the rider to pass.
— SUB-FORMATIONS —
—
—
Within the above formations, riders may like to experiment with riding in different relative positions:
SINGLE-FILE — Single-file formation will allow maximum maneouverability for avoiding obstacles. At slow speeds on easy terrain, we can ride closer together, but as speed increases, dust and increased stopping distance will likely force us to loosen up ranks considerably.
TWO-BY-TWO — Dust from other riders often keeps us widely spaced. A workaround is to ride in pairs. Ideally, a more experienced rider rides a few bike lengths behind and to one side of a less experienced rider. The front rider has only the road ahead to worry about, and the back rider has the road and the front rider to watch out for. The back rider can adjust his distance from the front rider such that billowing dust passes below his face. This formation is never a requirement, but can be fun, and will serve to keep us a little closer together. This is not a safe formation at high speeds: If the road becomes straight and level enough to allow a significant speed increase, this formation should be abandoned.
Finally, there will be long stretches which do not include intersections, and at both ends of which we will be regrouping. Such sections can be ridden in no particular formation.
SINGLE-FILE — Single-file formation will allow maximum maneouverability for avoiding obstacles. At slow speeds on easy terrain, we can ride closer together, but as speed increases, dust and increased stopping distance will likely force us to loosen up ranks considerably.
TWO-BY-TWO — Dust from other riders often keeps us widely spaced. A workaround is to ride in pairs. Ideally, a more experienced rider rides a few bike lengths behind and to one side of a less experienced rider. The front rider has only the road ahead to worry about, and the back rider has the road and the front rider to watch out for. The back rider can adjust his distance from the front rider such that billowing dust passes below his face. This formation is never a requirement, but can be fun, and will serve to keep us a little closer together. This is not a safe formation at high speeds: If the road becomes straight and level enough to allow a significant speed increase, this formation should be abandoned.
Finally, there will be long stretches which do not include intersections, and at both ends of which we will be regrouping. Such sections can be ridden in no particular formation.
— OFF-PAVEMENT PASSING —
—
—
Remember to let other riders ride at their own pace, whether slower or faster. Likewise, assert your own desires! If you want to pass another rider, let the rider know you want to go around. Passing on fire roads may require the slower rider to stop briefly, depending on the terrain.
If we are using Pace-line formation, the only passing is the entire group passing the leader after a tricky spot.
If we are using Pace-line formation, the only passing is the entire group passing the leader after a tricky spot.
— OFF-PAVEMENT COMMUNICATION —
—
—
ARE YOU OKAY? — To ask a distant but visible rider who is out of earshot and without a radio if they are OKAY, put your hands together over your head, forming an O (for “Okay”) with your arms.
I'M OKAY! — Make the same symbol back.
I NEED HELP! — Wave your arms around over your head. Make it look like you are drowning, or swatting giant flies.
Feel goofy waving your arms around? Get a radio. They are mandatory for the most challenging rides where riders will likely get spread out. Autocom, or Baehr Communication Systems equipment are worth consideration.
I'M OKAY! — Make the same symbol back.
I NEED HELP! — Wave your arms around over your head. Make it look like you are drowning, or swatting giant flies.
Feel goofy waving your arms around? Get a radio. They are mandatory for the most challenging rides where riders will likely get spread out. Autocom, or Baehr Communication Systems equipment are worth consideration.
— CRUXES —
—
—
A crux is a short section of trail that is much more difficult that the majority of the trail – so much so that many riders may want to stop and scout / discuss it before riding it. The lead rider generally stops at the beginning of a particularly challenging section of trail in order to allow other riders to gather. This way, information about the best lines can be shared. Riders then attempt the crux, one at a time, stopping just past the end of the difficulty. This ensures that if a rider has trouble in the crux, help is available from both directions. We go one at a time so that if one rider falls in the crux, the next rider is not obliged either to do the same, or ride over his downed comrade.
It follows that the only one who can determine if you are sufficiently safe is you. All riders – all people – are responsible for deciding how safe is safe enough for them1, and for taking steps to maintain that level of safety for themselves, or to change it when they desire.
The ride is the ride; if it doesn’t seem safe enough to you, you are responsible for identifying that situation and acting on it. You are welcome, on these rides, to attempt to get someone else to do things to make you feel safer. They might, but nobody is responsible for doing so. If trying to get others to change things so that you feel sufficiently safe fails, your only option left is to ask the person responsible for doing so, to do so – that would be… yourself.
That may mean vacating the ride. That’s fine: The ride is the ride, and your needs are your needs. You do not have to continue the ride if it means you would have to ignore your needs; requiring that would be disrespectful of you. The ride leader does not have to alter the ride in order to meet the needs of any one rider; requiring that would be disrespectful of the other riders.
But, what if a rider thinks they feel sufficiently safe, joining a ride, and suddenly discovers, when conditions change during the ride, that they were wrong – they don’t feel safe any more?
That’s the real world for you. It changes constantly. Well, let’s just plan for those contingencies, shall we? We’ll need to have answers to the following questions, for starters:
What if there is water in the gutter at the intersection by the BMW shop, and I slip in it and fall as we are leaving? What if a rider in the group disappears during the ride? What if I lose control in the snow and fly off a hillside? What if I give it too much gas in the sand, hit a hidden rock, and fly over the handlebars? What if the ride leader’s battery fails? What if we are on the way home, in the dark, in the rain, past the point of no return, fuel-wise, and we come to a ROAD CLOSED sign? What if my bike stops running? What if it starts raining and we’re riding on clay? What if I get heat prostration? What if someone is following too close and not paying attention and I have to hit the brakes and we collide? What if by the time we are headed home it is only 26 degrees & there is ice on the road? What if?
What if?
What if?
All good questions. All of these things have happened, on one ride or another. Nobody What-If-ed them all beforehand, and came up with ways to avoid all of them, or ways to handle them, if they come up. Riding off with all possible What-Ifs pre-answered and all possible problems pre-solved is not an adventure; I submit that it wouldn’t even be fun. It is, however, an impossibility: There is ALWAYS. ANOTHER. WHAT IF.
Imagine a rider has what is – for him – a harrowing riding experience on one of the rides in this series. As a result, he concludes that the ride leader should make the rides more safe by producing a map for riders before the ride, making copies of contact information of all riders for all riders to have, telling riders’ family members where the riders will be, and how long before the family should assume they need help and go look for them, making every rider responsible for one other rider, hiring a “professional” sweep rider to follow the last rider, and a few other things…
Imagine, rhetorically, that all that comes to pass…
WHAT IF – the rider stops and goes to the bathroom and the sweeper somehow misses that, and trying to catch up to the group, the contact list blows out of the pack the rider accidentally left open, and the map is useless because a road was closed and the ride detoured onto an unplanned route, and the email that was sent to the rider’s family never got through, because when they moved they changed email services and hadn’t sent him the new one yet, and the other rider responsible for this rider turned out to be, well, irresponsible, and…
All of that COULD happen. There is NEVER. A GUARANTEE. There is ALWAYS. ANOTHER. WHAT-IF. Furthermore, every individual will have a different answer for each What-If. NOBODY asks them all or answers them all, and NOBODY will ever have an answer for any one of them – let alone for all of them – that will satisfy EVERYONE equally. This is why we need to come up with our own answers for our own What-Ifs.
There is a certain level of safety and back-coverage built into these rides. That level is tried and tested now, and is unlikely to change significantly. If this level is insufficient for a rider’s comfort, that rider has a couple of options. They can choose not to join a ride. They can make their needs clear to the ride leader and request a change in the structure of the rides or a given ride. They can make their own arrangements to meet their needs – as long as those arrangements don’t interfere negatively with the ride as structured. Any of those might work, although the middle one – which amounts to asking the ride leader and all other ride participants to bear the burden of meeting one rider’s needs – is least likely to be effective.
We are all responsible for taking action to meet our own needs; nobody else is2. Your ride leader is not responsible for providing comforting answers for all or indeed any of your What-If questions. Your ride leader is responsible for leading ride participants on a given ride for as long as they are able and desirous to follow. That’s it. The rest – information, advice, photographs, lent tools, assistance hauling your bike back up the cliff, this website – all icing on the cake. Likewise, your fellow riders are also not responsible for making sure you feel “safe enough” – or for meeting any of your other needs. You can ask these people to take on these burdens, and they might. But it’s not a requirement.
How about an example:
No riders ever asked for sockets deep enough to remove an R1200GS spark plug to be provided on these rides: No riders ever asked themselves; “What if I ride into a river and suck a bunch of water into my cylinders?” When two riders sucked water into their engines at a crossing, they sure wished they had those sockets. It wasn’t the ride leader’s responsibility to provide for that sudden, new need. As it happened, he did: He borrowed the tools from someone unassociated with the ride, and in turn lent them to the riders with the new need. They fixed their engines, and… onward!
The next day, the ride leader did not get a request that he carry sockets deep enough to remove an R1200GS spark plug: The riders realized that their newly found need was not everybody’s need. They bought their own tools, thus meeting their need to feel able to surmount a specific unforeseen mechanical problem, without expecting somebody else to take on the burden of meeting that need for them3.
Here is a small list – it would be impossible to create a complete one – of concerns some – but not all – riders have. These are meant to get you thinking about what your own personal needs are, and how you are going to get them met during the course of a ride, and what contingency plans you want to set in place for yourself, before you join a ride:
What kind of shape are you in? Everyone has a different level of athletic ability and fatigues at different rates4. Tiredness is a safety issue; it can result in slower response times. These rides are full day rides. Some riders have come home very tired.
Here is that list of What-Ifs from before – all of which have happened at least once; you may want to plan ahead for any, all, or none of these contingencies:
Are you uncomfortable riding on the freeway? We often do.
Are you uncomfortable riding after dark? We sometimes do, especially in winter.
Are you uncomfortable making your needs known to others? You can get yourself into real trouble, and cause great stress to other riders in the process, simply by failing to make your needs known until it is too late for you or anybody else to do anything about them. A certain level of self-awareness and assertiveness should be considered safety-equipment for adventurers of any type. There is no guarantee that any one will be willing or able to help you meet your needs… but if you don’t ask, there is a 100% guarantee that no one will help at all.
Do you need to eat certain amounts / certain things, at certain times / time intervals? Your usual ride leader is a weirdo who sometimes forgets to eat for a day or so. If he forgets to stop for lunch, you could choose to pass out from low blood sugar late in the ride, or remind him to stop, or bring something you can eat while riding – like all problems, lots of solutions; some more desirable than others…some requiring a bit of that assertiveness…
Are you nervous when you don’t know where you are? Some riders love that. Some riders are more relaxed when they have with them a map that shows the general area of the ride. Some like to have a GPS. Keep in mind that not all routes are entirely pre-planned, and an entirely pre-planned route could be changed en route for a variety of reasons.
Leery of being out of cell reception? Maybe you need a sat phone, or SPOT…
Feel free to add any concerns you like via posting a comment on this page. There is no end to the possibilities, and the concern you mention might do a service to another rider by drawing their attention to something they care very much about but simply haven’t been thinking of.
— SAFETY —
—
Riding motorcycles is inherently dangerous. At least, that’s what it says in the release all riders must sign before joining a ride. Here’s an excerpt:—
5. HEREBY acknowledges that THE ACTIVITIES OF THE EVENT(S) ARE VERY DANGEROUS and involve the risk of serious injury and/or death and/or property damage. Each of THE UNDERSIGNED, also expressly acknowledges that INJURIES RECEIVED MAY BE COMPOUNDED OR INCREASED BY NEGLIGENT RESCUE OPERATIONS OR PROCEDURES OF THE RELEASEES.You are in danger, right now. I, typing this, am also in danger. We are ALWAYS in dangerous – and safe – situations; it’s just a matter of degree, & the nature of the danger. Danger is – like most things – a personal perception. Creating a ride that feels safe to one rider may be the same as creating a ride that feels bone-achingly stultifying to another. There is no such thing as a completely safe or completely dangerous ride.
It follows that the only one who can determine if you are sufficiently safe is you. All riders – all people – are responsible for deciding how safe is safe enough for them1, and for taking steps to maintain that level of safety for themselves, or to change it when they desire.
The ride is the ride; if it doesn’t seem safe enough to you, you are responsible for identifying that situation and acting on it. You are welcome, on these rides, to attempt to get someone else to do things to make you feel safer. They might, but nobody is responsible for doing so. If trying to get others to change things so that you feel sufficiently safe fails, your only option left is to ask the person responsible for doing so, to do so – that would be… yourself.
That may mean vacating the ride. That’s fine: The ride is the ride, and your needs are your needs. You do not have to continue the ride if it means you would have to ignore your needs; requiring that would be disrespectful of you. The ride leader does not have to alter the ride in order to meet the needs of any one rider; requiring that would be disrespectful of the other riders.
But, what if a rider thinks they feel sufficiently safe, joining a ride, and suddenly discovers, when conditions change during the ride, that they were wrong – they don’t feel safe any more?
That’s the real world for you. It changes constantly. Well, let’s just plan for those contingencies, shall we? We’ll need to have answers to the following questions, for starters:
What if there is water in the gutter at the intersection by the BMW shop, and I slip in it and fall as we are leaving? What if a rider in the group disappears during the ride? What if I lose control in the snow and fly off a hillside? What if I give it too much gas in the sand, hit a hidden rock, and fly over the handlebars? What if the ride leader’s battery fails? What if we are on the way home, in the dark, in the rain, past the point of no return, fuel-wise, and we come to a ROAD CLOSED sign? What if my bike stops running? What if it starts raining and we’re riding on clay? What if I get heat prostration? What if someone is following too close and not paying attention and I have to hit the brakes and we collide? What if by the time we are headed home it is only 26 degrees & there is ice on the road? What if?
What if?
What if?
All good questions. All of these things have happened, on one ride or another. Nobody What-If-ed them all beforehand, and came up with ways to avoid all of them, or ways to handle them, if they come up. Riding off with all possible What-Ifs pre-answered and all possible problems pre-solved is not an adventure; I submit that it wouldn’t even be fun. It is, however, an impossibility: There is ALWAYS. ANOTHER. WHAT IF.
Imagine a rider has what is – for him – a harrowing riding experience on one of the rides in this series. As a result, he concludes that the ride leader should make the rides more safe by producing a map for riders before the ride, making copies of contact information of all riders for all riders to have, telling riders’ family members where the riders will be, and how long before the family should assume they need help and go look for them, making every rider responsible for one other rider, hiring a “professional” sweep rider to follow the last rider, and a few other things…
Imagine, rhetorically, that all that comes to pass…
WHAT IF – the rider stops and goes to the bathroom and the sweeper somehow misses that, and trying to catch up to the group, the contact list blows out of the pack the rider accidentally left open, and the map is useless because a road was closed and the ride detoured onto an unplanned route, and the email that was sent to the rider’s family never got through, because when they moved they changed email services and hadn’t sent him the new one yet, and the other rider responsible for this rider turned out to be, well, irresponsible, and…
All of that COULD happen. There is NEVER. A GUARANTEE. There is ALWAYS. ANOTHER. WHAT-IF. Furthermore, every individual will have a different answer for each What-If. NOBODY asks them all or answers them all, and NOBODY will ever have an answer for any one of them – let alone for all of them – that will satisfy EVERYONE equally. This is why we need to come up with our own answers for our own What-Ifs.
There is a certain level of safety and back-coverage built into these rides. That level is tried and tested now, and is unlikely to change significantly. If this level is insufficient for a rider’s comfort, that rider has a couple of options. They can choose not to join a ride. They can make their needs clear to the ride leader and request a change in the structure of the rides or a given ride. They can make their own arrangements to meet their needs – as long as those arrangements don’t interfere negatively with the ride as structured. Any of those might work, although the middle one – which amounts to asking the ride leader and all other ride participants to bear the burden of meeting one rider’s needs – is least likely to be effective.
We are all responsible for taking action to meet our own needs; nobody else is2. Your ride leader is not responsible for providing comforting answers for all or indeed any of your What-If questions. Your ride leader is responsible for leading ride participants on a given ride for as long as they are able and desirous to follow. That’s it. The rest – information, advice, photographs, lent tools, assistance hauling your bike back up the cliff, this website – all icing on the cake. Likewise, your fellow riders are also not responsible for making sure you feel “safe enough” – or for meeting any of your other needs. You can ask these people to take on these burdens, and they might. But it’s not a requirement.
Q: If fifteen riders have five What-Ifs each, and are all expecting someone else to address those What-Ifs, how many What-Ifs is each person on the ride expected to address?Right now, you likely have a few concerns that you want addressed before you join a ride. Later, some of those concerns might become totally unimportant to you. Meanwhile, other concerns may arise and seem even more important to you than the first batch was. Keep in mind that your initial concerns are yours, and your future concerns will be yours, and while some or possibly even all of them may be addressed by these rides as currently structured, the responsibility for addressing them is yours. Remember also, that communicating your changing needs / concerns could result in – but do not necessitate – change in the structure of these rides.
A: Seventy.
How about an example:
No riders ever asked for sockets deep enough to remove an R1200GS spark plug to be provided on these rides: No riders ever asked themselves; “What if I ride into a river and suck a bunch of water into my cylinders?” When two riders sucked water into their engines at a crossing, they sure wished they had those sockets. It wasn’t the ride leader’s responsibility to provide for that sudden, new need. As it happened, he did: He borrowed the tools from someone unassociated with the ride, and in turn lent them to the riders with the new need. They fixed their engines, and… onward!
The next day, the ride leader did not get a request that he carry sockets deep enough to remove an R1200GS spark plug: The riders realized that their newly found need was not everybody’s need. They bought their own tools, thus meeting their need to feel able to surmount a specific unforeseen mechanical problem, without expecting somebody else to take on the burden of meeting that need for them3.
Here is a small list – it would be impossible to create a complete one – of concerns some – but not all – riders have. These are meant to get you thinking about what your own personal needs are, and how you are going to get them met during the course of a ride, and what contingency plans you want to set in place for yourself, before you join a ride:
What kind of shape are you in? Everyone has a different level of athletic ability and fatigues at different rates4. Tiredness is a safety issue; it can result in slower response times. These rides are full day rides. Some riders have come home very tired.
Here is that list of What-Ifs from before – all of which have happened at least once; you may want to plan ahead for any, all, or none of these contingencies:
What if there is water in the gutter at the intersection by the BMW shop, and I slip in it and fall as we are leaving? What if a rider in the group disappears during the ride? What if I lose control in the snow and fly off a cliff? What if I give it too much gas in the sand, hit a hidden rock, and fly over the handlebars? What if the ride leader’s battery fails? What if we are on the way home, in the dark, in the rain, past the point of no return, fuel-wise, and we come to a ROAD CLOSED sign? What if my bike stops running? What if it starts raining and we’re riding on clay? What if I get heat prostration? What if someone is following too close and not paying attention and I have to hit the brakes and we collide? What if by the time we are headed home it is only 26 degrees & there is ice on the road?These rides are designed first & foremost for adventure bikes. Riders of bikes with small gas tanks need to plan for or ignore the possibility that they might run out of gas on a long stretch – and realize that they are responsible for the outcome of their decision.
Are you uncomfortable riding on the freeway? We often do.
Are you uncomfortable riding after dark? We sometimes do, especially in winter.
Are you uncomfortable making your needs known to others? You can get yourself into real trouble, and cause great stress to other riders in the process, simply by failing to make your needs known until it is too late for you or anybody else to do anything about them. A certain level of self-awareness and assertiveness should be considered safety-equipment for adventurers of any type. There is no guarantee that any one will be willing or able to help you meet your needs… but if you don’t ask, there is a 100% guarantee that no one will help at all.
Do you need to eat certain amounts / certain things, at certain times / time intervals? Your usual ride leader is a weirdo who sometimes forgets to eat for a day or so. If he forgets to stop for lunch, you could choose to pass out from low blood sugar late in the ride, or remind him to stop, or bring something you can eat while riding – like all problems, lots of solutions; some more desirable than others…some requiring a bit of that assertiveness…
Are you nervous when you don’t know where you are? Some riders love that. Some riders are more relaxed when they have with them a map that shows the general area of the ride. Some like to have a GPS. Keep in mind that not all routes are entirely pre-planned, and an entirely pre-planned route could be changed en route for a variety of reasons.
Leery of being out of cell reception? Maybe you need a sat phone, or SPOT…
Feel free to add any concerns you like via posting a comment on this page. There is no end to the possibilities, and the concern you mention might do a service to another rider by drawing their attention to something they care very much about but simply haven’t been thinking of.
“The adventure begins when things stop going as planned.”
“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
These rides fit somewhere in between those statements. You can get a great idea of just where they fit by perusing the ride Recaps. If you find that you need more ounces and less adventure in your life, you are welcome to ask other riders or the ride leader to carry those ounces for you – and they might say yes – but the only one actually responsible for doing so is you5.“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
— — — — —
1Except children, right? Adults make that decision for them, for a time – and, hopefully, by example, teach them how to make it for themselves eventually.
2Unless you are a child – in which case you are too young to come on these rides anyway…
3This is a pretty typical example: One of a myriad of unforeseen needs arises for one or more riders, and rather than rail about how this new issue should have been prevented by the structure of the ride itself, various participants offer various ideas & resources which are eventually used to bring the unforeseen problem to a fairly agreeable conclusion. If that sounds familiar & acceptable to you, you probably don’t need to continue reading this document... Of course, it might be an entertaining read…
4Which is exactly why nobody can reasonably expect one product – in this case, a dual-sport ride – to ideally fit the needs / desires of everyone who signs up for it.
5If you want more adventure though, well, tough luck... You could try sticking with the touring tires on the muddy rides…;-)
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