I was finally reunited with my Sherco 250 SEF-R. Okay, not MINE, technically. Sinan’s. But I’m quite sure I’m the one who loves her best.
It has been four and a half weeks since I last rode her, what with Sinan being off at Red Bull’s Sea to Sky race in Antalya (and then catching up the backlog of work after returning), so I busied myself with rock climbing, kayaking, and whatever else I could exhaust myself with while waiting for things at the track to settle down a bit.
Today I finally got to see her again.
Much colder today. Cloudy and windy enough to turn up whitecaps in the Black Sea, the track’s backdrop. It’s late afternoon midweek and the track is practically empty. Finally.
It took me no time at all to get into my gear and hop on her. In just over a month I had forgotten how high she is. I’m a tall chick and my feet barely touch the ground. Ignition. She growls to life. GROWLS. And stays growling. She wants to chew up the dirt and spit it out.
Unlike other motors I’ve ridden whose macho exhaust is coupled with a strong, heavy, bearish force, Sherco is feline: fierce and fast and wants to pounce.
She bolts down to the track like I’m not even on her, like she’s the one leading. In every gear, she’s on the attack. With every downshift or throttle twist she growls the knobby teeth of her tires into the dirt, takes a deep bite, turning up the topsoil. Her power is impressive.
I practice turns and ramps, the mud pit and whoop-de-doos. It’s too late in the afternoon for a forest run; we’re losing light. I SO wanted to open up the throttle, brace the steering, and race her down the straight, sandy flats on the upper plateau of the North forest’s trail, feel her engine roar as the back tire fishtails through the sand. I want to practice starts and stops on the steep downhills, zip up and around the tight turns of the lower forest dirt hills.
But daylight was waning. Too late today.
I stuck to the mx track, practicing “fast squats”, trying to increase my speed on the whoop-de-doos. After about 10 laps I had the rhythm down and wanted to take the next round a little faster. Unfortunately, on that lap I was further right than I should have been, going over the humps that were about 10-20 cm higher– enough to throw off the rhythm. After hitting three of them at the wrong point at the wrong speed, I was about to wipe out. Instead I jumped over the bank and off the rolls.
Sinan couldn’t believe I was still upright, and, with his characteristic care for my well-being, immediately ran the whoop-de-doos in a comedically exaggerated rendition of my less-than-graceful execution to show me just how stupid I looked. Gotta love that asshole. 🙂
After Zac and I stopped laughing, we all did a short lap around the forest trail close to the track and called it a day.
A great day. Any day with my Sherco is a great one.
Thanks, Sinan.