The mark of an accomplished trail boss is how they go about keeping the troops on the ride inspired and fired up to conquer any challenge that may lie ahead. “I haven’t actually ridden this next section as we got turned around by the wet on the recce run,” barked Cam Donald, a bloke you might know for his stunning accomplishments racing road bikes and for conquering the famed SA 24 Hour Trial on a dirtbike, a sidecar and a Triumph Tiger 1200 Explorer. Yeah, he knows how to twist a throttle, on the tar and on the dirt.
“But we’ll be right, it’s nice and dry today, so let’s go, woo hoo!” Cam hollered as he dropped the clutch and powered straight up a white, shaly, goat track of a fire-trail that disappeared high into the treeline.
As lead rider on Triumph Australia’s national media launch ride for the shiny new Tiger 900 Rally Pro, Cam was making a calculated call that we’d either keep romping through the foothills of the Victorian high country north-east of Melbourne with a smile on our dials, or we’d plough a couple of hundred thousands of dollars worth of Tiger 900s into the ground on a track that had already turned him around once before. And take it from me: Cam’s got the sort of skillsets that hardly ever see him admit defeat from behind a set of handlebars.
Now, let the record show that we did
