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Motorcycle Safety and Awareness
Welcome to Think Bike, the podcast about all things motorcycle and the voice of motorcycle safety and awareness in Alberta. Your host is Liane Langlois.
Liane:Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Think Bike. I am super super stoked to have Emily Roberts from Motorcycle Mojo Magazine on today because she has had, like, a crazy adventure not many Canadians, let alone female Canadians have ever done. And I relate to that absolutely clearly. And no.
Liane:She did not go to the salt. She did something absolutely cooler than that, in my opinion. We will get to it in a moment. Welcome to the show.
Emily:Thank you so much for having me on. I am I'm so excited, especially to speak with you, Leanne. It's it's awesome. Yeah. Very excited.
Liane:I love running into you at the bike shows when when we're there. You guys you guys have a great magazine for one. We can talk a little bit about that in a minute. But first, can you tell our listeners who is Emily Roberts, and what got you into riding?
Emily:Yeah. That's a great question. My name's Emily. I really like bikes. I don't discriminate much.
Emily:I will ride pretty much any bike I can get my hands on. But my parents got me into motorcycling when I was quite young. I was six years old. And I'm I'm really grateful at least that I was kind of born into a motorcycling family. They always rode Harleys and street bikes, but, of course, when I was a kid, they got me onto dirt bikes first.
Emily:And I just thrived from there. And then from there, I started I grew up in Ontario, and and there's a fantastic school out there run by Clinton Smout. So I ended up working with him throughout all of my teenage years to teach kids and adults how to dirt bike. And then I moved out to British Columbia, got into racing. So I started doing enduro racing and then got into trials riding and most recently got into rally racing.
Liane:Yes. That's that's gonna be the fun story. Out of all of the bikes that you've had, do you have a favorite?
Emily:Oh, that's a tough question. I get very emotionally attached to all of my motorcycles. I would say so I still have my very first dirt bike. It's a 1979 Yamaha GT 80, which is a fantastic little motorcycle. My favorite bike, I think if I would have to say one, would probably be, the Suzuki Gladius SFE six fifty, which I've now let go of.
Emily:But I had that bike. It used to be my mother's bike, and I stole it from her when I was 18 to ride from Ontario up to Alaska and back. And, I hit my first year with that bike. I I also put on about 70,000 kilometers on that motorcycle. And it's a sport touring bike, but I made it into an adventure bike because it was all that I could afford.
Emily:So I threw dual sport tires on it, and that was my partner in crime for years and years and years. So I still miss that bike sometimes. I let it finally let it go a couple years ago, but, yeah, I'd say that one.
Liane:Okay. Question. You hit your first deer, meaning you've hit more than one? Like, how many deer have you collided with?
Emily:Yeah. I I don't know if it's my problem or the deer's problem. I have, however, only hit two deer in my life, and both of them have been by motorcycle. Both times though, I was able to keep the bike up and kill the deer. And I think a really big part of that, for any street riders out there who ever question why anybody would want to learn how to dirt bike, through hitting both of these gears, keeping the bike up, not crashing, I equate all of that to my dirt bike experience and instinctively knowing how to emergency brake and then understanding how to take on an impact.
Emily:So I hit, two deer with two different bikes. And, unfortunately, the Suzuki Gladius did not do so well. I bent both of the fork stanchions on it. So, it was a little, cockeyed to to ride after that, but it was it it worked.
Liane:Okay. So you've had you've had a lot more experiences than than I could even imagine. Ontario to Alaska. I mean, where are some of your favorite places to ride? Because it really sounds like you've been pretty much everywhere.
Emily:I've been really lucky to travel to some really phenomenal places. I mean, if I was to pick a favorite place, I would say in the mountains, anywhere in mountainous areas, off roading, dirt biking, trying to pick my way up a mountain. But I've if I was to choose a a specific location, I've I became really enamored with Morocco the first time that I rode there. The people, the scenery, the riding, it's got a mix of really good riding and kind of bland riding, but more so it's the experience that you get when you're there. Alaska was really incredible.
Emily:That was eons ago though, it feels like. And, yeah. I mean, I don't know. I I used to live in Cape Breton on the Cabot Trail for a few years, so I would ride that all the time. And now I live in the interior of British Columbia.
Emily:Just south of me is Nekusp And Nelson, on Highway 31, I believe it is, that offers
Liane:31 a. Yeah.
Emily:31 a that offers the best riding. So if you're you're in a street stuff, go check out that. Go check out Highway 6. Yeah. I don't know.
Emily:I can't I don't know if I could choose a favorite favorite place.
Liane:How like, what takes you to all these places? Just adventure? Is it also part of, like, what you do for a living?
Emily:It's a lot of stupidity, I think. Yeah.
Liane:That wasn't one of the options, but but we'll run Yeah. With
Emily:I have I've been very, very fortunate with my job as a motorcycle journalist with Motorcycle Mojo. It's taken me to some incredible places and given me so many more opportunities to be able to ride. Just the fact that I can work in the motorcycle industry doing something that I love and that I am, like, fully and completely obsessed with is absolutely phenomenal. The fact that it's been able to take me to these places and also given me these really unique experiences with riding is just a bonus.
Liane:That I mean, dream job, really. Like, if if I could, I would. But, but yeah. Okay. So racing.
Liane:Before we get into the rally side of it, so you you mentioned enduro, stuff like that. Like, what is your racing history and, like, why I I mean, really, how many how many other women are racing with you, first of all? Because I'm sure you're going head to head with
Emily:the boys and kicking butt. So in enduro racing these days, at least, we are seeing far more women step into the local enduro series, especially in Alberta and in British Columbia, in Ontario as well. I know that from personal experience, but I got into racing. My my parents never really let me race when I was a child, and I had always wanted to. And so back in 2020, I guess it was, I decided to enter my first race.
Emily:And it was a bit of a a whim. I just looked up the race that was closest to the date that I decided I would start racing. And that was a really stupid idea because that ended up being, Red Bull Outliers, which is a super hard enduro competition, in the Badlands Of Alberta, doing hill climbs on sandstone, and and it's absolutely like a very high caliber of riding. So, that was my very first race. And I've never seen my dirt bike Tomahawk so much, just like cartwheel downhills constantly.
Emily:After that, I kind of got my wits about me, and I decided, you know, I'll I'll start doing local races, local enduro races. So I started doing the BC Circuit with PNWMA, which was the Pacific Northwest Motorcycle Association, and it was great. I fell in love with it. I did realize that I'm maybe not the best dirt bike racer because I don't like to be super aggressive in the trails and passing people in single track. But Alberta and BC have so many opportunities for dirt bikers to get into enduro racing.
Emily:And now in Alberta, they have, so for the longest time, we've always had three classes for women's racing, amateur, intermediate, and pro. And Alberta, I believe last year or two years ago, introduced a fourth class for women. So they now have four classes, which makes it a bit of a easier stepping stone for female racers to to build their skill and to hone in on that racing skill set.
Liane:How would someone get involved in that if they were looking to? Like, who would they contact?
Emily:Yeah. So I think you have to decide what style of riding you really like. If you enjoy more technical stuff, you wanna start looking at the Enduro series that's offered in your province. If you like kind of going fast and riding, maybe some not as technical stuff, but you don't wanna get into motocross. There is an absolutely fantastic series in Alberta called the SOR series.
Liane:Mhmm.
Emily:And it's sprint racing. So it's pretty fantastic. Yeah. You get to do 10 laps throughout the day. So five laps on a, a faster track and then five laps on an enduro track, they call it.
Emily:But it's more so a lot more breaks. You do a sprints about every hour, every forty five minutes, and that's a really interesting thing. So what I would say is if you are thinking about getting into racing, go on to your local club's Facebook group or do a Google search of province provincial clubs that you can join and get information from. And then your next step is looking at, what races are offered in your area and what what you need for them because you do want to obviously have the proper amount of gear. There might be sound checks for some of them.
Emily:Spark arresters are required for a lot of them if you're doing off road racing. But, yeah, after after that, I got really into trials riding. I mainly did that because I felt like I wanted to get better on the dirt bikes. So I bought a trials bike and then became obsessed with how terrible I was at it. If you ever wanna crush any of your ego on a motorcycle, get a trials bike.
Emily:Get in a trials bike. Because you'll realize really quickly that it is not as easy as it looks and that everything you thought you knew about how to hit things and, like, go over obstacles is out the window when you get on a trial bike for the first time.
Liane:So I've seen some trials demos, and and I I'm more obsessed with the fact that, like, you never sit down.
Emily:Yes. Yeah. They have no seat. And they're about a 145 pounds. So they're incredibly light bikes, and they're all torque.
Emily:So if you are not good with your throttle control, you will loop out your bike very quick, or you'll end up doing a wheelie and wondering what what the heck is happening with the motorcycle. But it's phenomenal. It's a phenomenal sport for anybody who's interested in a slower, more technical aspect of riding.
Liane:Yeah. I mean, that at the minimum would give you some absolute wicked balance and technique and slow
Emily:Totally.
Liane:Skills. Yeah. Yeah.
Emily:Yeah. If you look at yes. Sorry.
Liane:No. Go ahead. No. No. Go ahead.
Emily:I was just gonna say if you look at any of the Enduro pros, even most of the sport bike pros, that are doing the international race circuits, all of them cross train with trials motorcycles because the skill set Yeah. The consistency and the finesse that you need to work one of those motorcycles is so transitional in every other aspect.
Liane:Yeah. I I totally I could see that. Okay. Let's get into when I saw you in January in Calgary at the motorcycle show. We just I don't know.
Liane:Like, I I'm proud of the fact that I'm counted as first female world land speed record holder. I mean, that's pretty so badass. Pretty crazy cool. But then you you literally trump me with the phrase, I shit my pants at Baja. And I mean, I think I purposely didn't wanna hear the whole story because I wanted you on here, and I could just react with it.
Liane:So let's talk Baja, because I know people from The States who I raced with at the salt who have gone and done rallies in Baja in dune buggies, motorcycles, like, everything. What made you wanna do that?
Emily:Ever since I was a kid, I was really obsessed with the Dakar rally. Yes. Like yeah. To the point where in grade school, I did one of my speeches on the history of Dakar. All all the other speeches were about the history of motorcycles and stuff.
Emily:But, the one, you know, like, I spent years talking about this race, looking at the history of it. As a child, it was a pipe dream for me. And so I as you know, motorcycling's such a close knit group of people, especially here in Canada. And so a few of my buddies that I had ridden dirt bikes with, they had gone down and done this Baja rally before. And they kind of, you know, they joked about it, talked about how tough it was, and then so I started asking them about it.
Emily:And we ended up organizing a roadbook course, with a Dakar racer from South Africa called Willem Avanens. So he came out and we learned how to read road books. It was just a day long course, but just getting to see a road book, getting to understand the amount of focus that you have to have while you're trying to ride your hardest, and trying to navigate to an unknown place that you don't know you don't know where you're gonna get to. You just know that if you can follow these directions properly and stay on your bike, you might get to the right place. And there is this this spark of like, I love that.
Emily:The the idea of the unknown, that every day you wake up, you're gonna get on your bike and you're gonna follow these directions and be lost the whole time. But in the end, if you do it right, you're gonna get to the right place and you're gonna have a great day. And I got really, really kind of excited about that. So I started working towards, doing a rally for the first time. And I had looked at a few different rallies.
Emily:Obviously, the big one is the Baja one thousand, which is really cool. But especially for my first rally, I really wanted to do something where there was no trophy trucks or side by sides. I do not wanna race with them. So I chose to do the Baja Rally, which only allows motorcycles to race. And it was yeah.
Emily:It was a trip. I will tell you that.
Liane:Okay. So where do you start? Like, when you when you go down there, like, I mean, if if anybody listening doesn't understand, Baja is South of California and Mexico. So Yes. Where do you start?
Liane:And then do you end like, I know the 1,000 ends in Cabo.
Emily:Yes. So every I think different rallies have different routes. The Baja Rally changes its route every year, so it doesn't ride the same tracks, which is quite nice.
Liane:Yeah.
Emily:So this one, we started in Ensenada. So the it's the whole Baja Peninsula, that we're riding. And last year, the route was, we didn't actually do a run down the peninsula. We will be doing that this year. But last year, we kind of did like a flower around San Canteen, for the whole rally, and it was really nice.
Emily:We did one day in Bay Of LA, and then came back to to San Canteen, and that's where we would be for, the rest of the rally. So we would do these kind of big loops out and then end up having to find our way back to to the endpoint and then do travel back to where we were staying.
Liane:That's so how many years have you been doing this?
Emily:Oh, that was my first one.
Liane:Oh, that was your first one.
Emily:Yeah. Okay. That 2025 was the first time doing it. The rally so the Baja rally itself started in 2013.
Kirk:Mhmm.
Emily:Just with a few guys. A couple of them had done Baja one thousand, had done the Nora races, had done Dakar, or at least attended Dakar, they were like, we wanna do something on our own. We, you know, we have this idea. We know these spots. We wanna show people this.
Emily:And and one of the great things about Raleigh that I kind of learned is it's almost like it's almost like buying into a tour, like a motorcycle tour, except you have no support. You're gonna be lost the whole time. But but you know that if you do the route correctly, it will lead you to some of the most scenic and untouched places that most people will never get to see. And that that's a pretty incredible thing when you think about it.
Liane:Okay. But it's like super hot down there. So if you have no support, like, I would imagine this is where the unfortunate incident may have occurred. I mean, is it dehydration? Is it like, what was going on?
Emily:Okay. So you're referring to me pooping my pants, which I did any ounce of pride that I had was out the window. So I had gotten down there. I had spent about a month and a half building up my bike, which was a a Cove four fifty or Covey four fifty. And really easy bike to build into Rally.
Emily:It's pretty much very it's very well set up to begin with. I bought the base model and then I put a Rally tower on it and built it out. I decided to run analog road books, which were the paper road books. A lot of guys run tablets now. I crash a lot.
Emily:And my biggest fear was like breaking the tablet and not getting my navigation anymore. So I thought the paper road book would be good. I love paper road books, by the way. I'm I'm so excited to run more paper road books. But I got down there and started the first day, and I didn't go into it with very high expectations.
Emily:You know, first time rally racing, first time in a year actually reading a road book again and trying to understand it. And on the first day, I did pretty well. I got lost twice, but found my way back. And, you know, I was racing towards the finish line. It was a long day.
Emily:We I was probably out there for, about I was out there since about 06:30 until about 04:30. Oh, jeez. About yeah. About ten hours of riding. I didn't stop for snacks.
Emily:I was just obsessed with riding. And I got a little bit complacent about a kilometer and a half from the finish line. And I ended up hitting a really large rock in a riverbed and went over the bars and crashed and separated my shoulder, Oh. On day one, and it's a six day race. So six days, I had worked to build up this bike.
Emily:I had worked to to finally get to do this rally, and I crashed out the first day. And I was so disappointed in myself. I knocked myself out and I came to as I could hear a paramedic talking to me, one of the medic riders. And, so I might have I might have fibbed a little bit and said, no, no, I didn't hit my head. I'm fine.
Emily:It's just my shoulder, whatever. Anyways, I got back on the bike. I rode across the finish line and, I got back to the hotel. I confirmed that my shoulder was separated and and told the medics that I would keep riding. I said I didn't wanna I wasn't gonna give up on this rally.
Emily:If it wasn't gonna do more damage, I would just bear with the pain. I would tape it up, and I would just ride with a separated shoulder for the rest of the five days. And so that's what I did. I learned really quickly, and the organizers had spoken about this quite a bit. The idea of understanding your own limits and having attrition throughout the race.
Emily:So understanding that it's not a speed game, but it's about consistency, and it's about knowing where you stand. And if you have to take a penalty to be able to finish the race, instead of dropping out, that's gonna be more worthwhile for you because then you still get to finish the race. So on day two, it was a quite a long day. I think it was over 500 kilometers that day. And there's two different stages, and I was in a lot of pain.
Emily:So by the time the second stage of day two came around, I cut out. I took time penalties by missing waypoints, and then I caught the finishing waypoints so that I would still be in the race. But I think that day, with all the waypoints that I had missed, I ended up getting about seven hours worth of penalties. So it it took me out of any running, but I it's okay. I I wanted to finish at that point.
Emily:I was I was hurt. I just wanted to finish this. And so, the the shit storm of what happened to me, I actually didn't come until about day five. So on day four, we day three, I rode. I had some painkillers.
Emily:It was good. I I made it through. Day four, we ended up in Bay Of LA, which is a beautiful seaside town. Little did I know that at dinner time, you shouldn't eat the seafood because I guess it's been out and then kind of sitting all day. Great.
Emily:So we had this lovely shrimp pasta, and a lot of us really enjoyed this shrimp pasta. Some of the guys, though, knew not to touch it. Unfortunately, I didn't know that. I had not learned my lesson yet. So I ended up eating that.
Emily:And, there is a few people that were kind of feeling a little bit sick. The Imodium started getting passed around. But on day five was probably the worst for most of us. And I remember I remember asking one of the organizers because he had a secret stash of Imodium and it was running out at that point. Anyways, I asked him for the secret stash, and he said, yeah.
Emily:I'll find it. I said, you can find me in my room. Just leave it by the door. I will be in there. And, any ounce of, like, womanly pride that I might have had went out the window literally when I was sitting on the toilet making these beautiful orchestral sounds into the porcelain.
Emily:And I all I hear from above me is anybody know where Emily is? And then, oh, I think I hear her. And I turned around on the toilet and I looked up and there is a window, up above the toilet that was open that led into the courtyard where all of the racers were. And, I realized that I had just announced to everybody exactly how I was feeling. What was even worse though was then seeing him put his fingers through the window with the packet of Imodiums saying, here
Liane:you go. Oh my god. That's amazing.
Emily:It was it was,
Liane:yeah. Mortified and amazing
Bryn:Yeah.
Liane:At the same time.
Emily:You know what? It was one of those things where I was feeling so bad. I didn't even care at that point. I was in so much pain. I had I couldn't keep anything in, which led to bigger issues later on.
Emily:So that day, I took the Imodium and I was feeling pretty good. I was riding, I had a few little spills but I was keeping up my energy. I made sure to stop and take snacks and stuff and I started feeling really good. I was riding fast, I was making good decisions until I forgot that I should never trust a fart because I I thought I would pass wind in one section and I ended up filling up my pants. And I will tell you, man or woman, it is not easy to clean up in the desert.
Emily:There is no like soft things around. It's all prickly and spiky. It is it's not good. So I cleaned up. I kept riding.
Emily:And about halfway through the day, there this was another really long stage. It was it was about 450 kilometers, I think, that we had to ride of off road. And halfway through the day, I started feeling a little bit just off. I couldn't make good decisions. I was starting to consciously just kind of like be a bit foggy in my brain.
Emily:And I remember reading the road book and thinking that I had to have been right about my decisions and directions, but I kept on getting lost. And I was wondering why I was getting lost, and I came to a point where I got on out onto this beautiful peninsula that overlooked the ocean. And I remember the organizers saying that there was supposed to be a section of single track that day. And I was standing above a canyon. This there is a drop in for the canyon, and I could see a single track trail down there.
Emily:And I remember seeing like five other bike tire tracks turned around there. They had spun around. They realized it was not the right way. But at that point, my brain was almost like a hamster wheel. And whatever it stopped on, even if I knew that it wasn't the right decision, I would do it.
Emily:And so I ended up deciding that I should drop down into this canyon, into this single track. Not the right decision by the way. No. So I ended up dropping down. I dropped down two big ledges.
Emily:And once I dropped down, I realized that I was in a really bad position. I was close to the back of the pack at this point, and I had dropped down into this huge canyon that had ended up having, like, 40 foot walls, and it was about six feet deep six feet wide. So I had spun the bike around trying to get back up the ledges, but they were, they were over overhang ledges. So trying to get any momentum to hop up onto them was impossible. And I ended up being stuck in a canyon for about two hours.
Emily:There is no other riders around. That's when I realized just how how serious it can get very, very quickly. Especially if you think about what led up to that. I was injured, I had the stomach flu, I was inevitably getting dehydrated. And I didn't quite know what was happening to me at this point.
Emily:As a I I really enjoy first aid stuff. I've I've done search and rescue for years. I used to do ski patrol. I really pride myself on first aid. And and when things like this happen to you, you have a very hard time actually comprehending the symptoms yourself and and telling yourself, like, there is something wrong with you.
Emily:So it wasn't until I was in the canyon that I realized that that I was I was pretty ill and I needed to get out of the canyon. So I ended up walking through the canyon and realized that it led to a gorgeous beach, which I wish I could have stayed there, but I I needed to get back. So I walked back. I turned around my bike again. I had left it on halfway up the hills in case somebody saw me.
Emily:I pulled the bike down. I turned it around. I rode to the beach. And the great thing about these these rallies is they do a really good job with due diligence with ensuring that the riders are safe.
Liane:Mhmm.
Emily:So every motor every racer gets a rally comp, which tracks you. You can also send out alerts or SOSs on there in case you need rescuing. And then they also give us a sat phone. So I pulled out my sat phone, I turned it on, and I got ahold of the organizers. And, after them giving me a bit of grief with how worried they were about me in this massive canyon that I had gotten myself into because they did not think that there is a way out.
Emily:I let them know that I was done for the day and I had to get I had to get out of there. So I had there is two sweeps that were able to kind of lead me out back to the road. And I just remember asking them, like I was shivering. I was so cold. It was 35 degrees out and I couldn't shake off a shiver.
Emily:I was like, it was like, I was cold. I was shaky. I didn't know what was happening with me and that was a really, really scary thing. So I did have enough wherewithal to catch the last waypoint and take, take time penalties again. So I still caught the last waypoint, so I was still in the race.
Emily:And I got back to the hotel where we were staying, and I just I kind of slid off the bike. I didn't have any energy. I went to my room and I pulled all the covers over top of me, and I just shivered for about an hour and a half. And that was a really tough point because I still didn't quite understand what was happening. And it it wasn't until I had asked the paramedics when they had come back from the race course to, come check me out that I realized that I had given myself heat stroke.
Emily:So I had severe dehydration from the stomach through flu. And then throughout the day, it had turned into heat stroke to the point where I couldn't make decisions. I couldn't comprehend. Even even the road book directions, they were they were, like, jumbled up for me. I couldn't I couldn't comprehend anything.
Emily:So I ended up being hooked up to an IV for four and a half hours, to replenish my fluids and to ensure that I was okay. Again, the the rallies do a really, really incredible job of ensuring that their racers are are okay. They're not gonna leave you high and dry. So as soon as the paramedics realized that I was having issues, they went in. They stayed with me for four and a half hours.
Emily:I was a little bit delirious. I kept on pulling the cover up over me, and they were like, no. They'd put a wet towel on my head and tear the covers off and make sure that I didn't pull my IV out. And there was only one other person, a friend of mine who who had to be hooked up to IV too because he went through a very similar thing. And so that was quite tough.
Emily:I remember at the end of that night, I had missed getting my my road book for the last day because we were on day five and I so badly just wanted to finish this rally. And I remember walking out, after they had unhooked me from my v and the organizer saw me. He yelled at me, what are you doing? Get back to bed. I said, I just need to get the road book.
Emily:I need to go through it. I need to highlight it. I just need to finish this. And he's like, you're probably not riding tomorrow. Go back to sleep.
Emily:And so I was quite disappointed in myself. I had made it, you know, the five days. I separated my shoulder. I pushed through that only to be taken out by a stomach bug. Like, how stupid is that?
Emily:And it's tough riding. It's It was a lot of desert riding, but it was very technical. And, anyways, on the sixth day, I realized that one of my friends had picked up my road book, had highlighted all the things and put in notes for me and put it into my motorcycle. So all I had to do, I went out geared up hoping that I could get my road book and I saw that it was in my bike already. And I was able to finish off the rally riding the last 196 kilometers, I believe it was, of off road.
Emily:And I ended up getting a top 10 placement for that day too, which was really nice.
Liane:Oh, that's cool.
Emily:It was good. Yeah.
Liane:So you ended on a on a good note.
Emily:Yes. Yeah. And it's I feel like it's very much a type two type fun. You know? You hate it when you're doing it, and then afterwards you're like, oh, I just need to do that again.
Emily:It was such an incredible experience. It was tough. It tested every part, like, physically, mentally, testing that tenacity that a human being can have. And I I loved every minute of it.
Liane:So so with all of that said and that, like I mean, I I would imagine that not separating your shoulder right off the get go would have made a completely different not maybe not as entertaining story. Yeah. But even with all of that, and it sounds excruciating but badass at the same time, you're gonna do it again?
Emily:Oh, yeah. Yep. I I I'm planning to go down this year again. I'm so excited. I'll either be I will be racing in some sort of capacity, but the one issue that I really realized from rally racing is that it isn't a cheap sport, so it is something that does cost quite a bit of money.
Emily:So I'm trying to work right now to get more money to do more rallies. It is it is one of the most phenomenal things. And the great thing about it is the road books are created to not only showcase technical riding and whether it's fast, like sand roads, rocky mountainous climbs, water crossings, beach rides. There's so much versatility to be offered, in any type of rally. But really, the organizers do it because they love that area so much.
Emily:So every piece of that road book is created to showcase some of the most incredibly beautiful and untouched areas, wherever the rally is. And that's a that's a really incredible piece of it.
Liane:Yeah. No. I I I totally get that. I've only been down to Cabo once and just fell in love with, like, touring around to different little towns and cities around there, and just the beauty of, you know, the landscapes. And it's just, yeah, it's crazy beautiful down there.
Liane:Not to make this a a gender thing, but to make it a gender thing because, like, you know, you look at that and go, there's still that stigma of women participating in Yeah. In stuff like this. How many how many women would you say are participating in the rally down in Baja?
Emily:Well, so I can't speak for other rallies. This one that I did, there was two women racing out of, I think, 36 racers. So Ruby is a fantastic rider from Washington. She came down to race the rally with me. We hadn't met each other before, but we very quickly bonded over the fact that we were the only two women there racing.
Emily:And she had a lot of mechanical issues, unfortunately. So, she didn't technically race, but she did ride all six days. Out of the thirteen years that this specific rally has been running, the Baja Rally, there has been six women in total finish, the rally. And, turns out I'm the first Canadian woman to finish it. So that was like Of course you are.
Liane:I mean, look at us bonding over here with these Canadian women doing things. Someone's gotta represent. Right? In those weird environments. Yeah.
Liane:Exactly. That sounds like an amazing adventure. I can't wait to see what you do. That race is in September. Correct?
Emily:End of September. So Yeah. Yeah. So this year, I believe it starts on September 28 and will go to October 4 Yeah. I believe.
Emily:It's really, really incredible. And for anybody thinking about getting into rally racing, if you want a more kind of in-depth, you can check out Motorcycle Mojo magazine. I wrote a three part series about my experience down there. So you can purchase all three issues and get a little bit more info. But there's also some really great resources that you can look at.
Emily:The Baja Rally website has great resources for getting into rally. Advtim.com is a great place to get rally parts and also talk to the owner, Tim. He is a wealth of knowledge for rally racing. There is road book courses that happen in The States quite often if you are keen to learn how to ride a or ride a road book. What I realized though, interestingly enough, is that there is quite a few guys who never took a road book course who raced the rally.
Emily:And when I asked them how they learned how to ride a road or read a road book, they said they bought a PlayStation, they bought the Dakar Rally video game, and they learned to read a road book through playing video games, a rally racing video game. And I for me, I'm not a video game person. I'm I I was, like, absolutely amazed at that. I would have never thought of doing that. So
Liane:I mean, genius, but a total boy thing to do. Very
Emily:much. I I had one guy, he would go home every night, pick his son up from school, and they would spend an hour playing Dakar video games to learn how to read road books. Road books. You know? And it and just reach out to people.
Emily:Ride North Moto is a great, a great organization in Canada. Couple Alberta guys who enjoy rally racing who can help you out with ideas. There's also, our latest Canadian racer who did Dakar and completed it, Jordan Strachan. He's also from Alberta originally. And, he's a great person to get ahold of to try to, get resources for Rally to learn how to build a bike, to learn, just how to get into it and how to get down there.
Liane:I mean, yeah. I'm gonna be watching to see what you do. I'm so excited to be connected with you on the socials now so that I can Aw. Keep tabs on that. And, and I just I wanna thank you, Emily, for taking so much time with me to share this because, yeah, it's quite the adventure.
Liane:It's quite it's it's a hard race to run. And you did it. And congratulations on being the first Canadian female to ever finish a rally race.
Emily:Thank you. I'm so excited. And I just thank you so much, Leanne. You are also an idol of mine, so it's just fantastic getting to speak with you about this.
Liane:Look at look at us just like girl power together. Alright. Well, if I don't see you before, I'll probably see you in January, February, whenever they decide the show's gonna be. Yep. Until then, let's stay connected.
Liane:And to everybody else, hang tight for the mixed bag.
Kirk:The tall shadow warning. Riding during an Alberta sunset is beautiful, but it comes with a hidden danger. If you see a long shadow stretching out in front of you, it means the sun is directly behind you and right in the eyes of oncoming drivers. When the sun is that low, a soon oncoming traffic can't see you at all. Increase your following distance, be extra cautious at intersections, and use your positioning to stay as visible as possible.
Kirk:Watch your shadow. It's telling you a story. This is Kirk with Moto Instincts.
Liane:And that's it for another episode of Think Bike hosted by me, Leanne Langlois, produced by Bryn Griffiths at Mighty Mouth Communications. If you have an idea or a question for the show, reach out to info@ab-amss.org or find us on all the socials. Always remember to ride smart, ride safe, and think bike. We'll see you out on the road.