Let the build-up begin! The countdown has officially begun to our next big Serbia Bike Trek, in 2008! If you missed the story of our 2007 Trek you can check it out here: Serbia Mountain Bike Trek 2007 - Kopaonik to Tara. If you can’t be bothered to read all that, the gist is: take a week out and go on a long, no-frills, exciting mountain biking holiday, exploring new mountain territories wherever is nearest to you, in my case Serbia.

How do you plan a trip like this and where do you start? Well, stick around, I will be cataloguing our progress until Zero Day and beyond right here, and hopefully sharing some tips along the way, now that we are highly experienced at these epic mountain-biking trips

Where to start?

1) Take the initiative

I suspect a huge number of mountain bikers never fulfill their ideas (same is true for all other areas of life) because they never just say, “Right, we’re going to do this!” Luckily, we have the illustrious Rob MacCurrach on the team, who is not lacking in crazy schemes, and there’s me too, always ready to hop on my bike with no mind for the finer details!

Rob sent me an email the other day suggesting we start planning now for a 2008 Serbia Bike Trek, and I am all for it. But someone has to take the initiative for these things, or they just won’t happen. Why shouldn’t that be you? Yes, rejection, disappointment and let-downs are all par for the course when you are the one trying to make things happen, but what does it matter? The rewards are far greater.”That’s it, I have set aside that period of time for the mountain biking expedition of my dreams (well, this year’s one, anyway!) and nothing else can now interfere with my schedule.” If you wait till “nearer the time”, something else will come along and seem more important, and that will be the end of that.

As soon as you are sure of the dates (i.e. all the key expedition members agree), make it certain - book time off work if you need to, discuss it with your family if there are arrangements which need to be made and write it in your diary in bold letters! We have fixed the approximate period 18-24 May 2008, and that, as far as I am concerned, is it!

3) Start dreaming

The next step will be to start dreaming. Get the maps out and start looking for those mountain areas that are just begging to be explored from the saddle of a bike. Start doodling trails through areas you want to see, even if there are no trails marked on the map. Aim high, be ambitious, don’t worry about those big climbs, or long stages - that can all be scaled down later. Right now you need to get the vision for where you want to go and what kind of experience you want to have.

We will be getting into this process soon, before Christmas, so I will let you know how we get on. All I can say at the moment is that we are looking at the areas of Čermeno, Golje, Dragačevo and Guča and perhaps even farther onto Peštar and the Montenegro border, names which mean nothing to you, but sound terribly exciting to me. Watch this space!

4) Start selling

Our ambition for this trip is to have a bigger team, perhaps 10 riders or more. Now, Rob and I will quite happily do the whole trip on our own, but we want to share the Serbian mountain-biking experience with others. So next we need to start selling the vision to our mountain-biking friends locally, especially the ones who took part in last year’s trip, but also non-locals, friends in the UK and the rest of Europe, who have maybe never mountain-biked before and don’t know anything about Serbia. We can guarantee them a fantastic experience, but how to get people to commit?

Well, one way is through this blog. I suggest that if you are a more serious mountain-biker you start a blog of some kind through which you can draw other people in to your crazy schemes. Sip, Clip and Go, and Ed’s MTB blog are good examples of local mountain-biking blogs designed to hook up MTB-ers. Include plenty of pictures, write up your experiences, encourage people to subscribe to your RSS Feed and start recruiting!

On this subject - anyone who likes the sound of doing a trip like the one we did last year, getting to know Serbia and exploring new mountain-biking territory, why not join us? No seriously, think about it! Why not do something different? Subscribe to my feed (as per the link above) and stay up-to-date with the plans, and maybe you will be part of the 2008 Serbia Bike Trek.

So how do you go about planning a big MTB trip like this one? I am sure you must have some tips for us so please do share!

mountain, biking, bike, trek, planning

If you think others might want to read this post, don’t be selfish, click above to AddThis to Digg, Del.icio.us or just about any other bookmarking service and share and share alike!

Popularity: 50% [?]

Technorati Tags: mountain, biking, bike, trek, planning

Posted on December 7th, 2007 by markowe
Filed under: MTB Serbia (All)