After the obligatory signup, jawing with all the great people and generally getting ready, I decided that I wouldn't bother installing my rollchart and would just leach off Walt & Frank, which may have been my first mistake.
All three of us were on our shiney, new Honda 450X's and this was basically the first ride with them. Out of the staging area, I took it easy on the new engine and let it warm up for the first few miles. By the time I made it by COMAC's Poker Run area, Walt & Frank were long gone. DOH! Now what? Since I had no rollchart, I didn't have a clue where the heck I was going, so I occasionally asked for directions from riders that went by and they directed me onto the first trail. This is about the time I caught up with Shayne and Dave. I figured I better hang with them, so we motored on, Shayne on Walt's old XR650 and Dave on his XR650L. After a few miles of really fun, groomed trail, Shayne started looking at his rear wheel and eventually pulled over. Low and behold, his rear axle had almost fallen completely out! The nut was still hanging on by only about one thread! He was lucky. And lucky for him I had an axle wrench that fit the nut!
Once done with that, we continued on. At one turn, Shayne went the wrong way on a trail and, by the time we figured out what went wrong, we went back and Dave was long gone. So Shayne and I continued on. That's about the time when the rains and snow commenced to pummel us. The snow proved very frozen and slippery. Shayne did one lipskid and I even got to see it! His quote was, "I hate snow!"
A little later we caught up with Dave, Jim and George while they were taking a break to warm up (and Dave to choke on a cig). It was raining so much that Jim and George had towels over their heads as hats (they can now be referred to as 'towel heads'). After a brief warm up, Shayne and I continued on into the rain and snow. Brrrrr. After many miles we came up to a killer section that was all lava fields. Was almost surreal like you were riding on the moon.
After that we ended up on a bonafide single track that went for a number of miles - it was a gas! About that time we caught up with four other riders and rode with them all the way to lunch - the rain was bloody cold and the traffic was scarey! At lunch Shayne and I caught up with Brad, Joe and Phil and decided to skip lunch and continue on in hopes of getting back to the start and warm up. The rain continued and we must have stopped four or more times just to warm up our digits on the burning bike exhausts. Phil's bike quit at one point, but he then showed up. I think his tank vent tube - wasn't venting.
At the second checkpoint, we were drowned rats. Fortunately Lobos' member, Paul, was doing flashpots with the campfire and doses of gas. We did our BB-gun shooting for points and decided to skip the final, long trail section back and just hit a direct road #18 to the finish. Fortunately we were smart enough to take a couple trails that shortcut us to road #18, which gave us a chance to warm up a bit. Once we hit #18, the sun actually started to come out. From there we flat-tracked our way back to the finish and made valiant attempts to warm up. My fingers never really stopped tingling till I got to bed that night.
Since my Baja Design Kit hadn't made it in yet for my new scoot, I suffered major points loss at the finish check, as they were checking for working street-legal implements on the bikes. I only had a headlight, tail light and a borrowed dealer plate, which made me an instant loser. Oh well, fun ride anyway. Andy overalled the ride and even some of the Mt. Scotters went home with trophies. You can check out some of the pix here:
http://tawmn.smugmug.com/gallery/499886/1/20469804
Don't be shy - how was your ride? I'll be helping Danno write up an article on the event, so you may even get your quotes in it - so post away!
-Tom
