ScottRNelson
Adventure and Dual Sport
Yesterday, a guy I ride with sent me an e-mail note about a motorcycle rider get-together out in Livermore at a Mexican restaurant. Apparently it's a monthly event which I hadn't heard of, but will probably attend in the future. During dinner, another guy that I like to ride with, Tom (a.k.a, OldFatGuy), mentioned that he would be heading out to Carnegie the next morning and wondered if I would be interested in meeting him there on my XR650L. I had been thinking of going out there anyway, so it seemed like a good excuse to do it.
Since it has been raining around here pretty heavily for the past week and Saturday would be the first rain-free day since a week ago Friday, so it seemed like the thing to do. The first issue was that Tom wanted to get there at 8:00 a.m. before the crowds get there. I have no problem getting up early and do it regularly without an alarm clock, but after the first clear night in a week it was much colder at that time of day than it had been. My thermometer showed 36 degrees when I started getting ready and warmed up to about 39 when I finally pulled out of the driveway. There was frost on the grass.
The second issue was that I haven't yet managed to get a proper riding jacket for off road yet. I dug through my coat closet where I have about eight coats and my wife has about 35 and found one that would probably work if I wore three shirts under it. I ended up with a long sleeve t-shirt, a short sleeve t-shirt, and a Wrangler work shirt underneath, which did a pretty good job of protecting my body heat everywhere except the front side of my thighs (only one pair of pants) and my face. But I survived the ride out there without freezing off any body parts, so that went fairly well.
I gassed up in town, then rode the 20 miles out to the dirt riding area. One nice thing about the 4.7 gallon tank on the XR is that it can actually hold enough gas to do some serious riding, unlike the stock 2.7 gallon tank. When I pulled into Carnegie, Tom was right where he said he would be, parked next to another of his riding buddies. He didn't actually ride with that friend until after I left, which was probably good for everybody. Before starting out, I was reminded to let some air out of my tires down to the 12-15 pound range, which I'm sure helped me get a bit better traction (somehow I forgot to fill them back up before riding home, oh well).
We started out on some easy to medium difficult trails which worked out okay. The trails at Carnegie are marked like at a ski resort with green circles for the easy stuff, blue squares for the more difficult trails, and black diamonds for the expert stuff. Tom would head up the steeper trails and I would meet him by taking the easier ones. I did a few medium difficulty hill climbs, but didn't want to push my luck on the heavy XR with the worn dual-sport tires. After six or eight miles of roads and trails we headed back to the parking area for a break. Nothing too hard so far even with a little bit of black diamond stuff thrown in.
After resting for a little while my bike didn't want to start. It only seems to have that problem while dirt riding. I'm thankful that it has a powerful battery because I cranked and cranked and cranked that thing. I eventually decided to put in the new spark plug that I had purchased the last time I was at Carnegie, to see if it would help. I've been trying to put together a proper tool pouch and the first thing I discovered was that the spark plug wrench needs a 17mm open end wrench to turn it and my biggest wrench was about a 12. Fortunately, Tom, being a mechanic, had a properly stocked tool box. The new plug barely helped, but I finally got it running and off we went. (I've since found a 17mm wrench in my home tool box and it's now in the tool pouch for next time.)
After trying a few narrow trails that were a bit more difficult, especially on the heavy XR, Tom turned down an innocent looking narrow trail with a black diamond and I followed without giving it a second thought. But the trail got narrower - about six inches wide - and steeper and rougher the further we went. Worse, it was along a hillside where if you ever slid off of the trail it would be nearly impossible to get the bike back up on the trail again and the bottom of the ravine was very tight looking. Of course, there was absolutely no place to turn around and a few of the steep muddy sections that we went down would be next to impossible to go back up anyway.
Once we came out to an open area, I realized that this was the place that my son used to refer to as The Devils Butt Crack. On the trail map it appears to be called No Name Trail, and I remember hearing a story about how they couldn't use the "real name" on the map. To get back out you either have to make a rather difficult hill climb up one side or the other of the canyon, or go up a very narrow, rough, and muddy trail. Going down the ravine would only be a last resort and would involve pushing through brush and dropping down a few small waterfalls, plus it's a long way out that way with no chance to turn around once you get in there. I remember doing it once with my son and a few of his friends, but during a time of the year when it wasn't muddy. I had hoped at the time to never go back there.
When I realized where we were, I told Tom "Hey, thanks for bringing me here." But since he had to help me get out, he got almost as much "enjoyment" as I did dragging the heavy beast back on the trail half a dozen times. The first attempt to get out was the hill climb method. Tom, on his KTM 530EXC with proper dirt tires didn't have too much trouble riding up to the top of the hill. I decided to go for it and made it a long ways up the hill, but couldn't keep the bike from sliding into a rut and wheelying at the wrong times, so I managed to get stuck about 50 feet from the top. This hill was steep enough that we might have been able to pull it up the last 5 feet or so, would have to seriously think about 10 feet, and had to consider 50 feet a total impossibility. At least I know how to walk a bike down a steep hill by sticking it in first gear with the ignition off and using the front brake for most of the stopping and the clutch lever, working backwards, to slow down the back.
The other problem that I realized at this point was that I'm rather out of shape right now, having recently skipped too many of my lunchtime walks and bike rides due to the rain and cold. Plus the little bit of additional altitude - 1500 feet higher than normal for me - had me out of breath just riding the bike on the rough trails. I had to recover for about ten minutes just walking the bike down that long hill.
Back at the bottom we talked to some other riders stuck in the area and they pointed to the ravine going back up and said that it wasn't too bad if you stayed out of the rougher mud holes. So we tried that until we noticed a narrow trail up out of there that didn't look too steep. I went up that about 100 feet until my bike bounced me off of the trail and the rear tire slid down the hill about four feet. That doesn't seem very far unless the bike weight over 350 pounds and the dirt is all loose there. We probably spent half an hour of resting, dragging the bike back up to the trail, riding a little ways, sliding out, then doing it again. I eventually asked Tom to ride it for me up to a better spot because I was just too tired to be able to control it properly.
So he took it up the trail a ways and I slowly followed up the trail on foot to find him. He went far enough to determine that it just got worse the further up you went. So I rested some more while he went back down for his bike and rode it up to the turn around spot, then we went back down the trail to the bottom of the ravine.
We had concluded that maybe it wouldn't be so bad after all going up the ravine until we crossed an easier "blue square" trail. I only dumped the bike twice more getting up that trail and got tossed off one of those times when my dual-sport tire decided to go sideways instead of where I was trying to point it. I was happy that I had worn my elbow guards when I landed that one. I was also thinking that maybe I should have taken the mirrors off when I had to lean the bike way to the side to get under a tree growing over the trail.
I used to wonder why pure dirt knobby tires had the knobs sticking out the side where they would hardly ever even touch dirt. Know I know several reasons why they're there. They keep you from sliding off of narrow trails and they help grab something to give you a little traction when you're trying to get over an eight inch vertical rock covered with slimy mud when the trail is exactly as wide as the widest knobby ever to go through there.
Eventually I could see the road and made it out of that awful place. I was considering lofting the front wheel as I came out onto the road, but good thing I didn't because there was a holding pond on the other side of the trail and I probably would have ended up in it.
There is a great feeling of relief when you're riding on a dirt trail that you really shouldn't be on and you finally make it back out. I've done it way too many times in the past and don't want to make it a habit now.
Once on a real trail, it was easy enough to make it back to the trucks. It was five minutes before noon when we got there and we had originally planned to only ride until noon. Seventeen miles of trail riding and I was completely worn out. I've always felt that dirt riding was good exercise, especially when you have to push a dead bike any distance or drag it back up the hill. You can bet that I'll do a lot more walking and bike riding before I go up there again. It shouldn't be so easy to get all out of breath like that.
The ride back through Livermore to Pleasanton was uneventful, even with the tire air pressure a bit low. Once I washed the mud off of the bike, it came out fine too. It's always a good thing when I don't break any parts or lose anything on a ride. The last time I let my 24-year old son take the bike, he brought it back and left me a list of the stuff that he broke or lost (how do you lose a kickstand spring?). That's a sure sign that he's starting to mature, because he both rode it WITH my permission AND left me a note so that I wasn't surprised by the missing and broken parts. That's better than he would have done a few years ago.
Looking back now, it's good to occasionally have difficult experiences and have to dig deep to overcome them. But it would have been a lot tougher without Tom's help, which I appreciate. Since he helped me get into that mess, that was the least he could do. After lunch and a couple of hours rest I'm fine, so other than possibly a few sore muscles tomorrow, there seem to be no lasting effects.
I think I'll stick with dirt roads for the big XR from here on, though.
________________________________
Note to self: I might be required to wear glasses when driving on public roads, but they're more trouble than they're worth off road. Remember to take them off next time upon entering the park. Goggles that have room for glasses are still a big bother when you need to remove them every time you have to pull the bike back up onto the trail.
Since it has been raining around here pretty heavily for the past week and Saturday would be the first rain-free day since a week ago Friday, so it seemed like the thing to do. The first issue was that Tom wanted to get there at 8:00 a.m. before the crowds get there. I have no problem getting up early and do it regularly without an alarm clock, but after the first clear night in a week it was much colder at that time of day than it had been. My thermometer showed 36 degrees when I started getting ready and warmed up to about 39 when I finally pulled out of the driveway. There was frost on the grass.
The second issue was that I haven't yet managed to get a proper riding jacket for off road yet. I dug through my coat closet where I have about eight coats and my wife has about 35 and found one that would probably work if I wore three shirts under it. I ended up with a long sleeve t-shirt, a short sleeve t-shirt, and a Wrangler work shirt underneath, which did a pretty good job of protecting my body heat everywhere except the front side of my thighs (only one pair of pants) and my face. But I survived the ride out there without freezing off any body parts, so that went fairly well.
I gassed up in town, then rode the 20 miles out to the dirt riding area. One nice thing about the 4.7 gallon tank on the XR is that it can actually hold enough gas to do some serious riding, unlike the stock 2.7 gallon tank. When I pulled into Carnegie, Tom was right where he said he would be, parked next to another of his riding buddies. He didn't actually ride with that friend until after I left, which was probably good for everybody. Before starting out, I was reminded to let some air out of my tires down to the 12-15 pound range, which I'm sure helped me get a bit better traction (somehow I forgot to fill them back up before riding home, oh well).
We started out on some easy to medium difficult trails which worked out okay. The trails at Carnegie are marked like at a ski resort with green circles for the easy stuff, blue squares for the more difficult trails, and black diamonds for the expert stuff. Tom would head up the steeper trails and I would meet him by taking the easier ones. I did a few medium difficulty hill climbs, but didn't want to push my luck on the heavy XR with the worn dual-sport tires. After six or eight miles of roads and trails we headed back to the parking area for a break. Nothing too hard so far even with a little bit of black diamond stuff thrown in.
After resting for a little while my bike didn't want to start. It only seems to have that problem while dirt riding. I'm thankful that it has a powerful battery because I cranked and cranked and cranked that thing. I eventually decided to put in the new spark plug that I had purchased the last time I was at Carnegie, to see if it would help. I've been trying to put together a proper tool pouch and the first thing I discovered was that the spark plug wrench needs a 17mm open end wrench to turn it and my biggest wrench was about a 12. Fortunately, Tom, being a mechanic, had a properly stocked tool box. The new plug barely helped, but I finally got it running and off we went. (I've since found a 17mm wrench in my home tool box and it's now in the tool pouch for next time.)
After trying a few narrow trails that were a bit more difficult, especially on the heavy XR, Tom turned down an innocent looking narrow trail with a black diamond and I followed without giving it a second thought. But the trail got narrower - about six inches wide - and steeper and rougher the further we went. Worse, it was along a hillside where if you ever slid off of the trail it would be nearly impossible to get the bike back up on the trail again and the bottom of the ravine was very tight looking. Of course, there was absolutely no place to turn around and a few of the steep muddy sections that we went down would be next to impossible to go back up anyway.
Once we came out to an open area, I realized that this was the place that my son used to refer to as The Devils Butt Crack. On the trail map it appears to be called No Name Trail, and I remember hearing a story about how they couldn't use the "real name" on the map. To get back out you either have to make a rather difficult hill climb up one side or the other of the canyon, or go up a very narrow, rough, and muddy trail. Going down the ravine would only be a last resort and would involve pushing through brush and dropping down a few small waterfalls, plus it's a long way out that way with no chance to turn around once you get in there. I remember doing it once with my son and a few of his friends, but during a time of the year when it wasn't muddy. I had hoped at the time to never go back there.
When I realized where we were, I told Tom "Hey, thanks for bringing me here." But since he had to help me get out, he got almost as much "enjoyment" as I did dragging the heavy beast back on the trail half a dozen times. The first attempt to get out was the hill climb method. Tom, on his KTM 530EXC with proper dirt tires didn't have too much trouble riding up to the top of the hill. I decided to go for it and made it a long ways up the hill, but couldn't keep the bike from sliding into a rut and wheelying at the wrong times, so I managed to get stuck about 50 feet from the top. This hill was steep enough that we might have been able to pull it up the last 5 feet or so, would have to seriously think about 10 feet, and had to consider 50 feet a total impossibility. At least I know how to walk a bike down a steep hill by sticking it in first gear with the ignition off and using the front brake for most of the stopping and the clutch lever, working backwards, to slow down the back.
The other problem that I realized at this point was that I'm rather out of shape right now, having recently skipped too many of my lunchtime walks and bike rides due to the rain and cold. Plus the little bit of additional altitude - 1500 feet higher than normal for me - had me out of breath just riding the bike on the rough trails. I had to recover for about ten minutes just walking the bike down that long hill.
Back at the bottom we talked to some other riders stuck in the area and they pointed to the ravine going back up and said that it wasn't too bad if you stayed out of the rougher mud holes. So we tried that until we noticed a narrow trail up out of there that didn't look too steep. I went up that about 100 feet until my bike bounced me off of the trail and the rear tire slid down the hill about four feet. That doesn't seem very far unless the bike weight over 350 pounds and the dirt is all loose there. We probably spent half an hour of resting, dragging the bike back up to the trail, riding a little ways, sliding out, then doing it again. I eventually asked Tom to ride it for me up to a better spot because I was just too tired to be able to control it properly.
So he took it up the trail a ways and I slowly followed up the trail on foot to find him. He went far enough to determine that it just got worse the further up you went. So I rested some more while he went back down for his bike and rode it up to the turn around spot, then we went back down the trail to the bottom of the ravine.
We had concluded that maybe it wouldn't be so bad after all going up the ravine until we crossed an easier "blue square" trail. I only dumped the bike twice more getting up that trail and got tossed off one of those times when my dual-sport tire decided to go sideways instead of where I was trying to point it. I was happy that I had worn my elbow guards when I landed that one. I was also thinking that maybe I should have taken the mirrors off when I had to lean the bike way to the side to get under a tree growing over the trail.
I used to wonder why pure dirt knobby tires had the knobs sticking out the side where they would hardly ever even touch dirt. Know I know several reasons why they're there. They keep you from sliding off of narrow trails and they help grab something to give you a little traction when you're trying to get over an eight inch vertical rock covered with slimy mud when the trail is exactly as wide as the widest knobby ever to go through there.
Eventually I could see the road and made it out of that awful place. I was considering lofting the front wheel as I came out onto the road, but good thing I didn't because there was a holding pond on the other side of the trail and I probably would have ended up in it.
There is a great feeling of relief when you're riding on a dirt trail that you really shouldn't be on and you finally make it back out. I've done it way too many times in the past and don't want to make it a habit now.
Once on a real trail, it was easy enough to make it back to the trucks. It was five minutes before noon when we got there and we had originally planned to only ride until noon. Seventeen miles of trail riding and I was completely worn out. I've always felt that dirt riding was good exercise, especially when you have to push a dead bike any distance or drag it back up the hill. You can bet that I'll do a lot more walking and bike riding before I go up there again. It shouldn't be so easy to get all out of breath like that.
The ride back through Livermore to Pleasanton was uneventful, even with the tire air pressure a bit low. Once I washed the mud off of the bike, it came out fine too. It's always a good thing when I don't break any parts or lose anything on a ride. The last time I let my 24-year old son take the bike, he brought it back and left me a list of the stuff that he broke or lost (how do you lose a kickstand spring?). That's a sure sign that he's starting to mature, because he both rode it WITH my permission AND left me a note so that I wasn't surprised by the missing and broken parts. That's better than he would have done a few years ago.
Looking back now, it's good to occasionally have difficult experiences and have to dig deep to overcome them. But it would have been a lot tougher without Tom's help, which I appreciate. Since he helped me get into that mess, that was the least he could do. After lunch and a couple of hours rest I'm fine, so other than possibly a few sore muscles tomorrow, there seem to be no lasting effects.
I think I'll stick with dirt roads for the big XR from here on, though.
________________________________
Note to self: I might be required to wear glasses when driving on public roads, but they're more trouble than they're worth off road. Remember to take them off next time upon entering the park. Goggles that have room for glasses are still a big bother when you need to remove them every time you have to pull the bike back up onto the trail.
