Kiamichi first ride...

[the_monk]

Hey guys. I went with JMD and all of his younglings to Kiamichi this weekend. All I can say is wow. That place is amazing. I'm looking forward to going back after all the soreness is out of my legs and arms.

I learned as much about riding a dirt bike in one day at Kiamichi day as I have in about three of my last outings. Very cool place.

And always, JMD was a great guide and very patient.

Now, anybody else up to going to Muenster this Saturday (01/04)?

 

[the_monk]

Does anybody have any pictures of the trails and terrain around there? I'd like to show the War Department some pictures to give her an idea of the place.

 

[lust450]

muenster sat

yes, i will be at muenster saturday!!

 

[JMD]

Monk, I'm glad you had a good time. I thought it was an epic day, even with all the goofy problems. Glad you didn't get hurt in that mud hole; that looked scary. I didn't think I was all that tired, but by the time I got halfway home, I could hardly keep my eyes open and had to have Mark drive for an hour. Next time, I'll take my digital camera, maybe even will have Alan bring his helmet camera. Mudd Slinger has posted some pics of a past Kiamichi ride here on the gallery. I don't have access, as I canceled my membership when Okie pissed me off in an argument about Bowfinger Stewart. Sure, it's probably petty, but it's the only power I have. Anyway, I'll be at Muenster Saturday with two sons and a daughter and a new fender on the Goose Goose.

 

[the_monk]

My neighbor is going to come too. He's the guy that got me into dirtbikes in the first place. He hasn't been riding in probably a year. He seems really excited about it.

 

[sgifford]

Jim: I'd like to join you Saturday at Muenster, but I think Saturday will be a maintenance day for me.

Benjamin won't be riding with us for a while. He broke his right collar-bone Monday. He landed a jump badly, went over the bars and hit his right shoulder pretty hard. Other than the break, he's doing OK. I guess he'll be out of commission for at least a month.

 

[JMD]

Seldon: Boy, I'm sorry to hear about Benjamin! That must be painful. But there are only two kinds of dirt bikers: those who have broken bones and those who will. Luckily, serious injuries are rare in our sport, even though we'll break a few bones here and there. I'll be out of commission for about a month after this Saturday, having my knee tuned up. Give Ben our best wishes.

 

[JMD]

By the way, here's my writeup from the Kiamooch:

My three sons and I had planned to drive up Sunday night to Oklahoma, to meet Monk and ride the Kiamichi Mountains Monday. I spent Sunday afternoon into the night working on bikes. I admit I was a bit rushed at the end, and that may have caused problems. We had wanted to leave by 6 p.m., but it was 7:40 before we got out. Plus, we first had to drive 20 miles south from my house in McKinney to Wylie, to pick up the fourth bike, which was at Seldon's house because he had hauled it home from Muenster Saturday, sparing me the ordeal of trying to get five bikes on my trailer again. After getting lost in Wylie, we finally made it to Seldon's and picked up the bike, an '05 450 EXC. That took more than an hour. So it was 9 p.m. before we passed through McKinney again, heading north. An hour and 20 minutes, and I was only six blocks from home.

We finally made it to Talimena State Park at 1 a.m. Monk was already there and asleep in his truck. We pitched two tents for the boys, and I slept in the van. We got up at 8 Monday and unloaded the trailer. I had my two 400SX's and the GG 300; plus, the borrowed 450EXC.

Art (AnotherOldTrailRider at KTMtalk) was camped in the site next to us. He had been there all weekend with his wife and two lions he walked in the morning at the end of long battleship chains. He claimed they were dogs, but I had my doubts. Aft asked to tag along with us for the day. Art knows the trails out there pretty well, and he’s a great rider, so we were happy to have him along. The plan was to ride 35 miles to Muse, have lunch, and ride back before dark. But events began to make that plan seem unrealistic almost immediately.

First, before we left, we noticed that the old 400SX, Scotty's bike, was leaking oil from the ignition cover. I had installed a heavier flywheel the night before and had fouled up the gasket. I violated Super Hunky’s rule: you don’t fix anything the night before an important ride unless it’s imperative. This wasn’t. I had just wanted to see how the new flywheel would work. (Answer: I couldn’t tell the difference between a 10-over SX flywheel and a 14-over. I may have to get the 18-over.) I had the problem solved by 9 a.m., but we were behind schedule already.

We were geared up and ready by 9:30. We all took off, riding right out of the campground, hitting the trails at the southeast corner and continuing south. I was on the ’05 450 E/XC. Scotty, my oldest at 25, was on my old 400SX with the heavier flywheel. Mark, 22, was on the ’05 GG 300. Jimmy, 20, was on my newer 400SX with e-start and E/XC ignition. Monk was on his KX250 with a 10-oz. flywheel weight and revalved suspension. Art has an ’03 525 E/XC engine in an ’04 chassis. Why? Ask Art; it’s a long story.

The first five or six miles were fun, fast trails with lots of erosion bars for jumps. One jump had a big mudhole hidden on the backside. Jimmy launched to the right and missed the hole, but Monk went right over the center and landed in the mud, which grabbed his front wheel and took him down hard. I barely missed him when I went over. Monk is recovering from a separated shoulder, and he sat in the mudhole a while without moving much, and I was worried. But he recovered OK. and said he hadn't hurt himself, just knocked the wind out of his sails a bit.

We took off just as the others came back to check on us, and we all continued onward. But then more problems surfaced. Mark’s GG 300 lost a handlebar clamp bolt over a jump, leaving him unable to steer the bike. Luckily he didn’t get hurt, but the GG was unrideable -- the bar clamps were hanging on by one bolt through the triple clamps. We looked along the trail for the missing bolt, but it was gone. So I sent Art on with Monk, Jimmy, and Scott. They would ride a loop and meet us at camp in an hour. Mark would push the GG half a mile to the gravel road and wait. I would ride the 450 back to camp, get the van and the trailer, and return to get Mark and the GG.

I rode 17 miles on the road back to camp, and loaded the 450 in the trailer. I took off in the van and tried a different way back to where Mark was waiting. It was a better way; it took only 6 miles to reach him that way. All in all, it took about an hour to get the GG back to camp. Art and the others were waiting when we got there. We managed to find a 10mm KTM lower heim joint bolt in my spares box that would go up through the bottom of the GG triple clamps into the bar clamp. With some spacers under the t-clamp, it worked fine.

So we got the GG going again. But Art, who had been riding all weekend, was done for the day and began breaking camp to go home. Maybe he was out of antelope haunches for his two lions, I don't know. It was only 1 p.m., so the rest of us decided to try to make Muse despite everything. We headed out again, out the same fun trails. But again, disaster struck. Scotty’s 400 started making excessive chain noise. A quick look showed the chain was shot, and the sprockets were shedding teeth. I had thought we could get another ride or two out of that set, but I was wrong. I should have replaced them.

I asked Scott if he could limp the 400 back to camp alone, and he said that he could. I told him to take it easy and wait for us at the van. Jimmy had never ridden the Kiamichis before, and it was only Mark’s second time, so it seemed only fair that they get a chance to ride. We still planned to try for Muse, if possible, though it wasn't looking good.

Scott found his way back without problems, as it turned out. He has a good sense of direction and a great memory. We continued on. Monk had made some suspension clicker changes to his KX250, and he was very happy with the results. It went from scary and skittery to confident and plush. His speed picked up considerably, as well.

An hour or so after Scott headed back we were only about 10 miles from Muse. Then Mark slid out on a rocky hill and went down, tweaking the GG bars and tearing the front fender off completely. I’ve never seen a fender do that: the middle section with the mounting bolts stayed with the bike and the rest of the fender just fell off. We threw it away, tweaked the bars back as best we could, and went on. Mark said it was strange riding looking right at the front wheel – the bike felt much shorter, for some reason.

But by now, it was 3 p.m. and too late to make it to Muse and back. So we decided to try to find the White Rocks, which were nearby, and then head back to camp on the Indian Nations Trail. The White Rocks are a pretty impressive formation atop a high hill, and if you climb them you are rewarded with a great view of the Billy Creek area. I turned up the trail that I thought would take us there. It was a great trail, winding slowly up the mountain with lots of rock ledges and erosion bar jumps. But it didn’t lead to the White Rocks. At the top, it dumped us out on the 6010 Road, near the intersection with Scenic Highway 1. Across the highway there is more great riding, but we were running out of time, so we turned toward camp.

Just a note here about the ’05 KTM 450E/XC. What an amazing bike! I love my ’02 400SX/EXC. But the 450, bone stock, is far superior to my heavily modified 400. I have 18mm clamps, Race Tech suspension mods, E/XC ignition with 6-oz.-under flywheel, and a Scotts damper. But the 450 was better in every way. The suspension is vastly superior. The thing hugs the trail like it’s magnetized, and soaks up everything. It turns beautifully, but it’s eminently stable. It absolutely inspires confidence. I could jump on the 450 and immediately ride it faster than my 400, which I’ve been riding for four years. I had ridden the 450 in the meadow at Muenster, and I thought the power was too smooth, too sleepy. I was wrong. The power is pretty close to perfect. It’s super-smooth off idle, but it has a nice mid-range surge -- though I wouldn’t call it a hit -- and it revs to the moon. You can ride it easy and smooth, but it will rip if you want it to. And you can't stall it without trying real hard. So I've got the new bike bug.

Anyway, when we hit the top of the rocky climb, we headed down 6010 and hit the Indian Nations Trail, then rode that back to camp. I showed everybody where my nephew Tyler had run out of gas in November, and we followed the trail we had been forced to ride back in the pitch dark, after we finally got Tyler going again. This time we were well ahead of the dark, thankfully; it's a pretty rocky trail. I've since installed lights on two of my three bikes, and the third rider carries an LED helmet light in his backpack.

We got back to camp about 4 p.m. I felt like I could have ridden for hours longer, but that proved to be an illusion. At any rate, we all loaded up, and headed home, Monk in his truck, the rest of us in the van. The boys and I drove straight through. My wife had steaks ready for us when we got home at about 7:30. By the time I got home, I was sore and exhausted. I hadn't fallen down all day, but I had gotten a good workout, and was glad I hadn't ridden longer.

It was a strange day of riding. I hadn't fixed some things that I should have, and I fixed some things I shouldn't. That caused us some problems. On the other hand, Jimmy and Monk were introduced to the Kiamichis, Mark got his second crack at the mountains, and I learned my way around a little better. Scotty had been a good sport and didn’t complain when his day was cut short. We put in about 60 miles, nobody got hurt all day, and nothing broke on the bikes that can’t be easily and cheaply repaired. All in all, it was an epic day.

 

[tx246]

sorry i didnt get to go. i really like that place.

 

[GhostRider32]

Seldon,

Sorry to hear about your son, I hope he gets well soon.

 

[sgifford]

Benjamin seems to be doing very well. There's already a lot less pain. We'll go back to the doctor in 2 weeks to see how it's healing. He has to have a brace on for 3 weeks.

 

[Mudd Slinger]

You are all making me miss the mountains. I will have my shop paid off next week and will get back into riding more often again. I had some medical issues also and bouncing on a seat was definately not allowed even though did just a little riding.

Seldon, I hope your boy heals up quick. I broke my collar bone as a kid going over the handlebars head 1st. It hurts but heals quickly. I went riding within days with the harness. Pain, what pain.