my Moonrocks rides

Saturday February 15, 2003

Morning

Waiting for the rides to come together, I warmed up on the trails and paths around the rock formations which, apparently, give Moonrocks its name. Recent precipitation left the ground slightly moist, just enough to keep most of the dust down.

Still waiting for a ride to form, I spied the only other KTM 440 on Earth besides mine and sought Farmer John. He invited me to join him on a short warm-up loop. While I was waiting for him to gather a couple other riders, the hill drag races were underway. I wasn't sure if this was a grudge match kind of thing or what, but I pulled up to the gate when it looked like a lonely 250 pumpkin rider was going to have to race himself. I realized it was BigLou and introduced myself on the line. I was glad to meet somebody who likes this so much he's willing to drive from Missouri. When the gate dropped, he immediately shot ahead of me. I don't know if I was spinning or what, maybe BigLou's buddies were holding my rear fender, but he got a big jump on spodely me. But my aluminum wonderbike found some traction and put some power to the ground and I reeled him in, then, miracle of miracles, I passed him and beat him to the top. (I was thinking, "WTF, did his bike seize?")

I couldn't wait around to figure out what happened, or gloat, because Farmer John and NVR FNSH were waiting for me at the top of the hill and we immediately began a short loop. What a way to start your first trail ride at Moonrocks, drag race up a hill to the trailhead! It was pretty uneventful except for my bronco-riding demonstration for Farmer John, and I got something in my eye that left me half-blind for the rest of the day. I did get a preview of the infamous whoops, and I didn't care much for them.

Finally, the rides started to form. I was torn between joining the intermediate and advanced groups Strick described. I am an experienced enduro/XC racer--but an ex-racer (and a mediocre one at that), I just got back into riding after a five-year layoff, and I didn't know whether Strick's "technical" meant "goat trail" (acceptable) or "no trail" (unacceptable), and I was on the harshest MX bike known in recent memory--not jetted correctly, I didn't want to hold them up, etc. I had almost talked myself into the intermediate group, led by Bobby on the #111T pumpkin, when Strick described the intermediate loop as having less whoops. That sealed the deal.

I don't know if we made it two miles before the first delay, when we waited for a couple fallen and/or stalled bikes. A YZF rider had to go back and start the four-stroke. Meanwhile, a Gas Gas was undergoing Kiwi Kiwi repairs repairs. Somewhere early on we lost a rider and waited while Bobby searched for her in vain. The group sorted itself out with a couple Canucks, dave186, 380EXCman (on a deafening Husaberg), and Firecracker22 in the lead pack, all candidates for upgrades to the advanced group. Bobby led a good intermediate pace.

I followed a Bob Hannah replica YZ250F across a steep gully and he got out of shape and bailed at low speed right in front of me. He was hurt so I picked his bike off him while he moaned about his back. It looked bad at first, and I was thinking backboard and helicopter. After witnessing his suffering and hearing his description of the crash, I was thinking he could catch a ride on a quad or even ride his bike back. I diagnosed him with snowboarder's @ss, a bruised tailbone. All the snowboarders knowingly agreed and discussed their experience with the malady. He had hit the gully too fast, sitting, bottomed out his suspension, and his tailbone smashed against his seatpan. Bob Hannah was finally perched atop his Yamaha and sent back with a buddy. We were real careful crossing gullies after that.

Meanwhile, another intermediate group met us from the opposite direction. (Hey, you mean there's a group that doesn't stop every two miles?) They had picked up our lost rider. Traitor!

Dave186 lost a rear brake part somewhere along the way and didn't have a functional pedal. More waiting for repairs. I was trying to figure out how to ride in the soft soil, not quite sand. My 490F kept me awake by tucking in every once in a while. My worn 695 spun everywhere traction wasn't perfect.

We finally got into some good stuff, riding down a snaking singletrack wash with a couple technical obstacles such as rocks. Firecracker stalled coming out of a gully and struggled getting her 200 re-lit, then got in more trouble when her tire spun in the soft soil and started moving her bike down into the wash. 380EXCman and dave186 were idling ahead of me, watching the horror show. I'm all for letting somebody work out their own problems, but she was stuck and getting more stuck, and I had used up all my patience stopping and waiting every two miles before this. I ran over to Firecracker and gave her bike a push, then ran bike to my bike, glowering at the two guys ahead of me. When I crossed the gully and went down the hill into the wash, Firecracker was off the trail with her front tire embedded in a shrub. Oops, did I push her into the bushes? She waved me on, or maybe she was taking swings at me. Either way, I decided it was prudent to continue down and soon caught up to dave186.

Dave186 looked a little out of his element in the snaking wash trail but I couldn't find a place to make a friendly pass. It was by far the best trail of the day. But not for the person who suffered a knee injury. More waiting. Dave186 joined 380EXCman, who couldn't take the constant stops, and left the group. Traitors! I stuck it out with the Canucks, loyal to our group.

Somehow we managed to lose our ride leader and, after waiting, the #226 pumpkin led the way back to camp. Bobby found us on the way back. We all made it back safe.


To Be Continued with Saturday Afternoon and Sunday rides...

Saturday Afternoon

For my Saturday afternoon loop I joined NVR FNSH, Unkle Moose, RetSenior, Farmer John, and a cast of thousands. We got into the whoops almost immediately. They were a larger species, Whoopus Nevadus, characterized by their soft, deep, sandy soil, great depth, and wide spacing. The alloy wonderbike demands aggressive whoop riding, keeping the front wheel light and skipping across the tops. However, it takes a lot of attention and energy, and I couldn't keep up the pace. I settled for rolling over most of them.

After the endless whoops, we were rewarded with the mother of all wash trails. It was an E-ticket roller coaster ride downhill, with good traction, big berms, and only a few rocks. We liked it so much we headed back up it. If you ever saw McGrath and Steve Lamson "geek riding" you know what I looked like.

Somewhere along the way a guy on a showroom-new WR450F joined us. The only riding gear he had was a helmet; he wore rain pants over jeans, under which were white socks and oxford shoes. I figured the dealer must have pitied him and thrown in a free helmet with his new bike. The consensus was he was a non-DRN local.

We hit some nice single track going down the side of a hill. It was unusually dark, packed soil, and was one of the best trails of the day. Somewhere around there RetSenior broke his chain and the group started falling apart. It was getting late so we wanted to head back to camp. Farmer John headed back to rally the RetSenior group, while Unkle Moose and the rest of us were to follow the fence line and at least one of us was to wait for the other group at a trail junction.

Unkle Moose waved me on and I rode along the fence line until I got to the roller coaster wash, where I ran into LongTime, CJ (?) Rider, and TTRguy from Missouri. (Those Show-Me state people must really love to ride!) They went down the wash while I stood guard so nobody else would go down when they came back up. It must've been fun coming up knowing there wouldn't be any oncoming traffic. TTRguy came flying up on a very loud 200 pumpkin (gospeedracer's bike, sans silencer end cap). We saw a group parallel the fence line a few hundred yards away, and it looked to be Farmer John with the RetSenior group. I thought they were supposed to ride the fenceline back. Oh well.

I followed my new group up the fenceline, and Unkle Moose and company soon joined us. The fenceline trail was seriously whooped-out and my left leg soon got whooped out itself with a painful charlie horse. Riding those whoops all day was like doing a few thousand repetitions of weightlifting squats.

LongTime on his Gas Gas led us back to camp safe and sound before dark. That was a much better loop than the stop-and-go ride I did in the morning.

bscottr, go home, nothing to see here.

gospeedracer, you mean we started with more than 16? I know people in the group were a little unclear on the whole stop-at-junction, responsible-for-the-rider-behind-you thing.

Unkle Moose, how could I forget? Here comes the Sunday ride report...

Sunday, February 16, 2003

It was difficult to fall asleep Saturday night with the howling wind making the third floor of the Peppermill annex sway. I didn't hear any rain, so I feared it would come in the morning for our ride. When I peeked through the curtains in the morning, it was a beautiful sight to behold. The sky was gloriously blue, the parking lot was wet, and there was snow atop the cars. My nipples got hard at the thought of the great riding conditions awaiting me at Moonrocks.

The Moonrocks staging area was a preview of things to come. The soft, sandy soil had become wet and firm. There was a buzz about camp; you could feel it in the air, we were in for a classic day of riding. The temperature was but a few degrees above freezing, with a biting wind. I wore two jerseys as before, but changed to a grey goggle lens for Sunday's clear sky.

I joined NVR FNSH (WRfour-hundred-something), Unkle Moose (Husaberg 501), RetSenior (KTM 525), Chris (XR400), Buddy (KTM four-hundred-something), and Fremontguy (KTM four-hundred-something). It's a telling commentary on the sad state of affairs in the world when I'm the only one on a ring-dinger. Fremontguy lead the way.

We retraced our steps over the whoops, just in case we hadn't yet got enough of them. It seemed Fremontguy was trying to take a shortcut over a hill, which turned out to be one of those nasty soft hillclimbs. I wish I would have realized how bad it was when I was at the bottom, not in the middle, where I soon stalled. Chris was a hillclimbing fool and made it up higher than anybody, but we all went back down and took another route.

Soon we were in the snow. It was beautiful. I'm pretty sure we were on the hillside singletrack that was dark, firm soil the previous afternoon. I really got into a groove on the singletrack, snow or not. One thing I figured out was it helped to steer with your rear tire, not neccessarily gassing it, but brake sliding into the downhill turns. We also re-rode a very soft downhill that was now fluffy white soft on top with brown soft underneath. Another, steeper downhill, covered in virgin snow brought about some fear and trepidation from the Magnificent Seven. It turned out to to be a piece of cake. After all, with no turn to make at the bottom, and no trees or rocks there, what's the worst that could happen?

We crested a hill and stopped for a breather and to take in the view. Chris snapped a couple pictures I hope he will share on DRN. Once again, I wished I had a sidestand, or a tree to lean the bike against. A tree, a tree, my kingdom for a tree!

Unkle Moose was snaking down a snowy hillside singletrack ahead of me when, for no good reason, he went straight through a right-hand turn, plowed some snow with his front tire, and flopped over just off the trail. I couldn't help but laugh at him and tell him how pathetic that maneuver looked. He must have fixated on something off the trail.

At another hilltop resting point, it was so cold and windy we just turned around and got back down into the trails, sheltered from the wind.

One uphill trail, more of a jeep road, was wide and bermed enough for some serious throttle-twisting. It was a gamble coming in to each turn; was there soil under that snow, could you pound into it, or would you plow through it and crash? I was slowly reeling in Unkle Moose when RetSenior went by me like a man possessed. You can take the man out of motocross, but you can't take motocross out of the man.

At one point we lost the trail in a relatively flat valley, but some of us thought we saw it up where the base of a few hills joined. Fremontguy, RetSenior, and I all tried different paths through the scrub. We could see Fremontguy having a hard time trying to climb the hill where the trail exited the valley. He reported it was impassable, so we turned around and found an alternate route, which dumped us onto a road.

I get pretty bored putting along roads, and the snow had lost its novelty. When I'm bored I tend to find wheelie bumps and fool around getting sideways and similar shenanigans. What to do on a flat, wide, snow-covered road? Get on the gas and turn the bars for full-lock slides, of course. Braaaap went the Honda and I got all crossed up. Wheeee! Next, the other way... Braaap-BANG! I smacked my head against the ground just that fast. I don't know if the front tucked or the rear came around, probably the former, it was so fast. Two inches of snow did nothing to cushion the impact to my left side helmet, bicep, torso, and hip. I generally don't crash hard and almost never hit my head, so that was kind of scary. I felt pretty stupid after that stunt and rode with a bit of a headache for a while. NVR FNSH kept calling me a showoff, but there were no witnesses; I was goofing off for my own amusement.

The road/trail ended at a creek, where Fremontguy stopped. It was rocky and there looked to be a drop-off at least a couple feet high. Fear and trepidation again took hold of the Magnificent Seven. There was a bunch of I-don't-knows and hemming and hawing. I think it was RetSenior who said we don't want to do anything that's gonna break somebody's leg. I said nonsense, the three or four locals who passed us at a rest stop came through here. I put down my bike and hiked over for a look down the creekbed trail. It was nothing. I got on my bike and rode down the creek before anybody decided against it. They followed when they didn't hear any bones snap, and Fremontguy took over point.

We got onto a wide, graded road well north of Moonrocks, below the snow level. We putted along until NVR FNSH decided to have an acceleration test with RetSenior. Of course I felt compelled to carry the two-stroke banner, so I gassed it behind them. I actually caught up to them shockingly fast, but RetSenior's 525 soon got on the cam and left us. He was some thirty yards ahead of me when he hit some loose dirt and threw up a roost that got through the area left unprotected by my body armor. Ouch, that smarts.

We left the graded road and got onto a jeep road, then turned onto a ribboned singletrack race course. Things got really fun again quickly. There were plenty of opportunities to pull quick little power wheelies on the trail that paralled a fence. The course took us to a wide hillside covered in boulders. We could see the ribbon but we couldn't figure out how we were supposed to go over the boulders. I walked up them and decided it was passable only by trials riders and super-human trail riders. NVR FNSH suggested the race course came down the boulders from the other direction. That seemed possible, but it sure would have sucked! Meanwhile, the Katooms and 'berg had gone to the far side of the hill where the boulders ended and attempted to climb the soft, snow-dusted soil. It wasn't pretty, but they made it up. I rode off into the scrub for a good run at it while NVR FNSH had the same idea. He must have found some traction near the top because he was soon standing on the hill behind his bike, holding the bars as it pointed straight up. He came back down and Chris attacked the hill. I thought no way, as he came at it sideways from the bottom, and turned up it with not enough momentum. But he tractored right on up it, to my amazement. I built up a head of steam, dodging scrub on the way, and powered up it on the main jet with enough momentum to spare I turned and traversed the final few yards, feeling good about it. I must have looked like I knew what I was doing, because Unkle Moose gave me a thumb up.

After following the race course for a while, I saw a steep hillclimb trail that went to the top of a mountain. Fremontguy was stopped, looking at it, too. I pointed out the side trail branching out half-way up and motioned an up-and-down loop. He nodded and we attacked the hill. It was extremely difficult, very deep, very soft soil, very steep. I bailed before I ever found the side trail. Who else but Mr. Hillclimb, Chris, motored on by aboard the XR400. Humbling me once again, he went farther up the hill than anybody. We went back down but I couldn't find the side trail. At the bottom, we could see Fremontguy failing in his attempt to go up the side trail. Buddy was nowhere to be found, but we were pretty sure he was on the trail back to camp.

After that it was just some more whoops. I knew we were close to camp, so I burned some energy riding them aggressively, just kissing the tops with the front tire, hard on the gas. It seems as if the bike was made to do that, not roll over them like a spode. Whodathunkit?

We pulled back into the Moonrocks staging area with about thirty miles. The riding conditions were epic, the trails were fun and challenging, and it was a great group to ride with. We were all smiles for a good long time after the motors cooled down.

I feel like somebody now!

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Like a sandbagger?

Canadians pack an entire spare bike in there fanny packs

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Must be the exchange rate.

Turns bad! Whoops good!

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That boy ain't right in the head.