observations

Departed home slightly after sched­uled time, sit­u­a­tion nor­mal, right? Stopped in mon­roe for fuel and to meet any­one who might have decided to come along and not told me. There is no one there, so about 12:40, I headed east towards stevens pass. light driz­zle, but noth­ing bad. As I get closer to the pass, how­ever, it’s com­ing down harder and harder. pretty soon I’ve folded: out with the glove cov­ers, put the shower caps on the tank and tail bags, and I’ve got the suit liner cranked up to about ‘7’. I stop at the top long enough to shoot a pic­ture, and then boo­gie. About 10–15 miles down the other side, the road is dry,

and I’m start­ing to think I need to dump the heavy gloves and the neck tri­an­gle. By the time I get to wenatchee, it’s about 65 and humid, I ditch the heated liner in a star­bucks park­ing lot and the long johns in their mens room. ah, much bet­ter. Along the way, my brain has been cat­a­loging the things I’ve for­got­ten: so far I’m up to a cup, a spoon, cof­fee, and my flask full of good scotch. the first three are eas­ily remi­died with the help of a safe­way and an ACE hard­ware in chelan. A quick ride out to Lake Chelan State Park, and I find a nice camp­site, right on the lake. I pitch camp, and con­struct my exper­i­men­tal din­ner; one of these freeze dried back­packer meals. I don’t intend to sur­vive on these on my trip, but know­ing if they are edi­ble seems like a good bit of knowl­edge. boil­ing water, a lit­tle packet of oil, and 13 min­utes later: viola, black bean chili pie (there were a few tor­tilla chips, too). not too bad, a lit­tle ‘thin’, but good spice. From this I con­clude: in a pinch, they will do. How­ever, now that I’ve had din­ner, i think of another thing that has been for­got­ten: I could use a cup of tea. oh well, not out here.

well, off for a bit of a walk and some pic­tures before it gets dark.

return­ing to camp, I tidy up, and pre­pare to hit the rack. Next up on the test list, a lit­tle inflat­able pil­low. It comes un a pack­age the size of a juice can, but it works really well. What doesn’t work so well any more is the old Ther­marest sleep­ing pad. Admit­tedly, it’s about 15 years old, but I sup­sect that it’s the age of the back, not the pad! I toss and turn most of the night. finally drop off about 4am, wake up at 7 with both arms numb and trapped under­neath my torso. yukko. OK, that’s some­thing that will need fix­ing.

Get up and about, and try to fig­ure out how to make cof­fee with my new-fangled stove/french press. Mechan­i­cally, this is easy, its a french press right? but it’s been dogs years since I’ve used one. How much cof­fee goes in? how long do I let it sit for. Oh My God, I’ve for­got­ten the recipe for cof­fee! But I mud­dle through, get some­thing mostly drink­able, if a bit weak, out of it, and set about pack­ing my stuff up. Sur­pris­ingly, it all goes back pretty much where it came from, and I head into town to score some break­fast. The Apple Cup cafe in Chelan gets a pass­ing grade: good food and fast, friendly ser­vice.

As I’m gear­ing up to head out, I can’t find the exten­sion con­nec­tion for my heated jacket liner. I paw through all the lug­gage, no lit­tle coiled cord. Oh well, I throw on another shirt and head up the pass. I have a beau­ti­ful ride back over the pass, includ­ing the moment just as I approached the top, a group of rid­ers passed going the other way, giv­ing me the uni­ver­sal ‘law enforce­ment ahead’ sign. Sure enough, the state patrol is at the top, giv­ing our tick­ets to those who can’t read speed limit signs. Not me, today.

So, all in all, a suc­cess­ful shake­down. The bike is comfy and very capa­ble, nearly all of my lug­gage and camp­ing gear works great, and the elec­tri­cal stuff on the bike (heated vest con­nec­tion, and charg­ing port) all work great. If I can fill in the few gaps in my check­list and fix the sleep­ing pad prob­lem, I’m per­fectly set.

See ya on the road!

black­dog on board the Great Pump­klin (aka the Turbo Giraffe)…
shiny side up, y’all!

Check­ing the weather fore­cast on sat­ur­day con­vince me to take the chance and leave my portable shel­ter at home: 10% chance of pre­cip­i­ta­tion, highs in the upper 50s. If that actu­ally held up, it would be one of the nicest rid­ing days we’ve had in quite a while.

Sun­day dawns way too early, and chilly: about 36 degrees at Black Dog Farm. Break­fast, cof­fee, put the last few things in the car (lunch cooler, wal­let, phone, etc.) except for the water bot­tles to fit in my fanny pack. This omis­sion will be impor­tant later.

Cinch the tie-downs on the bike down, and boo­gie north­ward. Only about 10 min­utes behind planned depar­ture time, should put me there right after 8 AM. Get up to the turn-off, expect­ing another 3 miles of dirt road, and whoa, here’s the whole gang, just parked right here in front of the gate. I park and ask why we’re down here and not up at our pre­vi­ous loca­tion, and I’m told that they don’t want street-licensed vehi­cles past the gate. Oh well.

I unload, check the bike over, and gear-up for a lit­tle warm up. There’s not much at the gate, so I head up the road a bit, find­ing a turn-out with some downed logs in it, and warm up. Sec­ond attempt over a 20″ log, the front end digs in and over the bars I go! and onto my back­side on the soggy ground, to add sog­gi­ness to cha­grin. Well, hope­fully I’ve got­ten *that* out of my sys­tem for the day! But no, 3 min­utes later, drop the front wheel into the same hole, and over I go. Well, this is either good, in that I’m get­ting this out of my sys­tem, or this day is doomed to be a com­edy rou­tine from start to fin­ish. I ride over the log a few more times, just to teach it a thing or two, and head back to the truck to get ready.

I get my punch, pack a hat, good­ies, tools, etc. into my day-pack. Water, I should take some water.… Shit, where are my water bot­tles? at home, on the laun­dry room floor… oh well, I’ll deal with that later. Head up the road a cou­ple of miles, and fol­low the rugged loop trail into the deep woods to Sec­tion #6. It’s right next to 5, so I have another observer to chat with when things are slow. Pretty straight-forward sec­tion, a climb and descent, fol­lowed by a cou­ple of tight, tricky cor­ners to the exit.
Most Novice and Inter­me­di­ate com­peti­tors do well in my sec­tion, i punch lots of cleans, and only a few fives, a cou­ple of folks lost the front end and sam­pled the dirt, and one gen­tle­man for­got where the sec­tion went and ended up rid­ing part of it back­wards. oops, I hate it when that happens!

Around noon we’re done, head back to the pits to get ready for my turn. Now I must deal with the fact that my water bot­tles, which fit so nicely into my fanny-pack, were I also carry a few tools and spare levers, are sit­ting at home on the laun­dry room floor. Well, I decide i’ll just put my fanny pack and my gallon-sized water cooler in my day-pack, carry it up to sec­tion 1 and leave it there until I’m fin­ished, and the retrieve it for the ride back down. Ok, that’s a plan, not a great one though: it means only hav­ing access to water once per loop, not opti­mal hydration.

Off to the rid­ers meet­ing, get a quick run-down of where the sec­tions are, and we’re off. Grab my pack and up to Sec­tion 1. A tricky sec­tion with a rock step, and a cou­ple of diag­o­nal log cross­ings near the end, depend­ing on how you tack­led it. I get into the sec­tion, and my per­cep­tion is all off, I’m way behind the bike, and end up with a 3. Much of the first loop was like that, I only really started get­ting in the groove on the sec­ond loop. By the time the third loop started, I was feel­ing pretty con­fi­dent and had really started to ride up to my abil­i­ties. My judge­ment how­ever, remained at it’s his­tor­i­cally low­ish lev­els. I enter sec­tion 1 the third time, resolv­ing to clean it this time: around the tree, over the rock, so far so good, up the chute, hey feelin’ good, right turn here and out.… front wheel starts to slide and instead of just tak­ing the dab and escap­ing with my 1, I chase it with the throt­tle and wind up on my head! Cost me a 5, some bruises, a smashed fin­ger, and (i would later find out) 3rd place! stoopid.

Over­all, it was a well done event: good, well-marked, and chal­leng­ing loop trail. Good sec­tions with­ouit too many dan­ger­ous obsta­cles. Wish my rid­ing had been up to the chal­lenge. It seems obvi­ous from look­ing at the scores that my prob­lem is prac­tice and being ready to ride. As I get ‘back in the groove’, my scores go down every loop. Seems clear that I need more prac­tice. Now to develop the dis­ci­pline to do it!

On an admin­is­tra­tive note, this is the last event report you’ll be see­ing here for a while. In cel­e­bra­tion of achiev­ing ‘a cer­tain age’, I have tak­ing 4 weeks off in May and trav­el­ling around the west­ern states on my KTM 950. I’ll be using this space to chron­i­cle my prepa­ra­tions and progress as I go. Uni­verse will­ing, I should be able to make at least one day of the PST round of the PNTA cham­pi­onship, in early June. Watch this space!

keep those feet up!
black­dog

As some you already know, your obe­di­ent scribe is plan­ning a trip, what my wife and I refer to as ‘going walk­a­bout’ after the aus­tralian tra­di­tion of ‘see­ing what’s out there’. In this case, I’ll be using a KTM 950 adven­ture for trans­porta­tion, and ‘out there’ is shap­ing up to mean­ing most states west of the Mis­souri river; cur­rent the roughly plot­ted course doesn’t include kansas, okla­homa, nevada, north dakota or montana.

Grand plan is a rough rec­tan­gle, with seat­tle, san diego, austin, and des moines form­ing the cor­ners. I have friends and/or fam­ily in all those places. The only hard date in the 4 week adven­ture is that I and 3 bud­dies have tick­ets to the World Super­bike races at Miller Motor­sports Park in Utah on memo­r­ial day weekend.

So with this in mind, I sold my BMW F650 (a nice sin­gle, but cross­ing texas on a 650 sin­gle didn’t appeal) and acquired a low-mileage KTM 950 adven­ture and set about set­ting it up for trav­el­ling like I like. This meant replac­ing the bald back tire, chang­ing the oil, adding con­trols for the heated grips (instead of the sim­ple switch) and for con­trol­ling a heated jacket liner Warm-n-Safe makes these great con­trollers . It also includes a GPS mounted some­where easy to reach and easy for 50-year-old eyes to read. Pics in the next installment.

All of this is pow­ered from a ded­i­cated, fused cir­cuit that is run from the bat­tery in the skid plate, up to the under-seat tray, and then dis­trib­uted to the var­i­ous acces­sories from there. also included is a relay to insure that I can’t walk away from the bike with the grips turned on.

The bike already had a lot of what I think I’ll need: fac­tory pan­niers, tank bag, rear bag, hand pro­tec­tors, crash bars, after­mar­ket seat from Renazco Rac­ing, and the fac­tory ‘tour­ing wind­screen’. What it didn’t have was decent lights. A lit­tle read­ing turned up the answer: the USA head­light is but a pale imi­ta­tion of it’s euro­pean coun­ter­part. Soon, a box arrived at the house with a euro head­light and switch, and an H7 low-beam HID con­ver­sion. Install hap­pen­ing soon. Read about it in the next install­ment of ‘prepar­ing to go walkabout’.

Right now, I have to get ready for the April Fool’s Trial! see ya there!

black­dog