Author Archive

Oct 07

Event Report: Walker Valley, October 3, 2010

event reports Comments Off

Another Sun­day in the Pacific North­west, it looks like so many of it’s brethren, damp, over­cast, and dark. But it’s not rain­ing, so it’s not as bad as it could be. I put the rest of my gear (cof­fee, lunch, the few nearly for­got­ten items) in the truck, snug down the tie downs on the bike, and head for Walker Val­ley ORV. Today is our last offi­cial club event of the year; our sched­ule hav­ing been abbre­vi­ated by our dif­fi­cul­ties in get­ting per­mits and per­mis­sion to hold events in the region.

90 min­utes finds me pulling into the park­ing area, find­ing about 15–20 folks already there, unload­ing, bull­shit­ting, get­ting ready, ya know: the stuff rid­ers do when they’re get­ting ready to ride! I sign up for the Advanced class and get the bike ready, tak­ing a few min­utes to put a few neces­si­ties into a day pack: extra water, snack bars, energy goo, and a liter of extra pre­mix. Our loop today will take us 3.5 miles up the moun­tain, through three loops of sec­tions, and back down to the park­ing area. We have per­mis­sion to ride, but not to park up there, appar­ently. Gary, the co-marshall today, tells me that we’ll be doing group check, so I want to make sure I have every­thing I need with me, don’t want to be a drag on my rid­ing buddies.

Head­ing out for a bit of prac­tice, I note that my left knee is com­plain­ing on mod­er­ate bend­ing under load. Hmm, not too good, I’ll have to be care­full of that today. Other than that, things felt good, if a bit rusty. I head back to the truck, top the fuel tank up to the very top, and go look­ing for my lit­tle pill box that has the sodium naproxen and ibupro­fen in it. Rum­mage, Rum­mage, Rum­mage, crap! left it at home. At that moment, they sig­nal the rid­ers meet­ing. Oh well, i’ll sponge some off of some­one later. We get our instruc­tions, find our groups, mud­dle around for a few min­utes when one of our num­ber arrives a bit late, and head up the mountain.

A pleas­ant mean­der up the moun­tain finds us at sec­tion 1: a twisty, tech­ni­cal lit­tle job­bie with a truly unfor­tu­nately placed 24” high stump right after a sharp uphill right hand u-turn. That pretty much set the tone for the day: Not a lot of awe-inspiring obsta­cles for the Advanced class (a few expert lines looked a bit more, er, pucker-inducing), but tight turns and tricky obsta­cles strung together. Sec­tion 6 was a bit of an excep­tion to that, more later. I strug­gled get­ting my rhythm for most of the first loop, then started to loosen up a bit. My knee was still com­plain­ing, but it turned out that walk­ing the sec­tions was the hard­est part, after the first loop, when we cut down on the stum­bling around, it felt bet­ter. I was still very care­ful not to stress it lat­er­ally at all, but it didn’t hin­der me too much.

And then there was sec­tion 6: We’ve all seen then “over the log, turn, over the log again, turn, over the log…” sec­tions, often with some other lit­tle gim­mick throw in: water, rocks, mud, you name it. Well this sec­tion didn’t rely on any gim­micks: the log is the thing. around 48” in diam­e­ter and a cou­ple of tricky approaches, oh, and yes, here an added twist: an absolute root-infested off-camber climb to the exit. Many of us found our attempts to scale the log sum­mar­ily rejected mul­ti­ple times, In one observed case, plug­ging the exhaust of the bike ques­tion so tightly that the bike wouldn’t start! many egos, and a few fend­ers were abused in that sec­tion. I finally man­aged to strug­gle through with a ‘3’ on my last attempt, and was ecsta­tic with that!

We finally get the sec­tions fin­ished, with only a mod­er­ate num­ber of cuts, bruises, and com­pletely cramped fore­arms, gather our packs and head down the moun­tain. I’ve been keep­ing an eye on fuel in my bike, and knew I’d be close to get­ting back to camp. Sure enough, about ½ mile from the pits, bwaaaaaaaaaaaa…. urp. I fum­ble for reserve, get it run­ning, and wob­ble in. Count­ing the score tells the tale: a rough event: 82 points with only 3 cleans on the day. But it was good enough for 3rd, and only 3 points off of 2nd (which makes the last ‘5’ in Sec­tion 10, from just a bit too much front brake on a easy part of the sec­tion, really annoy­ing. I was on a clean, which would’ve given me 2nd place cleanly!) oh well, that’s the way it goes.

Thanks to Gary and Jon for all their work, as well as the efforts of other club mem­bers to get us per­mis­sion to use this area. It was a cool event, thanks!

black­dog

Sep 19

Day 8: The Scooters of Oaxaca

Oaxaca September 2010 Comments Off

A few days ago, I gave you a taste of the motor­cy­cle scene here in Oax­aca, at least those that are pressed into worka­day ser­vice. Today we look at scoot­ers here in Oax­aca, a species per­haps even more numer­ous than the work­ing motorcycle.

Frist off: in the above-mentioned dri­vel, I men­tioned that every man­u­fac­turer here in Mex­ico has a copy, with greater or lesser fidelity, of the ubiq­ui­tous Honda CG-125 Cargo, and then failed to pro­vide a pic­ture of such. So here­with, over­sight reme­died, the Honda CG-125, in Domi­noes deliv­ery regalia:

Honda Cargo

Now with the scoot­ers. Actu­ally we’ll start with a sub-species of scooter, the step-through. The most com­mon type scene around Oax­aca is the Ita­lika, a par­tic­u­larly rough exam­ple I found on Inde­pen­de­cia this morn­ing:

Ita­lika Step-through

There are, of course, the Honda 90 and 110cc units in abun­dance, here seen in per­sonal trans­port form:

Honda Step-through

and the local-made copies, ita­likas, i believe. We see them here again, press-ganged into ser­vice of the evil Domi­noes:

Deliv­ery Vehicles

and now for some­thing com­pletely dif­fer­ent, before we get to the con­ven­tional scoot­ers, is a WTF moment. I have no earthly idea what ser­vice this lit­tle beastie per­forms, but it’s here near the Zocolo every day, and it’s back tires are worn smooth, from on-road use, i pre­sume:

who knows?

A fairly large local user of scoot­ers as trans­port are the police. Here we see two of Oaxaca’s finest arriv­ing at the sta­tion aboard their fire-breathing Honda Elite 125:

Honda Elite 125

Another pop­u­lar brand of locally-made scooter is the Vento, here seen trans­port­ing a local busi­ness­man on his daily errands:

Vento

but some of the local folks have a more finely honed sense of style and are will­ing to part with the seri­ous dough (by local stan­dards) to show it off. To wit, a clas­sic Vespa:

Vespa

in con­trast to the clas­sic vespa above, here we see an older scooter, logos (and gloss) long since lost to the rav­ages of time and blaz­ing sun. I think this is an older Ita­lika:

Old Ita­lika

Speak­ing of finely honed sense of style, this gent obvi­ously has it goin’ on: newish ita­lika 150 scoot, board shorts, UNAM Pumas shirt, shades, beis­bol cap, and iPod:

Which brings us to a few scoots that are obvi­ously objects of some enthu­si­as­tic focus of their own­ers. First we have the Rizla Gilera, com­plete with LeoVince pipe and RaceTech stick­ers:

And then a pair of mex­i­can car­bella Koncepts:

and in the “ideas above it’s sta­tion depart­ment”, the Ita­lika that wants to a Kawasaki when it grows up:

And to fin­ish off, it’s not a scooter, but it gives a great idea of the demands that these folks put on their trans­porta­tion on a reg­u­lar basis. Car? who needs a stinkin’ car?

well, that wraps it up for today. We’ll see what tomor­row brings. Keep the rub­ber side down and keep those feet up!
black­dog

Sep 15

Oaxaca Day 3: the utility motorcycles

Oaxaca September 2010 1 Comment »

There are a lot of motor­cy­cles in Oax­aca, and the vast major­ity are work­ing motor­cy­cles, not recre­ational rides. Here are a few of the bikes I spot­ted today, includ­ing a few brands you prob­a­bly haven’t seen in the US.

Every man­u­fac­turer rep­re­sented in Mex­ico has a 125 sin­gle, they are the work­horses of the city courier and deliv­ery rider scene here. This lit­tle blue Bajaj ‘Wind 125′ is a rel­a­tively new a clean exam­ple:

Bajaj

And these are Vento’s DS-styled work­horse, called the ‘work­man’:

Vento

Saw this blue BMW whizz by today and what a bit sur­prised; BMW’s are not a com­mon sight here in oax­aca, this is an expen­sive motor­cy­cle here:

BMW F650GS

Obvi­ously this Vento 200 cruiser has aspi­ra­tions above it’s cur­rent lot in life:

stick­ers are cheap here.

Here’s some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent, a Suzuki TS185 two-stroke, with a lit­tle added style via a cus­tom tank paint job:

suzuki

This is Yamaha’s lit­tle 125, called a Pul­sar, I think. This par­tic­u­lar one appears to have been drafted into gov­er­ment ser­vice:

yamaha

This is one of the locally man­u­fac­tured knock-offs of the Honda CG125 cargo:

ita­lika

and this is another of the local knock-offs. This par­tic­u­lar exam­ple is pretty typ­i­cal of the con­di­tion you see on the street. If you look care­fully, you’ll see that it has no bezel or glass over the instru­ments any longer.
Obvi­ously, Honda really hit the nail on the head with the CG125, every­one makes a copy now!

dinamo

And this is the pin­na­cle of locally made bikes, an Ita­lika EX200. a 200cc air-cooled sin­gle, wrapped in swoopy body­work and snazzy exhaust cans!

ita­lika

well, that’s all for today, folks. might not be a post tomor­row, as it’s Inde­pen­dence day down here, and we’ll be down­town tomor­row evening for the fire­works and cel­e­brat­ing! Viva Mexico!

enjoy, y’all!
black­dog

Sep 14

Oaxaca, Day 2: Parque Paseo Juarez de Llano

Oaxaca September 2010 1 Comment »

Today was much more ener­getic than yes­ter­day, we decided to walk up to Juarez Par­que, on the other side of cen­tral Oax­aca. Accord­ing to lara’s lit­tle pedome­ter, we walked 6 miles today. On the way, we found a won­der­ful lit­tle cof­fee shop, called Black Cof­fee Gallery. a won­der­ful space with good cof­fee, lots of light, and good latte’s. we’ll go back.

An old lamp post in the park, with a riot of flow­ers in the background.

an old lamp post and flow­ers in Par­que Paseo Juarez de Llano

We spot­ted this cat walk­ing around in the park, and thought for a moment that it was feral. Then this gen­tle­man picked it up, and it became obvi­ous that it’s a pet cat. Bone­less, apparently.

a guy takes his cat for a walk in the park

Heard this BMW pull up to a stop­light, think­ing to myself that it didn’t sound like every other lit­tle buzz-bomb run­ning around town. Glanc­ing over, sure enough! A clas­sic toaster-tank air­head, appar­ently still being rid­den daily.
a classic old BMW, still in daily use

It appears that the local police depart­ment got a bunch of new bikes this year; wee-stroms this time, instead of the nor­mal honda or yamaha 250’s. It was pretty com­i­cal some­times to see two cops, double-up on a honda 250, try­ing to make it up the hills!

the local police have some new bikes this year

There’s not a lot of graf­fiti around town this year, but there are a few pieces with some color and style. Here’s one that really caught my eye.

some col­or­ful graf­fitti in oaxaca

Lara has also put up some pic­tures today. you can see there at Ms. Shoes blog.

Tomor­row; a tour of the botan­i­cal gar­dens, and a photo sur­vey of the motor­cy­cles of Oax­aca streets. At least that’s the think­ing, plans and con­tact with real­ity and all that!

ciao, ami­gos!
black­dog Read the rest of this entry »

Sep 13

September trip to Oaxaca, Mexico

Oaxaca September 2010 2 Comments »

Well, yes, strictly speak­ing it isn’t a motor­cy­cle trip. But this is my pic­ture blog, so you get my Mex­ico trip here too! enjoy!

We trav­elled yes­ter­day (up at 5am, finally here at the casa at around 8pm our time), so today we slacked. Walked to the Zocalo and had cap­pu­ci­nos and bought news­pa­pers, then had a nice nap. Around 5 we wan­dered out to take some pic­tures, me with the 18-105mm on the D70, and Lara try­ing out her new 12-24mm wide angle. Here are a few of mine. I’ll put a link at the bot­tom to Lara’s cho­sen ones from today.

Lara doesn’t care too much for this pic­ture below, but I like the color and geom­e­try, so in it goes.

This stair­well runs down the hill, through a bunch of mar­ket stalls. I always love see­ing the geom­e­try here, this photo cap­tures a tiny bit of it.

geom­e­try…

 

THe weather here today was unset­tled, so we had inter­est­ing skies. This is look­ing south­west over the Church of Soledad, just a few blocks from the casa.

we had inter­est­ing sky today.

here is a link to Lara’s blog post for today:
Ms. Shoes

more tomor­row, I think we’re going to walk up to Par­que Jardin and shoot pho­tos. stay cool, cats!

black­dog

Jun 30

PNTA Points Round #8, Walker Valley, June 13, 2010">PNTA Points Round #8, Walker Valley, June 13, 2010

Uncategorized Comments Off

This turned out to be an inter­est­ing day for a vari­ety of rea­sons, not the least of which was the park­ing and loops sit­u­a­tion. There was appar­ently some last minute con­fu­sion between the club and the land man­agers about where we were sup­posed to park, and as a result, we wound up park­ing near the west­ern entrance to Walker Val­ley, and rid­ing a loop of sec­tions that were all at higher ele­va­tions. I mis­un­der­stood the instruc­tions in the flyer, which indi­cated that rid­ers needed to be pre­pared to carry an extra liter of fuel ( thought it said ‘after­noon’ rid­ers), and so arrived with no con­ve­nient way of car­ry­ing fuel. Any­way, got signed up, for Senior Inter­me­di­ate, as I hadn’t been on a dirt bike of any kind for over 6 weeks and Regional Points events are known for being pretty tough. That was when they let me know that morn­ing rid­ers too, need to carry extra fuel!

did a lit­tle warm­ing up, deter­mined that i had for­got to let any air out the back tire after air­ing it up to put it on the rack. Yep, 7 PSI is way too much! i let it down to my nor­mal 3–1/4 or so; ah, much bet­ter trac­tion and bite! Then i went back to the truck to fig­ure out how i was going to deal with this fuel issue, as i have no aux tank my bike, and i had no fuel bot­tle. ah, well, here’s a big plas­tic sack, i’ll just wrap my 1 gal jug in that and carry it in the day pack. With that prob­lem solved, I com­pletely for­got about car­ry­ing any extra water or snacks in my day pack, and headed out with­out either. The loop was what i call a ‘lol­lipop’ loop: ride a longish trail ride to the start of the sec­tions, ride all 10 sec­tions 3 times, and then ride the longish trail back to the pits. This means you get back to wher­ever you dumped the day­pack every loop, but not back to your vehi­cle. It wasn’t until the end of the first loop that I real­ized the I was going to run out of water, and had no snacks or other nutri­tion what­so­ever. argh.

Oh well, sec­tion 1 was a pretty easy tra­verse of a pile of sharp rocks, but I got through OK, so that’s a good start. In gen­eral, I rode pretty well, but I had some incon­sis­tent moments: stalled the bike in one sec­tion, a really stu­pid mis­take, and didn’t plan an ade­quate safety mar­gin into my line in another sec­tion the 3rd time through, and wound up sky­div­ing off of a 10-foot high rock into the bushes below. I rolled to a stop, picked the bike up, and when asked if the bike was OK (yes, they asked if I was OK first), replied, ‘of course: it’s a Sherco, you can’t hurt these things!” Got through three loops with lit­tle drama, picked my pack up from sec­tion 1, and headed back down the moun­tain. Got back to the pits, and drank about a liter of water, right then. had lunch, and went to col­lect my punch for my after­noon observ­ing assign­ment, I had sec­tion 3. About 1pm, I head back up the moun­tain, find sec­tion 3, and am then informed that there’s been a switch, I’m to observe sec­tion 4, a bit far­ther up the hill. Nor­mally, this would be a triv­ial change, except that I’m already tired, and seper­at­ing the two is about 1/4 mile of some of the nas­ti­est trail at walker val­ley. wind­ing through the trees, over the roots, and really, seri­ously steep uphill. sign at the bot­tom reads “up, turn, up, up, turn, turn, up, up, up”. ha. you a funny man, Ron! But I climb the moun­tain and find my sec­tion: a really inter­est­ing com­bi­na­tion of sharp turns and a vari­ety of paths, depend­ing on class, over a rock the size of a small cot­tage. The experts in par­tic­u­lar, I thought, had a nasty chal­lenge: a really sharp left u-turn fol­lowed by a rock climb with lit­tle run at the bot­tom, and only about a 6″ wide line. I spot­ted for quite a few folks there dur­ing the day, but had to catch sur­pris­ingly few bikes.

All in all, a very enjoy­able day, great fun to watch folks like Max and WIll do absolutely amaz­ing things with a motor­cy­cle. I can’t wait to head out to Funny Rocks for our next event.

keep those feet up!
black­dog

Jun 04

Walkabout days 25–26: the trip home.

road trips, walk-about Comments Off

My rid­ing com­pan­ion for the final two days of my trip was feel­ing under the weather on mon­day, so we got a late start on tues­day. Not many pic­tures here, we came back via the Inter­states. We did get off at one point for a stretch and bath­room break, and dis­cov­ered this amus­ing mural on the ack of a ‘Trad­ing Post’ type gen­eral store:

our faith­ful steeds, in Ellens­burg, after JC had an in-flight dis­agree­ment with a bee. A quick stop to remove the stinger, and treat the sting, and we we’re back under­way.

at just a touch before 6pm on wednes­day, i rolled home. happy, if some­what road weary:

final stats:

26 days
6784.1 miles
mov­ing aver­age speed: 58.8 mph
115:22 hours actu­ally trav­el­ling.
7 of the 26 days were spent not mov­ing: vis­it­ing with friends or attend­ing the World Super­bike Races at Miller Motor­sports Park, in Tooele, Utah.

Jun 01

Walkabout days 23–24: sunday/monday at Miller

road trips, walk-about Comments Off

Spent two entire days sur­rounded by rac­ing machines, rac­ing peo­ple, and rac­ing. I couldn’t take decent pic­tures of the rac­ing (I didn’t have a long enough lens with me), so i tried to take some machin­ery and peo­ple pics. only par­tially successful.

here are some fron saturday:

and here are some from today:

May 30

Walkabout day 22: Saturday at Miller

road trips, walk-about Comments Off

Kinda of a laid back day at the track. We walked around a lot, went on the pit walk, and watched practice.

I did man­age to find the hel­met ser­vice guys and get the vents on my Hel­met fixed: yay Robert!
I also took a few pic­tures (hover over thumb­nails for captions):

 

 

 


 

 

 

 


May 29

Walkabout day 22: it’s Miller time!

road trips, walk-about Comments Off

Met three of my bud­dies here in SLC, in about 15 min­utes we’re headed out break­fast and thence to Miller Motor­sports Park, for the US Round on the World Super­bike Race series. Pic­tures and com­men­tary for the next three days may be sparse, occur at odd times of day, and may be infused with over­flow excite­ment, and/or beer. you have been warned!

keep on ridin’!
blackdog

Previous Entries