observations

walk­a­bout day 4. today was vis­it­ing day. lunch with an old high school friend, tea with an author/teacher friend in oak­land, cof­fee with another old high school friend, and then din­ner with motor­cy­cle friends in Galt. not much rid­ing, only about 185 miles, but a busy day non­the­less.
spent some time check­ing out road con­di­tions in the Sierra Nevada, doesn’t look pur­dent to try to make it to Mono Lake tomor­row. So i’ll head south, skirt­ing the foothills on the Sier­ras, prob­a­bly end­ing some­where around bak­ers­field of so, giv­ing me all sort of options for thurs­day, depend­ing on whether of not i can con­nect with my friends in Escondido.

 

307 miles today, but it felt a lot longer, mostly due to toren­tial rain, cold, and even a lit­tle snow just north of Lay­tonville, CA. Yikes. Wait­ing this morn­ing in the hotel in Eureka, I real­ized that I hate doing noth­ing. I could have spent the day in Eureka and avoided all the unpleas­ant­ness, but I was already rest­less in the 20 min­utes I waited, and felt ener­gized when i got on the road. Every­thing went fine except that my gloves were soaked by 60 min­utes in, and get­ting cold. I stopped in Gar­berville for gas, and bought a pair of cot­ton gloves and ‘Marigolds’, you know, big rub­ber kitchen gloves. used those for the next 40 miles, but it was the cold­est 40 miles of the day. up to 1800ft. above sea level, and I actu­ally saw a few snowflakes going over Rat­tlesnake Sum­mit. Got to Lay­tonville, had cof­fee and lunch and thawed my hands out: they never got numb, just painful.

I also used the lit­tle local ‘free ads’ paper to help dry my gloves out, by rip­ping up the pages and stuff­ing the gloves full, wait­ing 15 min­utes, rinse repeat. Got them somwwhat dry. Got back on the road and felt good. but soon it became obvi­ous that the gloves are get­ting colder faster than the heated grips can heat them. So I stop in Ukiah and pull into a Honda dealer; not open. there’s another gent there com­plain­ing of the same thing. Turns out he’s a cop from eureka, and a big fan of the Fly­ing Spaghetti Mon­ster!  yay for ran­domly met friends! but no gloves will be had  there today. Down the road I find a sur­plus store, where I score a pair of ladies ski gloves, size large, gore­tex, for $35. I call them my Tom Rob­bins sig­na­ture mod­els, as the thumbs are longer than any I’ve ever seen. In any case, the offer­ing of $35 must have been big enough for the gods as I only had about 35 min­utes of rain the rest of the day.

The rest of the trip was grey and blus­tery, some blue sky, and gusty winds.

Espe­cially on the point above the Golden Gate bridge. just about blew the hel­met over, sit­ting on the ground! yikes. And I had to get back in the groove of CA free­way rid­ing: leave no space and go 80mph! riiight!

another 30 miles of really pretty light Bay Area traf­fic, and I’m safely landed with my friend Mark in San Car­los. A hot shower and some chill time, and now it’s time for din­ner. see ya tomorrow!

black­dog

447 miles today, a lit­tle longer than I usu­ally like, but there were Issues. It appears that rain is headed for the north­ern cal­i­for­nia coast tomor­row. In con­sid­er­a­tion, today’s plan was to get far enough south that cut­ting inland could be done fairly early tomor­row, in an attempt to stay dry. Look­ing at the weather for­cast for north­ern cal­i­for­nia tomor­row, it appears that it was futile.

any­way, today’s ride went from port­land to eugene on I5, the south to ore­gon 38, on which I found the drain:

well, day 1 went pretty well. I sit here in the pala­cial liv­ing room of my friends Joce­lyn and Steve, after a nice din­ner, steal­ing their inter-tubes.

two tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties reared their ugly head: the GPS antenna can­not live on top of the radar detec­tor: the radios inter­fere with each other. so, att the first stop, i moved the GPS antenna. prob­lem 1 solved.

sec­ond tech­ni­cal issue was that my fancy 12volt/120volt usb-charges-everything wid­get doesn’t. specif­i­cally, it won’t charge the cell phone. appar­ently, not enough cojones to charge this new-fangled moto cliq xt. for­tu­nately, i have awe­some friends, they took me to radio shack, and i now have a charger that works.

tomor­row, the ore­gon coast to see Michael and Judy, then shoot­ing for the oregon/california bor­der or there­abouts. let’s hope for good weather.

more later, folks

black­dog

The bear is on the road.

The Turbo Giraffe prepped and wait­ing in the sunshine.

The man him­self, suit­ing up.

Every­thing is good to go.

And away he goes…

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

So I decided to take a gam­ble and go to Cal­i­for­nia to retrieve the KTM I pur­chased 3 weeks ago. It is a 2006 KTM 950 Adven­ture with 4000 miles on the clock. The weather reports looked OK, if not stel­lar, but I have good gear, and I warned my boss that i might not get back into the office first thing mon­day morn­ing. Fri­day flight to SFO and cab ride to Mark’s place, where the beast was being stored went with only the usual amount of drama asso­ci­ated with air travel these days. I had expected to receive extra atten­tion dur­ing the “Secu­rity The­atre” as I was fly­ing on a one-way ticket, but it was the nor­mal rou­tine.
Upon arriv­ing at Chez Mark, Joe escorts me to the garage and there’s the beast. it’s even orange-er in per­son, if that’s pos­si­ble. And it’s metal­lic orange, with green met­alflake in it! the bike looks exactly as described, only bet­ter: this thing is basi­cally brand new! if it had a new back tire on it, you’d swear it was right off the show­room. I’m very pleased, and set about get­ting my GPS and heated gear hooked up, with the help of Joe and his awe­somely stocked tool­box. first trick: where do they hide the bat­tery on a KTM 950 Adven­ture? Remove the seat, no not there. peer around next to the air­box, not there. hmm, there seems to be a lot of wiring headed towards the front of the skid plate. And the bat­tery ten­der pig­tail is in front of the rear brake lever. remove a cou­ple of bolts, the skid plat piv­ots down and viola, the bat­tery. some jig­gery pok­ery to get wires routed (with­out remov­ing the fuel tanks, which looks like a task), some zip-tie mas­tery, and every­thing lights up the way it should. I stuck a piece of dual-lock on the side of the GPS and stuck the heat-troller to it, and we’re good. A quick run to the ship­ping place to send the stock seat and stock wind­screen home, then it’s off on the shake­down cruise, down to Los Altos and back, stop­ping to have din­ner with an old friend I haven’t seen in 20 years. What a cool bike: feels a lot like my old F650, except it han­dles bet­ter and has twice the HP. wheee!

Joe writes down some route sug­ges­tions for me, and Mark primes the cof­fee maker. I’m the only one mov­ing at 6:30 Sat­ur­day morn­ing as I pack up and get loaded. I leave a scrawled ‘Thank You’ on the din­ing room table, go out­side and start the bike. It’s only as I’m deploy­ing the sky-crane to get my right boot over the seat that the front door opens and Mark appears, wish­ing me safe trav­els and a thumbs-up. And I’m off. First stop: a lit­tle town called Kent­field to meet a friend for Break­fast. It’s about 45 miles of mixed free­way and city dri­ving, and the bike is pretty pleas­ant, it runs well, han­dles pretty good, if a lit­tle slow to respond to the tiller, but i put that down to the 21″ front wheel. It does seem a tad-lean on the pilot/needle tran­si­tion in the carbs, hunt­ing a bit at 35mph or so in 2nd/3rd gear.
Break­fast han­dled, I gas up (twin fuel tanks, and both will gush gas back at you if you’re not care­ful how you have the noz­zle pointed when you pull the trig­ger). I real­ize I have no idea how much fuel it holds, make a note that it’s at least the 4 gal­lons I just put in, and hit the road in earnest, motor­ing up 101 under gray skies. In about 25 miles, my heat-troller is loose, flop­ping around in the wind, and my right earplug is killing me. OK, I can take a hint. I stop in Santa Rosa, remount the HT (black and white dual lock doesn’t play well together), repo­si­tion the earplug and motor on. 350 miles of awe­some roads later, with only about 10 min­utes of rain the whole way, I see the sign that says “wel­come to Ore­gon, Michael and Judy, next left”. I motor up to the Giant Road Bur­rito and greet Michael and Judy. I think i see a smidgen of bike lust in Michael’s eyes.

Michael and Judy took great care of me, pro­vid­ing a hot shower, hot chicken enchi­ladas, and a nice port to round out the evening. A per­fect way to end a great day of riding.

Sun­day broke grey and damp, but not actu­ally rain­ing. A check of the weather fore­cast was incon­clu­sive; change of rain most of the way up the Ore­gon coast. A check of the var­i­ous passes over the coast range showed no antic­i­pated prob­lems cross­ing over to I-5 where ever I decided to. I get my stuff packed and while I’m doing that Michael makes me a ‘bronze’ mocha (in honor of a fallen friend: it’s a 20 oz. quad shot mocha); I thanked him and told him that if the bike didn’t start I’d just push it to Gold Beach. “One handed” sez Michael! I “Mocha up” and get ready to go. I get a rec­om­men­da­tion for a restau­rant to check out for break­fast (appar­ently run by an ADV rider) and hit the road. It’s about 7:15 AM.
A short ride to Gold Beach, search out the “Bar­na­cle Bistro” only to find it closed. Oh well, back-track to The Cape Café and set­tle in with a cof­fee and the 2-egg break­fast. As I chow down, the sun breaks out and the sky turns a lovely blue. I gear up to head out, mak­ing sure to change to the tinted shield, and I’m on my way. For the next 3–4 hours, I work my way up the coast, from small town to pic­turesque bridge to small town. My GPS says Hwy 18 is the ‘short­est’ route home, and it leads through some of my old stomp­ing grounds, so I go that way. Shortly after depart­ing the coast, I have my only near-brush with Offi­cer Friendly. We are climb­ing up the hills out of New­port, and there’s a ditz in a mini­van doing 53.5MPH in a 55 zone, with 7–8 cars backed up behind her. We get to a pass­ing lane, and she camps out in the left lane, so those of us behind (myself and about 6 cars) pro­ceed to go around on the right. As soon as I’m clear, I shift left and get on it, hop­ing to get out of the clot of cages for the run to the sum­mit. As we round a sweep­ing right-hander, with me pulling out in front the pack, at about 80 per, I spot Mr. friendly parked in the turn-out, with his testicle-toaster hang­ing out the win­dow. I gen­tly roll off the gas, as does every­one around me. Whew, no way he’s going to be able to pick me out of that pack. We gen­tly motor past and my heart rate returns to normal.

The rest of the trip was unevent­ful, with two notable events; while stopped for my final gas stop in Chehalis, I put the hel­met on the mir­ror (yes, I know bet­ter; I was get­ting tired) so I could move the bike away from the pump, and while push­ing it, the hel­met bails and lands face-shield down on the tar­mac. ARRRGGG! Oh well, that shield was ready for replac­ing any­way. And the sun’s almost down, so I swapped it out for the clear one that I took off over 350 miles ago. Upon arriv­ing home, I dis­cover that I also cracked the side cover on the hel­met, so I’ll have to fix or replace that. The other note­wor­thy event, even though wholly pre­dictable, was the speed at which the tem­per­a­ture dropped after the sun went down; with no cloud cover to hold heat in, the mer­cury plum­mets! And I dis­cov­ered that the heated grips on this bike are ‘cal­i­for­nia’ heated grips: Ok for tak­ing the morn­ing chill off, but not up to the job of keep­ing your hands warm in the north­west in febu­rary. I arrived home about 7:23 PM, feel­ing a bit tired but not beat up in any way and very pleased with my purchase.

keep those feet up, and the rub­ber side down.
black­dog

Headed out the door at oh-dark-fifteen for our sec­ond club tri­als of the sea­son, the Ice Trial. Weather looks like it won’t live up to it’s name, although it has in past years. Get to the site, get unloaded in a light driz­zle, and warm up. A lit­tle prac­tice, and some time dial­ing the carb in a bit, since it was com­pletely dis­as­sem­bled and cleaned a cou­ple of weeks ago. Focus was on the smoothest pos­si­ble off-idle response i could get, a key char­ac­ter­is­tic for a tri­als engine.

Got geared up and went over to the rider’s meet­ing. learned of an inter­est­ing plan: in order to man­age traf­fic, our tri­als mar­shalls had built an ‘out-n-back’ loop. The plan was to ride the loop to the end, doing sec­tions 1–12 (1–11 for Novices) and then ride it back to the bot­tom, hit­ting the sec­tions in reverse order (12 through 1 on the way back). Then back to the pits for water, fuel, food, what­ever, and then fin­ish with a final 1–12 ride). sounds inter­st­ing. So we divide into groups, and away we go.

We quickly dis­cover that a lot of the road and trails is a soupy, muddy mess. But the sec­tions are chal­leng­ing and fun, with very lit­tle actu­ally dan­ger­ous. It took me a num­ber of sec­tions to loosen up, and to get a bet­ter feel for the gear­ing on the bike, with the new 9-tooth coun­ter­shaft sprocket (down from the stock 10). What I dis­cov­ered is that I now have a choice of gears for a sec­tion, first for really crawl­ing, sec­ond for nor­mal or any­thing with a climb, and third for seri­ous climb­ing. All in all though, the bike ran great and seems a bet­ter fit for my rid­ing style this way. The loop was pretty long and rugged in spots and I was cer­tainly happy to get back to the pits after our first two ‘loops’. Water, a bite to eat, and gas for the bike. And out to fin­ish out with the third loop. At sec­tion 1, we run into the rest of the Advanced class, and they’re already fin­ished! What the.…. turns out they just rode two attempts on all the sec­tions on the way back down, so they only made two trips up and down the loop. smart guys!

In the end, i had some good rides, and a bunch of sloppy rides, 3’s that should have been 1’s, and 1’s that should have been cleans. Fin­ished in 4th or 5th place, I think. I hope to get some prac­tice before the next round, hope­fully that will help keep me a bit sharper.

A ques­tion for all of you: how much do you con­sider the loop trail to be part of the chal­lenge of a tri­als event, in par­tic­u­lar, a local club event? There was some grum­bling around the pits after the event about the folks who didn’t ride the loop trail all 3 (or 4) times, and I’m curi­ous if there’s a con­sen­sus on this issue. I’m not seri­ous enough about it to care that much, but my guess is that my score would have been 5–9 lower with the extra fatigue and arm pump that I had on my thrid loop. What do you folks think? Send me your com­ments, I’d love to hear from you.

keep those feet on the pegs!
black­dog