Dual Sport Desert Daze 2010 (Part 2)

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Saturday:

The ranch included breakfast with tent camping and it was deeeeelicious!
Nothing beats a massive hot breakfast before a long day of riding.

We stuffed our faces and then played around waiting for Aaron to roll in from Tucson and a few other people to finish eating.

I was really excited about riding over this rock.

I think I need a trials bike.

I really liked the casual way the rally was put together, there were gps tracks made available and maps laid out with routes color-coded by difficulty. You picked your route, found some buddies and explored at will.


Riders plotting a course.


People starting to gather in front of the saloon.


I thought this bike was really cute.

There were -a lot- of KLRs


KTMs were well represented too!


Karensa, another badass ADV lady. I also met Maren, who owns a green ’08 KLR. I suggested the three of go for a ride sometime, a whole rainbow of chicks on new model KLRs!


Aaron’s bike posed by some cool rocks.

We took a few minutes to crawl up them.

Here I am sneaking behind him like a ninja!

Or trying not to fall…whatever. Those MX boots aren’t too great for rock climbin’.

Thomas joins us on his GS with street tires.

We decide to join another group of bigger bikes planning a route of easy dirt to the border road.


The whole gang at the first rest stop.

One of the KLRs decides it doesn’t really want to go again.

Aaron, our resident KLR whisperer; diagnoses, dissasembles and repairs the bike in no time.

There’s your problem, dirt where it doesn’t belong. A couple grains of sand on the float needle were all it took to take the pig out.

We proceeded down long stretches of graded dirt and gravel roads. All the big bikes were flying up at 70+mph, my bike didn’t really want to do that and at 50 it got a bad wobble going on, so I plugged along around 45 to meet them at the top. The last bit did get nice and winding though.

We let a little air out of my tires and it felt much better on the gravel after that.

It also got a little rougher, so I stood on the pegs and the bike just feels better to me like that. I was finally keeping up with the group as we hit the border road.

That part was really fun for me. It was pretty well graded, but rough enough to be interesting and had steep, smooth hill climbs and descents. It was like a roller coaster!

I recalled our guide Bret saying there was a very steep one “You’ll know it when you see it!” where we would stop to regroup. My eyes widened as I approached a very steep climb. I throttled up and realized there was no one waiting…that means there is a -bigger- one!

I continued along, pondering how much steeper it could possibly be and then I saw it, the mother of all steep climbs. I wasn’t going to stop and lose momentum, so I just throttled over and then used all my concentration to stop on the top and not to launch into the stack of bikes waiting.

Sean was nice enough to make this elevation profile though to give you an idea.

We waited for a while and discovered Thomas and James hadn’t been seen for miles. I was worried about them, but the group decided there were plenty of Border Patrol to help out if there had been a problem and it was most likely the GS was struggling on its knobless tires and they just turned off.

I tried to restart my bike to leave, but it would just stall. Aaron pushed me down the hill to bump start it. It stalled again further up the road when we stopped and we figured out it was just the clutch lever adjustment, it had jiggled loose and wasn’t engaging properly. Just as we fixed it, Thomas and James rolled up!

Apparently James’ rack had given up on him and they abandoned it in the desert.

We then did a bunch of zip tie repairs to a KLR rack and my license plate, which has started splitting in half.

From here the group split up, several heading back to Tucson while the rest of rode some twisty dirt and pavement back to the ranch.

I took a long hot shower and watched the sunset.

Dual Sport Desert Daze 2010 (Part 1)

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Friday:

I had hoped to get an early start Friday, but one of my classes had a mandatory quiz, once I finished that up I met with James to head out to the Desert Daze Rally


Riding Buddies

He had google mapped a route to take us all the way there almost completely by dirt. Genius! If you are going to ride a distance like that, may as well make it fun!

It started out on some familiar trails Southeast of Houghton and Sahuarita Rd. We popped up over my favorite hill jump (didn’t stop for pics this time) and onto the ‘lake’.


This pic and some others by James
From there we rode in the wash under a bridge/culvert thing. Here’s the mouth of the wash where it spits you back out onto a road again.



Takin’ a break under a tree.

You can see how reflective my stripes are in this pic!

We rode some twisty dirt that turned into a ribbon of twisty pavement.

Really nice views and cool rock formations.

The road was nice and varied, not just in texture, but color.

The road signs are no help when all we have are waypoints…

James consults his GPS.



We missed a waypoint.

Oh well, let’s ride…uh, that way!

We started following a gasline road and it crossed these deep, steep and rocky gorges. Ever since the Sibley Mansion incident, these things have made me a bit squeamish, but the first one wasn’t too bad and they got just a bit worse one by one.  James asked if I was comfortable continuing and I said “yeah, it’s not completely absurd yet.” I had just gotten my SPOT back from recall and I was feeling pretty good about attempting somewhat risky terrain.

…but then I came across this one:

Pictures always flatten things out, but I think that tree in the middle gives you a good sense of how steep that drops off.
“Okay, now it’s absurd.”
We just passed a fork and I declare we should try that way instead.
Then I drop the bike turning around.

The other fork took us on some very loose rock with twists and climbs.

James coming down a hill where he was scouting better options.

We did a seemingly endless string of loose rock climbs and descents before hitting this gorge.

I wasn’t going back, so I just plowed on through.

That little dot is me!

When the going got rough, we decided I should lead. That way I could set the pace and James would be right there if I ran into trouble. Well I was zipping along happily and came to a good hill to wait for him. I briefly felt proud that I got up there so far ahead, getting out my camera to catch and action shot of him riding through.

…then I realized I didn’t even -hear- his bike and got worried.
I rode back down and found him trying to fix his homemade rack.


(This picture obviously taken at another time…there were no trucks out where we were…or any signs of life for that matter!
It’s just a prototype. 😉

Eventually he got it secured enough and we carried on.

I got my photo!


Stopping to rest on a hill.

At this point we decided we had truly turned ourselves around backwards and high-tailing it to the interstate to slab it down to Dragoon was the only hope in making it to the rally before dark.

After more twisty, rocky, secluded riding we finally spotted civilization!


The interstate!

We popped out on the side of the freeway, with semi-trucks flying past and no on ramp. We looked at our little 400’s and then at each other, agreeing this would be far scarier than anything we attempted all day!

We somehow made it to Benson without getting squished, ran into another ADV rider at the gas station and the three of us made our way down to the ranch and set up camp.

I actually had to move the tent because I couldn’t put stakes in here, but dang it looked cool nested in the rocks. The rocks in the Dragoons are truly fantastic!

Sean rolls in after work about the time I’m done setting up…how convenient.

We hung out at the Saloon, cooked hot dogs over the fire and talked about bikes!

There were a ton of people there, I was pleasantly surprised by the turnout!

Death in the Desert Take 2

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Since acquiring the DRZ and improving my dirt skills, I had been dying to retry the treacherous Death in the Desert route.  I had a feeling it would be a lot easier than I remembered it, but I had no idea it would seem so much easier I would barely recognize it!  That’s even with all the rain we had creating some large mud bogs… 

I had asked for a late start this morning, thinking it would be nice to sleep in, but I ended up waking early and I couldn’t wait any longer. I decided to roll up through Gates Pass again.

I’m a little bit obsessed with riding through here, but look at it! It’s fantastic!

Then I went to the gas station and made circles in the dirt lot next door until the crew rolled up. 

The crew (in no particular order):

Brian, Aaron, KB, BobM, Stephanie and me.

There aren’t any pictures for most of the ride. We were really caught up in just going and took very few breaks…until the giant mud bog slowed a couple of our riders down. 

Aaron was way too fast picking his bike up, but we got a couple shots of Brian’s GS taking a little mud bath.


My favorite picture ever (by KB)

I should probably not laugh too hard at Brian, he did help me put on my new knobbies the night before. (and by help I mean…put on my new knobbies…with some actual help from Sean)

The new Desert Maxxis IT’s worked awesome!

Not sure how much I can attribute to the tires, how much was the rain packing down the loose stuff or how much was riding skill improvement and the new bike, but the ride went amazing! I struggled to recognize the obstacles that posed a challenge before and I didn’t drop the bike once! Not even in the mud bogs!

The last little washout that Brian pushed our bikes through on the original Death in the Desert trek was a bit of a challenge to Aaron…only because he was trying it without a clutch lever!  Apparently it busted loose in the mud bog and jiggled off somewhere after that…

KB and BobM wandered back in search of the fallen lever, but unfortunately didn’t find it.

We arrived at the coffee shop early and hung out for a while. Most of the crew returned via dirt, but I had stuff to do so I headed back on pavement with Aaron and his gimped up bike.

As we were hauling butt up I-19 home, I ran out of gas (I thought I could go further, but I guess my mileage wasn’t so good up all that dirt stuff). Aaron saw me and crawled along slowly til I switched it on reserve and got going again.

I guess he spotted a gas station and dove off an exit at the last minute. I missed the exit and stopped a little further up the road. The exit was a steep downgrade from where I stopped, but I just looked at the embankment, with its weeds, ruts and decorative cement and decided it was no worse than anything else I’ve ridden across and did a little urban enduro!

What a thrill! The whole day really. I just had an awesome time. I’m in love with my new bike, it handles everything so well and it’s just so damn fun to ride!

We had a great group, great weather and a fantastic day!

Jump Around!

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Yesterday was a perfect day for riding. I made an impromptu run up to Gates Pass in the morning for some paved twisty fun.

View from the top:

Then I ran down to Sahuarita to meet Aaron for trail exploring.

We made a special stop at this great hill jump James had shown us on the last ride.

I decide to take advice from my fellow riders and practice, practice, practice!  I must have jumped that hill a dozen times…

Aaron joined in, testing the suspension on a stock KLR.






I was riding a little further down the road to turn around (so I could get a running start) and at one point got a little stuck turning. So I hopped off to muscle it around. Well, I jerked it a little hard and the bike fell over with such vigor that it catapulted me over the top of it, still holding the handlebars and I did a full somersault!

After doing that jump about a million times, I got much better at the turn too. Yay for practice!

I also started catching more air!




I know I’m not actually that far off the ground, but man it felt like I was flying!

This bike is pretty much the most fun thing ever!

I was all paranoid about going down the steep part the first time, but after a few passes, it was total cake!

Are you tired of jumping pictures yet?! TOO BAD!


Alright alright, I’ll move on…

We went off exploring random roads, which led to some rocky rocky climbs, which dead ended for rocky, rocky descent practice. It went pretty well, but I did bounce off a rock and drop the bike once. I somehow jumped off of it as it went down though, so that was cool. I’m getting experienced at dumping it without injury.

The rain had made the roads all mucky, but by now they had mostly dried, leaving some weird dirt ridges in the middle of the road.

Take note of that little powdery ridge in the middle…

I thought it would be funny to charge at Aaron as he was taking pictures. I hit that little ridge and started flaily wildly. I gave him a mini heart attack, but I stopped in time without crashing and he got this picture.

We rode on through Fish Canyon and Madera Canyon…


I found some puddles to splash in…

There was a pretty little waterfall down this rock face. I have a more…stoic…picture of Aaron standing by it, but this one is hilarious and I can’t help myself.

We rode all day and it was perfect weather the whole time.

I felt really confident on one of the last dirt sections home. It was nicely packed from the rain, but fairly twisty with nice dips. I think it was my fastest run on that kind of terrain.

Thanks for riding out with me Aaron and for all the great photos!

This one is my favorite:

NO JUMPING!

I woke up this morning feeling like I’d been hit by a truck. Maybe it was all the jumping or just going from sun up to sun down like that, but I think I got a workout! It was damn fun though and totally worth it!

And I Shall Name him ZEB!

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I’m not sure why, but the moment I saw my bike, I knew he would be mine and that I would name him Zeb and put stripes on him.  He just looked like he was meant to be a Zebra bike.  I spray painted the yellow panels white, cut stripes from black reflective tape and put on a new headlight. 

Tada!

A zebra bike of my very own, plus he’s very visible at night!

Gunsight Pass

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I was planning to take it easy on the new bike, but I made a bet with Aaron that I would try Gunsight Pass if he put his KLR back together by Sunday (poor thing had been in pieces in the garage for months!)  Well, he slapped that bike back together so fast I had to hold up my end of the deal…

Our bikes from left to right – Me, James & Aaron
The three of us set out bright and early and headed down some graded roads towards Gunsight Pass. We took a break at a turn off and Aaron noticed the bolt holding on my exhaust pipe had wiggled loose and disappeared. We determined it was best to detour back towards town and fix it, lest it fall off mid ride. Ace hardware was just opening and we got in, out and back on the road fairly quickly.

The detour was a really fun bit of road with some sand, rocks and ruts. It was excellent practice turf for my new bike. I’m so impressed with its sand manners compared to the KLR.

The road we took back in the direction of Gunsight had some great puddles to splash through and I baptized my bike with mud.

There was a great steep hill we stopped in front of and James told me it was not as bad as it looks, but there was a road around if I wanted to do that. I just trusted in the bike and it popped up and over effortlessly. Just beyond that was a little pond we hung out at for a while.

We took some detours which included riding several washes lengthwise and I was really happy with how the DRZ did. There was one part where we turned off the main road into a wash and I hit with my tire turned a little too much. I fell over, but picked it up and started riding before my buddies came back for me. It’s like it never even happened!

We finally decided to give up looking for the mysterious all dirt route to Gunsight and booked it down hwy 83 to the trail head we knew went up.

The road was generally nice, with some sand and a bit of mud. The view was awesome.

Suddenly James’ bike stopped going. Apparently his bike had turned cannibalistic and the chain decided to eat its own guard. It was really wrapped up in there but Aaron and James eventually pulled it out without completely dislodging the chain.

Aaron and James lead the way up the rocky mountain to the lookout point. If you look very closely you can see them both.

The road is really rocky and fairly steep, I’m glad I’m not on the KLR, but even on the DRZ the last hairpin is tricky and I manage to drop it on the way up and on the way down, in the same place. This bike is actually taller than the KLR and when I try to put a toe down, it finds empty air. I will have to learn to trust myself to make the turn without pivoting on my foot.

We park our bikes and climb up to the ridge. What a phenomenally beautiful place. We hung out for a good long time just sitting up there and talking.

We left our mark and proceeded back down the mountain.

We decide to go down the hard side. We went up the easy side, going up the hard side is the way most people do Gunsight and I can see how it would be exhausting. It was very steep and rocky so we had to be on the breaks like mad the whole time. Going up you would be constantly on the throttle jostling up the rocks.

Aaron led the way and he was keeping things uber slow to show me how to descend a steep, rocky mountain safely. The only bad thing was, when we hit the rocky section, I used some more speed and momentum while he was putting down the last stair I found my front tire about to play bumper cars with his rear. I braked hard and managed not to hit him, but my bike fell to the right on a large rock. The puddle of green blood was a telltale sign something bad had happened.

I cracked the water pump cover badly.

I was honestly so close to buying a better bash plate earlier this week, but decided to hold off since I just dropped a pretty penny ordering a new headlight and a Trial Tech Vapor computer.
Ironically, the same thing had broken on this bike while in the possession of its previous owner and he showed me the broken pump and everything. I should have taken that as a sign and bought the bash plate.

We debate what the best plan of action would be and eventually decide to send James down the mountain to go home and return with a truck while Aaron and I coast down with our bikes off.

I was initially really paranoid about coasting down in neutral without engine power at the ready, but it was much easier than I thought. It made me realize how much I unnecessarily used the throttle in situations where the weight of the bike was more than enough to keep momentum. It was like riding a really big bicycle. We coasted down, braking frequently and then kicking like skateboarders in places where it flattened out. I didn’t dump the bike once through the whole ordeal and actually had fun with it, leaning forward to get more speed, bouncing the suspension and wiggling the handlebars to crawl forward on a flat bit until the next good downhill.

We stopped and Aaron rode off a bit to make sure we were in the correct rendezvous location.

Looking back at the Gunsight.

Waiting for help

Trucking the bike home while Aaron shows off.

Many thanks to my riding buddies for being incredibly awesome and helping me to take on new and daring terrain. I’m feeling much better about steep rocky crap now, but I have a new nemesis, the steep hairpin turn!

A DRZ to Call my Own!

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I finally found a DRZ I really wanted and a seller willing to work with my budget. 

This bike is so sweet! Raven helped me retrieve it and she rode it a little, she said it’s a demon bike and she’s scared it will whisper evil, evil things to me while I ride.

Here’s all the specs so you can nerd out and drool!

– Racetech gold valves – forks.
– Racetech front springs – .46mm/kg (180lbs)
– Ohlins rear shock – fully adjustable
– 2 ohlins rear springs (installed on for 180lbs & one for 215lbs)

– 4.2 Gallon Acerbis tank
– Corbin seat
– Kytech aluminum rear rack
– Electric start
– Suzuki kick start kit installed

– Twin Air air filter
– manual cam chain adjuster
– JD Jet kit
– remove coast enrichner
– AP mods
– extended adjustable fuel screw
– White brothers exhaust
– protective case covers

– Fat Bars
– handlebar risers – up 1″, forward 1″
– cycra handguard
– Scotts steering stabilizer post and mount

– Pirelli XCMH front
– Bridgestone Griddy ED
– Bridgestone ultra heavy duty tubes

– Street Legal title
– Brake light via banjo pressure switch

Bike is actually a Kawasaki klx400r – identical to the drz400e

This is pretty much the best purchase I have ever made.  I can’t wait to tear up some dirt!

Arivaca (The Non-Deadly Way)

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I wanted to try the non Death in the Desert route to Arivaca, so I got a group together and we headed out.  This was a fairly easy and high speed ride, hence the lack of photos…

It was a nice relaxing ride, but we did get separated at some point and turned down a wrong road. I was lamenting the task of turning my massive bike around in the dirt.  James offered to switch bikes so I could try his DRZ out and not have to turn my KLR around. I had so much fun on his bike he would have had to pry me off of it to get it back!

As soon as I got home I went hunting for a DRZ of my own…

Santa Ritas

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In an effort to take it easy on myself, I gathered together the more relaxed dirt riders in our group and we went out for a day of easy trail exploring.


The group: James, JQ, me, John & Raven
The ride was generally glorious. Mostly smooth, graded dirt with some particularly nice sections near the gypsum mine which painted the roads a brilliant glowing white.

We spiced it up on the way back with a little more adventurous section feature a couple washes with short rocky climbs and some long stretches of sand. James warned me that the only tough spot was a 180 degree sandy turn near the end. Everytime we came to a turn I thought “Is this is? No, that wasn’t sharp enough…” and then “Oh shit this is the turn he was talking about!” as I slid over in the powder onto my right side.


The offending sand and subsequent panel damage (I bought it scratched on ebay to replace the one I destroyed at Sibley…that crack is new though…)

There was a benefit to my little spill though. My bike won’t start right up after it’s been on it’s side, so while we were waiting for it stop being flooded and for my adrenaline to subside, we realized Raven’s taillight had rattled off!


Brave James heads back through the sand to the rocky area where we suspect it got knocked loose…


Oh there it is!


And returns victorious!

Some action shots from the ride (these and a few of the previous pics were taken by James)

We ate some awesome pizza and watched the sun set on the way home!

Bisbee

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Ever since I bought the KLR I had been having big dreams of adventure. The daily grind started wearing on me and the desire to get away grew. I decided to ask my boss for a long weekend over New Year’s to do a mini adventure weekend to Bisbee.

(Side rant: I was really excited about the SPOT I got for x-mas and wanted to try it out but it was recalled before I could activate it! )

I wanted to do my first solo ride, but without the SPOT I didn’t feel confident enough to go out in the dirt alone. Instead I opted to ride dirt with friends to Sonoita and then continue solo on pavement.

I don’t have any pics of the initial dirt section, it was just Box Canyon and Fish Canyon again (man I love those jumps!) Too bad though really, Sean actually came with me this time.

I felt extremely nervous and did the ride even slower than usual, but with no mishaps. When we reached Sonoita, most everyone turned back, but Raven offered to accompany me to Sierra Vista and thought she could even find a dirt route to do it. We spent a while looking for the dirt route and exploring some roads in the area.


I was very proud of my minimalist packjob on this trip, even if my pajamas reeked of exhaust (Note: place clothes in plastic bag within cortech bag)

Eventually we gave up and decided I should try to cross through Ft. Huachuca, but they turned me away for not having a reflective belt and an MSF card. Who knew?

So we had to go the longer way around. Raven rode with me to Elgin and then set off back home. I tried to plug in my GPS but it inexplicably broke. So I set off without it. I’ve been to Bisbee before, just not recently. By this point I have been riding all day and I’m wondering if I’ll make it to my couchsurfing host’s place before dark.

I have to say, riding in those last moments before the sun dips below the horizon are the most magical. The mountains turn purple with orange highlights reflecting the setting sun. As I rode down through the riparian area, the trees were illuminated the most brilliant sea foam green. I wanted to stop and take a picture, but I was racing the sun and it wouldn’t do it justice anyway.

The sun went down just as I reached my destination and my fingertips started to numb from the cold. My host greeted my warmly and informed me he used to have a KLR too! We talked about bikes for a while and then went into town to watch the parade and the Flam Chen performance.

There was a lot of celebrating.

I explored the town a little the next morning and took a few pictures.

For those who don’t know, Bisbee used to be a mining town famous for its copper. Now it’s famous for its hippies and many, many stairs.


The houses are built up onto the mountains.

They have a special aesthetic here. I was joking that in the interest of packing light, I ended up wearing a strange outfit to the party. My green motorcycle garb over a fringed alpaca sweater (it’s colder there). I looked like a Peruvian astronaut. But in Bisbee you don’t have to worry about being criticized for attire like that, you get compliments!


This house is for sale.

This person really loves Hillary.

“B” Mountain

The tunnel back

I took a long wandering route home. I was glad the GPS broke and I could just do my own thing without the electronic voice barking at me to do something more efficient. Riding solo for hours was a very different but highly positive experience.