Lost Weekend 2: The Outtatowners

We were very excited about getting to share Hardrock with guests. Max and I were oddly proud of our Evil Beast Home Turf and beamed like happy parents at the thought of subjecting people we considered good friends to what promised to be the nastiest thing we could throw at their bikes. The time leading up to the appointed date in early December had been a bit of a disaster for us Florida boys..mainly because of feet. I, as previously posted, had just broken my foot at Hardrock two weeks before, but George (who had finally healed up enough to start joining us) was out because on his first gallivant at the end of October had picked up some manner of foot rot in what was still, basically, the open wound that was his foot. Unlike George, however, I didn't have to worry about infection, so decided there was no way in hell I was gonna miss the trip. I'd be good and stay out of the nasty stuff, but I knew the trails well enough that I could at least ride around and take pictures. My wife was dubious. I had to cut my boot to get it over my foot. We were gonna have a good time.

Here's the Carolina boys: Jay, from previous posts, on the left, Marcus on the right. Jay brought the venerable Field pig

While Marcus brought his sadly unnamed BSA single of some description (the model likely involving a "B" and some numbers, I'm definitely no BSA expert)

I was on the Stomper/Triumph Wheelchair...

....and though restricted to chicken routes on the top of the pit, could get pretty near to where the suffering was being doled out. Max was on good ol' Smokey Bacon, and had the other camera.

We started everyone out on a standard loop, but Marcus managed to get separated and missed a couple of our favorite spots, namely the Rock:

That's it in the foreground, it got worn down over time, but at this point you can see there were two ways to deal with it. You could aim for the notch and hope you had enough clearance, or hit it on the left(in this pic) and try to bounce over it. If you did get it, you got rewarded with one of the best views in Hardrock.

I didn't get this view, having a pretty leisurely tourist perspective of it all. Just look at that sad crippled peasant down there, who let him into the cycle park?

After giving Jay a chance to enjoy the view, Max figured it was time to make him miserable and led him to the Bottom. Sadly, I couldn't get anywhere near there to get pics, but damn if it didn't sound like a good one that time. I backtracked from the foot of the Rock and parked myself at the top of a scrabbly climb after the Bottom and got an aural treat listening to the horrid beating Max and Jay received going through it. Frantic revving, shouted commands, more revving, stall, brief silence, foul language, repeat. It seemed like days for them to get through. Good, good stuff. They finally made it, again...sadly, and came past my roost.

Marcus may have thought he escaped the joy of the Bottom, but he didn't get far. He was over in another shithole called the Rock Garden, when we found him he was turned around to come back and find us, but how he got that bike turned in there I have no idea.

The section is a ping pong narrow track between large limerock boulders that then abruptly turns right and climbs steeply uphill.

This was my favorite part of the day because I had a pretty good view down into the section. Which was nearly as much fun to watch as ride.

 Jay's face in these pics pretty well sums up that climb.

With a good loop in the bag we headed out, played on the Roller Coaster a bit, and then headed to the bottom of the pit for Picture Hill and general tomfoolery. My foot kept me from scrambling up the hill to get decent side-on shots, so sadly you get pics of rear tires and hind-quarters. Here's Marcus getting his pitcher taken,

 Jay getting his picture taken,

And Max going the wrong damned way,

Then it was time for some trials,

Those preliminaries out of the way, and we were off to the $13.65 Hillclimb, which was the climb on which I'd broken my foot. On the Tonup board I'd laid a challenge that whoever could get up that climb would get what I had in my pocket at that moment, which happened to be....$13.65. Here's Max trying to convince Jay that this was a proper sum of money on which to risk life and/or limb. If you recall earlier photos of this climb, you'll notice it got Even Better, it now had a fallen tree on it.

Jay didn't think 13 dollars, 65 cents was enough money for this endeavor, leaving Max to give it a go,

This was one of the most ridiculous, impressive bits of riding I've seen. Remember, this is a 360lb, 40 year old converted road machine.  Max was barely on the bike half the time, most of the time the bike was bucking and weaving and pretty much doing its own thing vaguely underneath him. But he got it. He got the prized $13.65, which he promptly put in a picture frame and hung in his bike room.

That accomplished, we left the pit and rode the Roller Coaster a bit more (well, they did), I swapped out my riding boot for my broke foot boot and we spent the rest of the weekend drinking beer and eating truly ridiculous quantities of fried, smoked, and generally unhealthy food. For his heroism on $13.65, Max was given the famed "Trophy For What We Deem Worthy This Time".

And with that, I'll leave this post with one of my favorite pics from the weekend, a nice family portrait from the pit bottom.

Hard Rockin' Too Hard

Another quick look at the dates shows it was now November. A couple of the Carolina boys were planning on coming down our way to be subjected to Hardrock for the next Lost Weekend. Max an' I decided to head down to check on the condition of the trails and screw around a bit. On a previous trip, at the top of a section that we had been over a bunch on our usual loop, Max had rediscovered a horrifying downhill he had been subjected to in his first race. The first time I looked down it I believe I said something manly like "do you mind if we don't go down this today?" But we were back and it was time to pay the piper. It was so steep there was no way to actually stop, short of running off, which put you in weeds on one side, and over a cliff on the other. Plus, because of a slight kink half way down you couldn't see the bottom. It was lovely, we both dumped our bike at the bottom. I have no pictures of that drop, because I was too busy pooping myself from fear, but there was at least the benefit that it dropped us down into a section we hadn't ridden before.

This is Picture Hill. We named it that because we took pictures of ourselves going up it, pretty clever...eh? It was limerock and so was nice and solid, but the top was like a knife edge and dropped off immediately on the backside, so you had to be careful with the throttle going over the top or you'd be floating in space with 15 feet or so of clean air beneath you.

These things don't have the suspension of modern bikes, so a landing like that would break 'em in half and make you an inch shorter.
Also down there, we found an uphill I though was un-climbable for our bikes. It was steep, rocky, loose, rooted, rutted, steep, and steep. Max was optimistic, we tried it anyway.
My first attempt was a pretty sorry affair.

Which wasn't shocking, considering I kinda suck. Max was a bit more successful, getting a bit further up and keeping it upright until he ran outta forward momentum.

He gave it a couple attempts, but the results were mostly the same.

Max is infuriatingly optimistic about these things compared to me, and despite my doubts his optimism was contagious and I gave it another go. Look how optimistic I am in the next pic! That's an optimistic face, dammit!

Sadly, optimism is no good if you're an idiot, and the attempt might have gone better had I not screwed up a shift right at the base of the climb. Before I even got to anything steep, I dumped the bike and I guess my foot got caught between it and a rock. I stood up and my foot did not feel right. Plus, it was making a clicking noise when I walked. I'm no expert, but that seemed wrong to me, so we headed out. Back at the truck we were trying to deduce what a broken foot would be like, neither of us having broken a foot before. Despite the clicking and swelling,  I could still walk on it and was able to start my bike so our erudite, non-medical opinions pretty much boiled down to "hmm, not sure". On the way home we had to stop by Max's parents house in Palatka anyway, so decided to hit a walk in clinic to avoid hospital costs if it wasn't broken, but...

It Was!

Which sucked because that made it seem at the time like I wasn't gonna get to play when our NC friends came down. With sad heart we headed back to town and a few weeks with my foot in a boot. Luckily, I'm made of sterner/stupider stuff, and would be able to enjoy that weekend, but that's for the next post.

Jay all by his lonesome

Okay, back to 2008. October-ish, I believe. Gonna have to skip over Barber for the moment, can't find a single pic. But that's all right, it means I get to give Jay some space of his very own. He didn't make Barber and instead a weekend or so later headed back to the site of his first race at Devils Ridge in Sanford, NC. As I wasn't there, I'm cutting and pasting his report from the day after the race to give you that jenyoowine-just-happened feel.

"Rode CC at Devil's Ridge yesterday.
The race was initially going to be called due to the weather.  However, me and 2 AHRMA guys walked the course and then they did a test lap. Afterwards they said it was "doable" but added "Hey Jay, I would NOT take your bike out there. Nothing without AT LEAST 10 inches of suspension travel is going to make it through there." I had the oldest bike, the only Brit machine and the only 4-stoke. The other guy in "vintage" was a fucking 360 Husky... there were other big-ass Huskys, a Yammer and a Maico, I think... I said "Fuck it. I'm going. If I have to disassemble the bike and carry it out so be it." It was very tight, very technical, very wet and very nasty. A new long section was added across the old clear-cut and it had never been ridden on. The freshly cropped scrub growth hid all sorts of washes, logs, stumps and deep holes. I paced myself. I chose my lines carefully... practically rode a very brisk trials ride. I was keeping a decent pace with the big stinky two smokes (I was actually beating the other guy in my class... at least I think he was in my class... the regional breakdown of classes is odd) until I ate shit (hairpin, big hidden stump, wheelie, throttle roll, front end washout, dump) and stalled the bike. The Pig has an odd tendency to get quite sulky about starting once it gets good and hot. A fresh plug often helps, but I got crap in the cylinder when I did this and lost compression... the Bebout Brisketneck Auxiliary Starting Unit saved the day on that one. Overall, I managed 3 laps and crossed the line under the bike's power this time.
The new shocks and front springs made this race so much better than the last one. The bike (besides the sulkiness) performed admirably and I had a good time. I need to put on the smaller front sprocket (spent 99.9% of the race in 1st), sort this hot-start issue out and maybe extend the swingarm a smidge.
I opted not to camp last night and came home, hung out with the pups, watched the livestream of The Girl's derby bout from Chicago while eating Chinese takeout and getting puzzled on beers. I woke up about 6AM this morning and considered, for all of 9 seconds, driving the hour plus back to Sanford to run again at 8 am... oddly, I'm still wearing my bathrobe and eating cereal.
Alex took some good pics... hopefully he will be so kind as to post them.
Woo hoo!
Build a dirt bike!
Race it!
It is awesome!"

Time to turn off the Wayback Machine for a Sec

Well, I've been trying to do this in chronological order, but seeing as how I haven't even gotten out of 2008 I figured I'd stick in this post about the happenings of the past weekend while the memory is still fresh. The event was a lil' hootenany called British in the Blue Ridge, a long running Brit bike rally in Hiawassee, Georgia. We've been going to this for years, all the way back to when George an' I first started screwing around with old bikes. Its one of my favorite events, being incredibly laid back and mostly involving drinking beer and sitting in a creek all day. I was particularly excited this year because I missed the last one due to our race schedule. If you like old British bikes and creek sittin' you can't find a better event. This year we changed things up because there are trails all around the rally site, including a couple George found just twenty minutes or so from camp. Max wasn't able to make it, but Jay brought along his bike. You'll notice a few differences from the previous posts, which will take a long time to catch up to, so I'll just summarize. First, George is present...

...which is good, because back in 2008 (where the ongoing postings are), he was still slowly recovering from his foot mangling. He was out on his Triumph Tr5t

 He was generally having a grand old time. He recently had a kid so was pretty happy to get permission from the wife to abandon the family for a weekend and go play in the woods. The second big change is Jay's bike. He's currently on some bit of fancy modern hoo-ha, having burdened another friend of ours with the Field Pig. He's currently putting together a sufficiently freakish old Greeves based critter, so hopefully he'll rejoin the ranks of the mindlessly anachronistic soon.

And finally, its not overly visible in the pics, but the Stomper is no longer a Triumph T100 based critter, but is in fact now an AJS Model 20 in a modified version of a '50s trials frame.

The first set of trails we went to that day were closed due to logging activity, so we had to hit a set that were closer to camp, but described as "difficult" to "most difficult" which had kinda put us off. In the end we didn't have much to worry and the trails were great, with nice scrabbly climbs, slithery downhills with no real horrors all linked up with nice rolling bits.

Oddly enough it was toughest on Jay's modern mochine, though only because he had vaguely dual sportish tires that just couldn't get a grip. He had to keep speed up as he got to climbs, while he described downhills as particularly "puckering" moments.

 George an' I had no such problems, being on high quality British devices

And that was that. We packed up and retired to the campsite to eat incredible ribs (if you're ever near Blairsville or Young Harris in N. GA., be sure to drop in on Bitter Creek Meat Market on 76, you wont regret it), drink beer, and sit in a creek.

And with that, we'll get back to where I left off in 2008.