Jeepskool and Big Silly Mining Equipment!

July 2009, we were back off to Ohio. This year's race was no longer at Mid-Ohio VMD because of a flap between Ahrma and the AMA, which was fine, because we went to Jeepskool for another "Chicago" Jerry course. As with most of his courses it had a little of everything, and was a really fast track. It had quick woods riding, with decent ups, downs and twisty bits through the trees,

But the best part was when the course dropped down into the pit bottom, which had some really fast dirt road sections,

And the craziest bit of all, pea gravel that was like riding on ball bearings. It was fun stuff, but completely unforgiving. If you dropped off your line and lost speed you sank down into it and then had to fight to get back on top, weird stuff. Here's Max doing it properly,

And me, again proving I always know how to screw up in front of a camera. Suspension loaded, wheels legs and smoke going every direction but straight, bike and rider in a catywumpus skid,

Good times! Really, it was a damned good race.

We had so much fun, and were so excited that we hadn't been rained on that we signed up to check trials, which we'd never done before, and found that was fun too...until it started raining and we got soaked. Fed up with rain we loaded wet bikes, tents and riders into the truck and drove to scenic Cleavland for a dry hotel and a wild night on the town, which in that 'burg is a relative thing. But! on the way back my nerdiness got the better of me and I subjected Max to the Big Musky Bucket, a nice piece of mining heritage.

I had saved a place for this thing in my brain because I had seen a picture somewhere of an entire marching band in the bucket,

So to impress everyone with how big we are, Max decided to take on the role of an ENTIRE MARCHING BAND! He's Huge, I know!

Actually, he's doing a crap impression of a marching band, but he was probably just confused because we weren't getting rained on at the moment. Hurrah!

Happy Saturday at Hardrock!

Just a quick dispatch from the present. I know all the reminiscence is incredibly fascinating, so I'll keep this recent stuff short....well, that and we took pretty much no pics of the riding. Yesterday we popped down to Hardrock for some general purpose riding and machine testing. George had been itching to ride and check his jetting, Max had just put his bike back together after yanking the head off after Texas this spring, Hollywood's schedule hadn't really allowed him to get out since Durhamtown last fall, and I wanted to test my jetting and to see if I had sorted my engine's horrible oil leaks. So bright-ish and early-ish we loaded up like in the old days (the new van, Shark 10's, instrument cluster is off being fixed and we don't have the title from the guvment just yet) and convoyed down to Ocala.

The Rollercoaster was off limits, having been turned over to the baha buggy guys, which is understandable seeing as they pay much more than us dirtbag bike riders. Plus, the harescramble course had been shortened by over half. So instead we mainly plugged around on the tracks, which is why we don't have the usual "hey man, watch this" pics. In fact, here's the only riding pic.

Everything else is mainly shots of us taking breaks or just getting back from riding.

 Ahhh. Hardrock, Spanish moss and old bikes. Truly Florida at its best.

A happy lil' AJS

Nice family portrait

Portrait of the Max as a Triumph Rider

Hollywood's Taco of the Bull

A flattering pic of George

And that was that. We ate mediocre BBQ, and headed back to town. All the bikes survived...all the riders survived. It was a good day. A really, really good day.

Good Bye, Blue Dinosaur, And Godspeed.

Its time to mark a passing of a loved one, a transition, the end of an era. The old crusty van has been sold. Yes, a van. We had a van. A creaky old van. At first I didn't like the van that much. The first time I saw it I knew it would one day break our hearts. In the end, though, I came to really like that van. I guess spending hour after hour in it and driving thousands of miles to races all over the eastern United States will do that. It was bought for a few hundred bucks from a government liquidation auction back when I was recovering from a broken leg. I had other things on my mind, I thought it was gonna be a money pit. George and Max were really excited, they said I had a bad attitude. At first I never really drove it, not that I much could, the first couple trips I was still in a cast or boot. However, I'll never forget the first time I did drive it. The steering was....approximate. The suspension was more of a concept than a real thing. The tires were terrifying "used" jobbies. The brakes were infernal devices. When a truck would pass you it felt like the van was gonna get blown over. It also felt more like a steam powered device than a diesel, as if you had to throw on more coal if you wanted to accelerate. But it grew on me. I couldn't help it, the thing was just too damned jolly. As it kept going, trip after trip it's stock definitely began to rise in my eyes. I started spending money on it without grumbling. I made a bracket to mount the spare tire on the front grill all safari style because we thought that was just the coolest. But it was Max who really adopted it, aside from the fact that it was unceremoniously dumped at his house after each trip, he had an almost nurturing relationship with it. He trolled auto salvage yards for better seats and interior parts, sewed a cushion for the rear bench, laid carpet.

Its usually only in the background of pictures. I don't think we ever really specifically took pics of it until we needed some to sell it.

It really was a good van. It could haul four guys, their stuff, their bikes, a smoker, a grill....

It was a rolling hotel. Mobile workshop. Crap weather dining hall. It had a raised floor in the back so it had tons of space to store pretty much everything you could need for a weekend's racing. Its contents had been refined to a science, and you could get to a race and have camp set up in style in literally minutes. We recently did an event and took a different vehicle...I didn't have my stuff...I wasn't happy, I missed the van. It really only let us down once, on the way to the Carolina Boy's event its injection pump shit the bed which made it a fairly expensive weekend...had to haul it back home on a flatbed tow truck from Brunswick, Ga.

Other than that it did the things an old van should be expected to do. It leaked oil, leaked in the rain. But it began to get cutesy nicknames: the Blue Armadillo, the Big Blue Dinosaur, the Nambla Van. Real terms of endearment stuff.

In the end, sentiment only goes so far. Sitting in the pub one night Max an' I totaled up how much we'd spent on gas the past season. It only got 11ish MPG. It was a horrifying number. We realized the difference in mileage we could get with a newer vehicle would cover the cost of a new van. So we sold it off to finance a recently acquired newer, more expensive government liquidation auction van.

 Its just a new version of the old van, still a rumbly diesel, but all modern-y with lots of electrical mystery boxes. Its shiny, has real suspension, brakes etc. Hell! the radio even works! It runs great but is currently a bit of a problem child. The Air Force motorpool we got it from had been stealing parts off it for a while. But, this time around I don't mind it being a little troublesome, I guess that's just fitting...something of a family resemblance I suppose. Goodbye, old van. Thanks for all the miles.

The Hell of High Water!

May, 2009, Arkansas. This was exciting stuff, people. All three of us were headed to a race. Not just any race, mind, but one of the Ahrma ISDT qualifiers. The original International Six Days Trial began about a century ago and was intended as a rigorous test of rider and machine. Its still going, and is one of the longest running events in motorsport. Ahrma took the concept and broke it up into 3 seperate 2 day events to be a little easier on the bikes and riders, but only just. For an old bike, this is one of the toughest tests of reliability you'll find. Each day is a solid high mileage ride, but its punctuated by special tests, which are timed sections of varying length and terrain. In fact, the whole event is timed, in a way. Everything is done to a set schedule, from when you put your bike into impound, to when you can get it out the morning of the race, starting on your set time, and passing through various check points on your minute. If, say, you start on the 21st minute, you can get your bike out of impound literally just a few minutes before, and then you can't start it till your minute, 9:21am in our case. As the bikes come out of Parc Ferme (impound) you get lined up and steadily push your bike up as the people on minutes ahead of you take off in turn. On your minute you start your bike from cold and have to go a set distance in a minute. If you can't get your bike started before the next minute, you get a time penalty added on. Then, instead of a 3-5 mile course like in CC, you ride over all manners of surfaces for 20-30 miles till a time check or test section, which again, you must reach and pass through on your minute. Then its more transfer section milage, and on, and on. The tests are timed, so the goal is to get through the sections as quick as possible and incur no added time penalties to finish the weekend with the total lowest time. Its a LOT of riding. A typical Ahrma ISDT is well over a hundred miles. Its also a LOT of fun. Keeping a bike and yourself running over that kind of distance you would think would be stressful, but in fact is ridiculously satisfying and gives you the time to really get into your riding. Currently, these are some of my favorite events, but back in ol' 2009, I wasn't sure how bike and rider would hold up. We rented at van for the trip, and nearly huffed ourselves silly from the gasoline fumes from the bikes (well, if I'm honest I think it was mainly MY bike).

Perhaps we needed a break from the gasoline, but as we neared the race site we pulled off for a moment at a scenic stream to decompress a bit and skip stones, just 'cause.

Aside from allowing us to get high on fumes for hours on end, the van would also be home to me and George for the weekend. We'd had an epiphany at some point and realized that sleeping in a tent in a field wasn't as much fun as it used to be, and that a solid, weather tight space you didn't have to set up or take down was a truly remarkable concept. Oh what a nice decision that was. That night the gray skies closed up completely, the wind picked up and it started pouring. I was awoken by the sudden onset of the hell-tempest and the billowing EZ-up just in time to watch it get picked up by the wind and flipped over the van. George was dead to the world so I woke up Max, who sloshed his way out of his tent, so we could retrieve the shelter and lash it down. This was just not a good start. I crawled back in the van and lay awake with visions of Carolina dancing in my head. The next morning did nothing to ease those fears, it had kept up all night and was still looking gray and rainy. We made coffee and sloshed over to Parc Ferme to retrieve our bikes. All three of us started on a line, 21st minute as you can see from the green stickers on our front plates, and got moving. The start led you over a creek on a bridge made from a flat bed tractor trailer that had been set to span the creek.

From there it scrambled up and down through the woods to the first creek crossing. This was pretty exciting because it wasn't a ditch or puddle, but a real live flowing creek. This was new, so unsure of technique I just gunned it and plowed through. A quick look back to make sure George got across and on we went. My fears about the conditions of the course were fading. It was mostly rocks and scrabbly climbs, with not much mud. Plus, since we weren't doing laps the course didn't get chewed up. There was only one section of sliminess right before the first special test, but all in all it was a good fun ride to that point. Coming to the test somewhere around my minute I didn't have a chance to wait for George and headed straight in. I was beginning to have trouble seeing, we were up on a mountain at this point and were in the weather. Rain would give way to a heavy misting fog which completely obscured my sight, at one point a downed tree suddenly appeared through the streaks on my glasses, throwing me off and sending rider and bike sliding down the trail. By slowing up I got through the test and met back up with George. We got back on the transfer section headed down to camp, lunch and the afternoon stages.
With rain continuing, we had a pretty good ride until we came to a line of bikes stopped at a creek crossing. Walking up we saw the problem was that with all the rain, the creeks were rising...fast. The creek was too deep and swift to ride across, so groups of 5 and 6 guys were dragging bikes across one at a time. What was quickly becoming a pretty out of the ordinary race had just begun.
Up ahead of us, Max was bombing along, he had gotten through the creek we were at while it was just barely still passable and came to a spot were a couple creeks converged just above a waterfall. There seemed like a lot of activity there, too, as the creeks were rapidly getting near impassable. On the opposite bank, one of the riders that had just made it across motioned for him to gas it. Gunning the throttle, he just made it across. The reason for all the activity was because that crossing had just washed one bike over the waterfall and they were fighting to get another rider and bike out of the flood swollen creek. Max had just barely made it, but he was now clear of the unbridged creek crossings, headed back across the trailer bridge and back to camp.
Back at the creek George an' I were stuck at, the turn to try ferrying my bike across had come. It took six of us. Three on one side pushing and dragging to mid stream, to hand me and it off to the guys on the other side. We got one more bike across, but with the water visibly still rising quick, we had to call it with George and all the other riders that had come up still on the other bank. Luckily they had the sweep rider on their side, who knew the trails, so he took them back up the mountain and around on the road. I remember feeling bad for George because it meant his days racing was over, but I didn't at that point realize mine was too.
My side of the creek was a pretty sad sight. All the bikes had been under water up to their engines, and even though they weren't running while being dragged across the creek, they were thoroughly swamped. All but one of us got our bikes going, and most of the group went on ahead to let the officials know what had happened and that a big part of the field was coming the long way around. With one rider unable to get his bike running, I stayed behind for a bit to see if we could get some life out of it, to no avail, so he started walking the trail out and I rode on to let the officials know. That's when I came to the creeks that had nearly stopped Max earlier. At this point they were completely impassable, I could barely even get myself across to see if there was some better crossing. After the first creek, there was a foot bridge slightly upstream, but there was no way to get my bike across that first creek by my self.
I bactracked up to a pipeline road I'd crossed earlier and headed down it to see if I could get out that way, but just came to another impassable creek. It began to occur to me that I was trapped. I leaned my bike up against a tree just as another rider came walking up, his bike was also swamped somewhere out there. Not knowing the area, we figured we weren't too far from the trailer bridge so decided to walk cross country along the main creek to see how to get out, only to be greeted by this,

We were officially stranded. The other rider headed downstream several miles through the woods on foot to eventually reach the road after an attempt to pass a line across the swollen creek failed. As I pondered my options, loathe to leave my bike out there with no idea when the creeks would allow me to retrieve it, a group of four wheelers came by, carrying the rider I'd stayed behind to help at the first crossing. They were confident they could get me out, one of them having a winch to get me across the creek my bike was stuck at. There followed the most bizarre and enjoyable ride I have ever had since I began racing. We had to make use of the winch a good bit, both for my bike and for the other four wheelers, at one point I remember being on the downstream side of my bike to keep it upright as water was over the top of the tank. At some point, confidence that we would get out eased my worrying, and we began having fun. The rider with the winch was on a pretty hot shit four wheeler, and we began bombing along the trails. It was turning into a good time, I submarined the bike a few times at creeks, but each time I would pull the plugs, eject a jet of water from the cylinders, and start it up. It was such a good bike. The ride was a good one, but to avoid a couple creeks we couldn't get over, it was a long way over the mountain and back down the valley. At 7:30pm, having left on my time at 9:21 that morning, and after nearly nine hours of continuous riding, my Triumph and I made it back to camp under our own power. It felt great. Max had gone on to survive the afternoon stages, but George and I had effectively DNF'd and we decided not to run the second day.

 Personally, I was exhausted, and wasn't sure how the bike would feel about another days abuse. So I poured myself and George another cup of coffee to watch Max start off for a shortened second day's stages. Which he finished with verve and aplomb for his second Gold of the weekend.

 We were pretty sure we had been cursed, considering our luck with the weather. But it was a good race, and despite a lil' ol' flash flood we were hooked on the ISDT's. They really are the best test of a bike and rider.