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.
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