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Who to Ride With, Where to Ride
Burl’s Ride - Terlingua ... like Baja ... only a whole lot closer!
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[QUOTE="Tony Eeds, post: 1320114, member: 32023"] OK ... it has been too long. Let’s see if we can kick this in gear and wrap up the day here ... Where was I ... oh yea ... my karma was on reserve Well, he1 hesitated going through a steep wash and his bike dies. Mark started his bike and rode it across as I helped he1 across the ditch on foot. Did this bump my karma up out of reserve? Apparently not, because about 50 feet shy of the intersection with the road, my bike gets tired and lays down. Again, no photos, so I guess it didn’t happen. Mark helped get the beast back on her feet and as I knew she was likely flooded ... We waited ... And waited some more All the while folks passed us by heading on towards [b]lunch[/b]! There is a problem here as lunch was being served at the rock house and it was to be fajitas, which are always particularly yummy! Come on baby, we have miles to ride and lunch to eat ... please start ... Nope Dang it! We waited some more, tried again, still no luck ... Mark and I decided to push her out to the road and at least be able to ponder the problem without having to stand there in the way of other people’s progress, so move her we did. Once we achieved the road, we poked about a bit around the site and waited some more. The problem with a DR is they are electric start and they do not have a kick starter, so you have to be careful when they are cantankerous, and El Petrolero was cantankerous. Nothing would light her fire ... nothing ... Matt and Mark decided to tow her and see if they could do some good ... I told them to knock themselves out. Now is when I should have unleashed the camera ... Matt (or a XR650R) was going to attempt to pull Mark on my DR. The first shot out of the bag was telling. Matt simply pulled Mark onto his side and spun his rear tire spraying rocks at Mark while EL P defiantly laid there and laughed. We got her back up and they headed off up a hill. Sometime during all the laughter and commotion, some folks had arrived on a mishmash of vehicles just puttering about. One was a 4x4 Quad ... this gets better ... Matt and Mark come flying (at maybe 5 MPH) back down the hill and ... nothing ... when she slides to a halt on the concrete. Remember the quad? Well, we had a willing volunteer to pull Mark ... assuming he could figure how to get the quad into reverse ... Now, we should have wondered at this point but we didn’t ... On the second attempt, she did start and sputtered to life. Mark with a grin returned victorious! I jumped on to run her out a bit and she promptly died when the back tire hit the first small step up ... there is a clue here ... but no one saw it. Frustrated, we towed her again and I rode Mark’s bike to where she was sputtering and coughing. Mark kept her running to charge the battery while I opened up the air box to check the air filter. It looked fine. In fact the bottom half was clean ... clean as a new filter. Perhaps the problem was the fuel standing even with the inlet of the carb in the bottom of the air box! We laid her over and quickly drained the gas and I pulled the drain plug on the air box for good measure. Well, guess who quit sputtering? Yep, that would be El P! OK, so finally we mounted up and chased off after the balance of our crew that had long since gone on. Time lost ... 30 minutes or so Lessons learned ... too many to count, but the biggie is that the Safari tank holds enough gas ABOVE the carb that they are capable of pushing the needle down when El P gets tired that the first action, even before extracting myself is to [b]turn off the gas on the high side of the tank[/b]! No ifs ands or buts ... immediately! So, we were back on the road and we rode like mad men chasing lunch. The balance of section two of the day was familiar roads, so we stretched it out a bit. I even used a few berms to turn El P for grins. There is nothing quite like sliding 400+ pounds into a berm and wondering if it will hold up to the impact. We survived ... Onward to section three! Hitting the asphalt at South County Road, we slipped westward to the gas stop so Matt and Mark could burp their tanks. El P still had a semi full load. Section three is always a lot of fun because it starts with a worn out double track left over from a century gone by. Imagine this ... a series of 9 inch tall curbs spaced about 15 feet apart and covered with baseball and softball size rocks all at about a 20 degree angle. Add in a little off camber, pucker bushes and the occasional butt puckering drop off on one side or the other and you can now visualize the first 5 or so miles of the track. This section was made to separate the good, the bad and the ugly. El P was the ugly at this point ... too much weight and not enough speed contributed to a situation where we crashed headlong into the face of the step ups one after another, never quite able to begin skipping across the tops. I quit counting the number of times the forks bottomed ... We could have been the main comedy act at that point. We skittered across the track, back and forth, barely in control and with little or no sense of grace ... but we made it ... we made the crest of the last hill ... with only something like maybe a thousand or so dabs ... but no [b]naps[/b]. I can safely say that no one that day was more pleased to see the valley on the back side of that hill than I. Matt and Mark gamely followed, suffering the onslaught of rocks that El P kept spitting out with her rear tire. At this point, I knew the next stopping point and headed there as fast as I could follow the track. Soon we arrived ... El P and Marks XR400 [img]http://teeds.smugmug.com/photos/419209521_AdxNG-M.jpg[/img] We made the top of the road above Lone Star Mine. This is always a Kodak moment ... An aside ... will they still be Kodak moments when every camera is digital and all of them are made in China? Inquiring minds need to know. In any case ... we stopped ... we snapped [img]http://teeds.smugmug.com/photos/419209782_qYzW3-M.jpg[/img] [img]http://teeds.smugmug.com/photos/419210011_CjDmS-M.jpg[/img] [img]http://teeds.smugmug.com/photos/419210488_CmMMC-M.jpg[/img] [img]http://teeds.smugmug.com/photos/419210707_9EN2g-M.jpg[/img] Did you notice the killer view out the window? This is because of the fact that the building is at the top of a ridge. A ridge that has a steep decent. On the decent there were two rocks exactly 1490 mm (58.7 in) apart. You ask why I know this? Because this spacing matches the wheelbase of my DR, that is why and these two rocks brought me to a rapid and complete halt and we all know what bikes do when there is zero forward motion and the rider’s feet are not on the ground. Well, she flooded again although I turned off the gas and she only leaned over ... she didn’t fall. How do I know this? Because I was able to right her by myself, a task nigh on impossible if she is laying down good. Well, I knew the plug was out of the air box so I rode her on down the hill in silence, trying to fire her with momentum every now and again ... cough, sputter, sputter, skid we went. Oh well, we made it and she fired up, so now only about 15 minutes of asphalt separated us from lunch. So off we flew ... A disclaimer ... I am not usually such a lame rider. It is something about rocky downhills combined with massive drop offs and big bikes that tosses grace and aplomb out the window ... what can I say ... of course, if I would ride more often. Back in a bit ... [/QUOTE]
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Burl’s Ride - Terlingua ... like Baja ... only a whole lot closer!
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