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Categories: all aviation bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater Mon, 28 Jul 2008Jesse finally talked me into going out and riding in the dirt a bit, and today was the day. We loaded up and headed out to Tahuya, which is near Tacoma, on the Kitsap Peninsula. It's a little state park that's been set up for offroad vehicles, and seems to be mostly used by dirtbikes and quads. We had Jesse's WR250 and his friend's XR200R in the truck, and I was wearing a hodgepodge of my, Jesse's and the friend's gear. Now, this was a significant day, and I should explain why. When I was growing up in Woodinville, my parents absolutely forbade motorcycles of any kind. There were other kids I knew who were allowed to ride dirtbikes, and it seemed horribly unfair to me that I wasn't given the same opportunity. Unfortunately, most of the kids I knew who rode dirbikes were also, to be blunt, assholes. They seem, through the gathering mists of time, to have been characterized by awful mullet-like haircuts, husky voices, a certain fantastic boastfulness ("I'm a black-belt in karate" sort of thing), and a smug, superior attitude. Between the attitudes (despite all present evidence, I was a scrawny and unpopular kid when I was growing up) and the bike-envy, I essentially grew up hating dirtbikes. In early adulthood, I came to view dirtbikes, and by extension their riders, as these awful noisy things that went around destroying natural areas. It's a classic capital-L Liberal reaction. It was supported by the evidence, though, and it never even crossed my mind that I might one day try riding one offroad. Then, a few years ago, Jesse got a dirtbike. I made the requisite inbred-hick jokes and didn't think much more about it. He seemed to be having a good time with it, but I wasn't interested. After I got into racing this year, I heard an awful lot of people say, "Dirtbike riding really improves your track riding skills." Ok, sure. Still not interested. Finally they got through to me, and last week we made plans to go out. I agreed to go attempt this form of riding that I'd been completely against less than a week earlier. Jesse's friend Eric had a bike to lend in exchange for some much-needed maintenance. So Jesse and I replaced bearings and brake shoes, and adjusted and cleaned and did all the things you really have to do every so often on motorcycles. Once we finally got on the trail, riding Eric's undersprung XR200R, pretty much the first thing I did was crash on the first corner. I saw this seemingly huge vertical wall looming, and stared it down, crashing as surely as if I'd target-fixated on a concrete wall on the freeway. Fortunately, I crashed at about 4 MPH, and the worst damage was to my pride. Heaving and sweating (it wasn't a hot day, but I was already soaked from working muscles I didn't know I had, and I was wearing my effectively non-ventilated road helmet), I picked up the bike, and declared to Jesse as he rode back to investigate, "This isn't fun." He laughed it off, and we kept going. He told me about how he'd had much the same reactions at first, as well. I realized that my mistake on the first crash was that I wasn't looking where I wanted to go, so I worked on that. It got better, but my second crash was basically the same thing. After that, I didn't have any more trouble with crashing due to looking in the wrong place. So, a bit more background here. In street riding, you're working on the assumption that the road surface is solid, and any impediment to traction (such as oil, gravel, rain, snow, etc.) is a call for utmost caution. You train yourself that if you see these things, mental alarm bells go off, and you back way off and go gingerly. Gravel in particular is one of those things that sets off the alarms. Now, on the trail we were riding, there was about 50% coverage with what I will graciously term "gravel." This wasn't your nice, jagged, unlikely-to-roll roadside gravel. No, this was deep puddles of rounded stones that looked to me like gigantic mineralic ball bearings. In other words, exactly the sort of thing that makes my brain flash red strobelights and engages every nerve that will lead to stopping and getting away from this foolish road condition. So, for the entire hour or two we were out, I was fighting deeply ingrained impulses to STOP because I was ABOUT TO DIE. The trails we were following were between 3 and 5 feet wide, and typically involved a sharp curve every 10-20 feet. The curves were massively banked, so it was possible to fly through them quite quickly, although I was going at a grandma's pace. Jesse was very good about stopping and checking that I was still upright, and he wasn't going too fast (although I found that if I let him get ahead of me, I wasn't consuming quite so much dust). However, in addition to being massively banked, they were also covered with these seemingly colossal swamps of overgrown pea gravel ("orange gravel," if you will). Fortunately, it didn't take me too long to figure out that the bike wasn't going to freak out about this stuff if I wasn't. It would slide around a little bit, but in a very controllable way. It would go over little rocks and roots and such without any drama, although the 1991 motorcycle's apparently-original rear shock wasn't doing its job particularly well any more. Unfortunately, my brain wasn't so quick to shut down the alarm bells. On top of all this, despite my book-larnin' about how you're supposed to ride in the dirt, my natural instincts were to adopt street-riding techniques. I stood up over the heavy bumps, but I stood in such a way as I might on a street bike -- as if I was going to sit down again immediately, putting a huge strain on my arms to pull me forward just for a moment. Only I held that position for minutes at a time. Not so good. I put my feet on the pegs with the balls of my feet taking the weight. When dirt riding, you want the weight in the middle of your foot. When I could actually convince myself to do this (or more like remember to do it), things were easier, but that amounted to about 5% of the time. In order to ride correctly, I had to consciously override years of training and instinct, and that just didn't happen very often. Among the kit I had on, the one piece of my own gear I was using was my helmet. I tried Eric's helmet, but it was definitely too small, and adding a headache into the mix seemed like a terrible idea. The goggles I had didn't really fit in the cutout of my road helmet, but it was a better system than trying to use my faceshield, and at least the helmet wasn't attempting to compress my skull. The problem is, offroad helmets are positively breezy compared to road helmets, so my head was swaddled in its own steambath within a few minutes of setting off. Now perhaps, you can imagine me, sweating my way down the trail, turning sharp curves every few seconds (we might have hit 15 MPH in one of the straight sections, so at least we weren't going too fast), brain screaming, "GRAVEL! YOU'RE GOING TO FALL!" the whole time, arms and chest trembling with unaccustomed effort, sucking in clouds of dust as I attempt to tame this sliding, slithering, wobbling motorbike. It was... passable. I made it. My last fall resulted in a banged-up leg, but nothing broken. But at no point did I even approach near the thought, "This is kinda fun." No, it was just work. I was working to make sure I didn't fall so I could get back to the truck, get off this bucking hellbeast, and breathe some air that had much less of a mineral component. It was not enjoyable. And in a very important way, I was horribly disappointed by that. I had really hoped that this would be an activity where I could just let loose, and have a really good time. Stop worrying about everything. Just have fun. Instead, I was thrust into a situation where there was literally a small but solid (6-8" diameter) tree directly in my path much of the time. Every turn was composed of a traction situation designed to induce panic. Working with the bike was a chore to be endured. I did learn (or at least re-learn) things. Looking where you want to go is vitally important. Traction is not an absolute thing, and some traction is good enough. Armor is good. (If I weren't wearing very substantial boots and shin armor, I'd have more damage than a big bruise on my leg.) And, there were cool parts. Once I enforced the rigid discipline of "look where you want to go," it was amazing how easily the bike could ride up these walls in the corners, and over obstacles that looked at first to be completely unsurpassable. I didn't have to think about it at all by the time I was done, the bike was just going where it needed to go. I managed to go the whole ride without bashing anything like a tree or stump (and there were countless opportunities, with a couple close calls). Despite the fact that I'm writing this with my faintly throbbing leg (which inspired the title for this entry) elevated to keep the swelling down, I didn't really come away with any damage. An ex-girlfriend's motto is, "I'll try anything twice." There's a certain logic in that, and I'll stick to it for dirt riding. It's obvious to me how the skills transfer from dirt to track. I don't want to give up on something just because I wasn't immediately skillful at it on the first try. So I'll try it again. Maybe in a few months. After my leg feels a bit better. Posted at 23:28 permanent link category: /motorcycle I took a look at the dyno charts Ducati Seattle sent me home with, and all the runs that look reasonable (ie, real runs instead of "riding at road pace" warmup runs) run up past 16 HP. That's definitely not my bike: we saw a lot of 12.x HP, and 14.0 peak. I'll have to check in with Ducati Seattle again to see whose files I actually have... Posted at 08:21 permanent link category: /motorcycle Categories: all aviation gadgets misc motorcycle theater Written by Ian Johnston. Software is Blosxom. Questions? Please mail me at reaper at obairlann dot net. |