nklr- ride report - stardate 070800

[Dash Weeks]

Well the maiden thumpage was yesterday. If you are just tuning in.... Da'Bomb is my new KLR650, new to me as it was purchased in March (A2 with 31051miles), even newer to me as it has been in pieces since March, even newer that nearly everything was upgraded. Dreams were played out in the past few months, "What If's" were explored, much research was conducted and an intimate relationship was melded. A detailed account of the process will follow as I get things sorted out in my head. In the mean time, I thought I'd share my maiden thumpage with you. Daryl, my neighbor, my best friend and fellow KLR owner (all one person) and I got lost in the mountains around Los Alamos, New Mexico. Daryl being native of Los Alamos was supposed to know where we were going.... Well OK it wasn't all his fault. Daryl knew of a great 4X4 road that we could start out on. Well we leave the safety of our nice washboard gravel road and head up the first technical hill. Daryl led here and promptly showed me what line not to choose. No real damage to the bike but his ego was bruised, as he got off in a hurry before crushing his leg under "OSO". I gave his bike the name "OSO", Daryl hasn't quite adopted it but..... So I picked a line and passed by him as he caught his breath. He couldn't start in the middle of this hill so he had to carefully descend and try another run at it. We ascended a couple of mesas and descended into the subsequent canyons. I'm still happy to be staying on my rolling pig until.... Well that sand was not ordinary sand, it was indeed quick sand, it grabbed my front tire and was compelled to hold onto it until I get off the bike, leak gas on my new tank finish and put a scar on my left shroud. Sigh... My first get off, doing about 10 MPH.... Sigh... that was stupid.... Sigh.... Awe Screw it that's why I bought it. Tooling right along.... Daryl's memory of the road quickly came back to him.... We were in the bottom of a canyon with very soft and deep sugar sand. We managed to follow the canyon a ways until we just got too tired to fight the sand anymore.... We rested a spell and headed back where we came. Da'Bomb boiled over as we were trying to stay afloat the top of the sand in 1st and very occasionally 2nd gear. Floating the front wheel was very important and turning with the rear wheel was the only way to stay afloat... that wasn't that much fun.... We get to the canyon wall and start our ascent. I was leading and Daryl was chewing on dust and roost. I had this canyon trail licked. Right up until I got to this spectacularly technical, rocky, mostly washed out hill. Daryl was too close and I needed to teach him a valuable lesson... Here's what I did... I carefully calculated the best place on the hill to pop a wheelie, up on the left side of a washed out section using a nice root to give me a boost... I launched the front wheel. Carefully laid it over on it side cushioning its fall with my right leg.... perfect. Daryl grabs a handful of brake, and gives me a nudge with his front wheel. He lays "OSO" down and the left mirror just jumped off the perch.... Both of us scramble to upright the leaking beasts, tired, out of breath and laughing every second. Had to descend to go at it again.... Damn and I was half way there. Ok exit that side of the mountains and head for the pumice mines. Remember where Daryl had his first rapid dismount?.... Well I just had to make him feel better so I let my front wheel grab onto a rock and twist the controls right out of my hands. Mild dismount but my right leg is still sore from 1/2 hour ago. Got into some great old overgrown logging roads. Then we got into some of the mountains that were badly burned. Sterile in many places and very disparaging. I didn't mention this but my battery was dead. I stalled that beast on the flat, in the burnt and I'm wearing new MX boots to boot. Got it bumped and learned that lesson quickly... DARYL WE NEED TO REST AT THE TOP OF A HILL NEXT TIME. Tooling along... Here's where we got lost and I mean lost. Couldn't find the overgrown trails anymore. Couldn't even guess where they were supposed to go. Didn't want to backtrack in the spirit of true adventure either. So we were thumping along, blazing through burnt forest and whooo hooo an old road. Well... follow any road DOWN a canyon and you'll always end up in a better place than in the other direction.... Lost... but not on top of a mountain, cold and wet, and lost. Oh yeah it was raining at this point.... Follow this road North for about 6 miles. This ended up being a 40 MPH road with killer jumps at every wash. I forgot to tell you about one other technical portion that defied reason... I can't figure out how we got down that without killing ourselves. This was true Sherpa territory... Edge of cliffs in many places, and when not a cliff then just a really steep bank that dropped for about 100 feet with burned trees all over. Ash by the way is good for traction. I had high centered in one place, had to pucker through some really large rocks in about ten million other places, grit my teeth at the switch backs and close my eyes and hope in many more places than I care to admit. OK OK so were on a great logging road at this point and we cross a cattle guard... Huh?.... A cattle guard... there's no ranches way up here.... HHMMM.... WOW a gate and then a paved road. Hey Daryl, do you know where the hell we are? "Um... well... yeah we have to go this way" We see a large Bobcat on the way down the canyon road, that's cool. Nice twisty paved road all down-hill. No traffic in either direction, starting to get dark... Daryl knew exactly where we were and life was good. Until we get to the bottom of the hill. There was a cable that crossed the road and on the other side of the cable was a main road to get home. See.... we entered an Indian reservation from the wrong direction.... I can't even imagine what would have happened to us if we were caught. Both of us packin' ,on injun land, after dark, on Dirt Bikes and both of us white (non-hispanic, non-native american)... Good thing we didn't get caught eh? Check both directions of main road and then lift the cable high enough to shimmy the bikes under. Got home, threw on some brats, threw back a few suds, iced down my battered knee, fixed up my battered bike for todays ride and fell asleep totally exhausted. That trip was Da'Bomb's first 51 miles.. It took us over 5 hours to come full circle from bike in garage in pieces to bike in garage in pieces again. Broke the tabs on the right shroud, scratched the finish nearly everywhere, dented the tank with the hand-guard mount (pro-rally's), thrashed the finish from leaking gas..... (Krylon Clear Satin is not gas resistant, yuck what a mess) My new s-bend wasn't in from SuperTrapp, so I rigged up the original with my silencer... it couldn't take the abuse and was very loose when I inspected it. My top t-clamp was twisted in relation to the bottom clamp (ouch that made wounded knee at little big rock in the same dismount). Had some fixin to do... Found a dangerous high speed wobble to figure out. HHMMMM... late enough..... I'm practically asleep as you must be as well. Perhaps later I'll get around to writing about today's ride.... Much fun.... D606 with K139 is an excellent combination of tires. Suspension needed a bit of tweaking. Engine was strong but I didn't care since I was up and running and it would have been fun at 100 MPH or 10 MPH, well the dismounts wouldn't have been fun at 100 MPH. The Speedo is off a bit, I didn't have a measured mile or a GPS to determine that... See .... There was this African Swallow that flew with me for a spell to determine my speedo offset. laterZ Dash