Dreaming of Dakar

This weekend marks another big milestone along my journey.  I am entering my first enduro race tomorrow!  The past couple of weeks I have been busy working on the deck (so Jane will let me out of the house for the weekend) and getting the bike ready.  A couple days after I got it I had it stripped down in the garage.

The biggest thing was I put on a street legal kit (turn signals, brake light, horn and mirror) put on a new rear fender (old one was broken) and generally checked over the bike.  I found quite a few loose and missing bolts but have not found any serious issues.  It seems like it should be a good bike, of course at this point I had only ridden it a few laps around the yard.

Just the other day I finally got everything bolted back together and got it plated and insured.  Finally it was ready to ride.  I took it for a quick trip into town to have lunch with a couple of friends and then after work took it out to the trails for my first real ride on it.

I have to say I am amazed.  The bike makes me look like a much better rider.  Granted, nobody is going to confuse me with David Knight but hopefully I won't be going so slow I am in everybody's way.

So, I am heading out this afternoon to Sandisfield, MA for the "Mudslinger Enduro" tomorrow morning.  My goal is to just finish.  For those unfamiliar with an enduro it isn't just an all out race.  You are given target speeds for each part of the course and you are supposed to ride at that pace.  They then throw in surprise checkpoints and you loose points if you are early or late.  However, on some sections they will give a target speed that not even the best riders can keep so everybody looses points so speed is still important.  If you are more than an hour behind the target time it is called "houring out" and you are done.  So, my goal is to stay within the hour.

If I have 3G coverage tonight I may post an update tonight from my camp site.

Can't believe it has been over a month since the event and I am finally just now getting around to continuing the story.  So to make sure I get this written down while it is still somewhat fresh in my mind here is the rest of the story uninterrupted with no commercial breaks....

We had just finished lunch and I was beginning to warm up a bit and feel somewhat human again.  Robb's wife Heather had met us at the lunch stop so he was able to change into fresh dry clothes.  I was a bit jealous!  I did have a spare pare of gloves in my backpack and put them on but otherwise I would have to make due with the same rain soaked gear.  The organizers mandate you take at least 30 minutes at the lunch stop and I don't think we were there much longer than that.  We hit the road again feeling a little refreshed.

Almost immediately I began to shiver again.  I had warmed up at the stop but with my cold damp gear any wind chilled me.  Luckilly there were only a few miles on the roads before we hit the next trail section.  By this time the rain had stopped so at least we were not getting any wetter and with the slower speeds of the trail along with the fact that I was physically working harder kept me warm.

Most of the afternoon trails were absolutely wonderful.  They reminded me of a lot of the class IV roads we have in New Hampshire, just old and no longer maintained roads.  However, in New Hampshire when you find a good road like that it lasts 1 or 2 miles.  We would go 20 or 30 miles without even crossing a paved road.  Much of it was rough and rocky and most importantly NOT muddy so it had good traction.  I was still the slowest rider of our group but on these I didn't feel like I was slowing us down quite as badly as early in the day.  There were a lot of other dirt bike riders in the area who were not in the event so evidently this was a popular riding spot.  I wish I knew where this area was because I wouldn't mind going back there to do some riding again.

Of course after getting comfortably on these roads we got to other trail sections that were greasy slippery mud again.  I had lowered my tire pressues down to around 15psi after slipping around a lot in the morning.  Brad was quite concerned about this since he was afraid I was going to get pinch flats from sharp rocks at this pressure.  I understood his concern but I felt the added traction was worth the risk.  I was running the Kenda "Tough Tube" intertubes and have never had a problem with them (knock on wood).  The lower pressure did help but this is something I am going to have to work on to get comfortable.

Along with the muddy bits there were of course some deep water holes.  After the insanely long 1200M stretch we went through in the morning I no longer had much concern over going through water.  Of course it is when you get confident that problems arrise.  There were a couple that were much deeper than I expected.  On one I almost dropped the bike while it was still running.  Dropping a running bike into water can be a very bad thing if water gets sucked into the engine.  It can take quite a bit of work getting things running again.  Throughout the day we passed a few other teams who were trying to get a bike going after this.  I am happy to say that all 3 of our bikes made it with no water issues!  However I did get stuck a couple times and needed a hand getting out of the water.

By late afternoon the sky had actually began to clear into a very nice cool summer day.  This was absolutely perfect riding weather and it was a great ride.  It is hard to believe at thsi point we had been riding nearly constantly for 12 hours.

Around 6pm we were getting close to the next stop where Jane was going to meet up with us.  Brad had mentioned he was getting really low on fuel and his bike started sputtering.  We knew we were getting close so he managed to get it fired a couple times and would go another kilometer or so and it would die again.  Good things we were prepared and had planned for this.  My DRZ has an oversized 4 gallon (about 16L) tank on it so the plan was I would make sure to have more than enough fuel and a siphon hose.  This of course made my already heavy bike a little heavier but it worked out well.  We had a little trouble getting the hose down to where it would pick up fuel but other than that we had Brad up and going again in a few minutes.

Jane was waiting for us as planned at Coe Hill.mud  She said that pretty much all the bikes she had seen recently were meeting up with their support trucks and loading up for the day here.  We were of course going to still push on.  Brad was especially eager to get going, being a finisher of the event the previous time it was held 2 years ago he really wanted to finish again.  We knew that the cutoff time at Camel Chute was 7:30, since we were the last team to leave with a start time of 31 minutes after the first team we hopped they would allow us to continue on if we got there as late as 8:00.  Either way we had quite a way to go and needed to get going.  We fueled up from the cans in the truck, I downed a gatorade from the cooler and off we went.

Just past Coe Hill we did make a bit of a wrong turn, or more to the point missed turning off of the road and on to a trail on an old railroad bed that paralleled the road.  Luckilly we discovered this fairly soon and were back on track.  The railroad bed trail was very fast and a lot of fun.  There was a lot of this and also some hydro line trail that was rocky but otherwise lots of fun to ride as well.  This all went on for miles and miles.  I would occasionally glance at the clock and realize that 8pm was quickly approaching.  I wasn't sure what the mileage was to the Camel Chute checkpoint but it seemed to never come.

8:00 arrived and we were still on the trail.  Robb was leading at the time and pulled over for a break.  At this point we knew it was official that we would not be able to do the last bit of trail but were satisfied that we had given it a good shot with our riding since Coe Hill.  This was the first time we stopped since then and had been making good progress but our slow pace early in the day with the rain was catching up with us.  It was still a lovely evening and still had more good riding ahead.

It turns out that we were even farther from Camel Chute than I had realized.  It was another hour later when we pulled off of the last trail section onto a paved road.  At exactly that time the background on my GPS switched to the dark nighttime mode which it does at sunset.  A couple miles down the road we got to the checkpoint where they jokingly told us we "just barely missed the cutoff".  Another team was at the checkpoint when we got there so evidently we were not far behind them on the trail.  Other than them we had only seen 1 other team who was fixing a drowned out bike about an hour before.

The "bail route" from Camel Chute was supposed to only take 20 minutes or so, I think it took us closer to 30.  Up to this point I had still felt really good, amazing since I didn't sleep the night before and had been up for about 36 hours.  Once the sun set however I found I could barely see the road.  The last bit of the bail route went through a narrow winding gravel road and I had slowed down to crawl speed.  It might have been better to have Robb or Brad lead for the last bit but I think they were just as tired as I was.

Then at 9:40 PM, just over 17 hours later we arrived at the Dacre Community Center.

We got cleaned up and had a couple beers but that was about all any of us could handle at this point.  My wonderful wife Jane had set up the tent and had everything ready (thank you sweetie!) so I was off to bed for some long overdue sleep.

The next morning we got another picture of us looking much better.

Looking at my bike the next day I realized why I couldn't see the road!  I need to remember to clean my headlight during rides like this.

as this post is already longer than I had planned I will save my closing thoughts until later.

Sorry, been a busy couple of weeks and I have not gotten back to my Paris to Dacre story. Hope to do that soon. Since most of my summer has been spent getting ready for the P2D my home improvement projects have gotten behind. I was supposed to start building a deck on the back of the house in the spring but never seemed to find the time to get started. Finally last weekend I got started for real.

The first major task was to dig the holes for the concrete footings.  Those of you who live in New Hampshire know that digging around here isn't much fun.  It isn't called the "Granite State" for nothing.  I had my nephew Josh helping and rented a powered auger style post hole digger but it was still a couple days of pretty serious labor.  Then, to make it much worse I managed to get in a bit of poison ivy.  It started out very minor, I thought it was just a mosquito bite but it kept getting worse and worse.  I will spare you and not show pictures of my disgusting rashes on my arms and legs, just trust me, it got pretty nasty.

Anyway, back to motorcycle stuff.....

Yes, believe it or not I have bought yet another bike.  I have been watching Craig's List for a good deal on a ligher weight trail bike.  I really do like the DRZ and for most of what I use it for it is great but it really doesn't do well on tight difficult trails.  I decided that if I want to try entering some enduro races I need something more appropriate to the task.

I spotted this on Craig's List:

It is a 2006 Yamaha WR250F.  It seems to be in good mechanical shape but needs a few odds and ends.  It isn't a street legal bike but in New Hampshire it isn't too difficult to convert it over.  Most enduro races require the bike is street legal since they have some road sections (timed of course where you are required to go the speed limit on those sections).  I ordered a ton of parts, turn signal/brake light kit, new rear fender, front disc brake protector, an enduro computer and a bunch of other small odds and ends.  I hope to get it set up in the evenings this week (but of course need to prioritize working on the deck).

So yes, I am now up to 4 bikes.  But, the old IT200 is for sale.  I had one interested buyer but he has decided to hold off on buying a dirt bike for now.  I will probably write up a "for sale" post for the blog here in case one of you wonderful readers wants it.  It is a fun little bike, great for learning trail riding on, and you can help me get back on budget :)

I think it was around 900 or so when we left the pit area where we met up with Jane.  5 hours of riding so far and about 1/3 of the distance done.  We were a little behind schedule for when we expected to be there.  We knew that the later part of the day would be on harder terrain so we wanted to make up good time early to leave enough time for that.  Still, we were making decent time considering my earlier wipeout.

Not long after we left the pit area I noticed a few drops falling on my face shield.  So far the weather had actually been very nice.  We had high clouds which helped when riding into the sun in the early morning.  We knew this would not last from looking at the weather forecast however.  Since it was supposed to be wet and not too warm I had warn my riding jacket over my gear.  I had expected I would need to take it off before the end of the day.

The rain started to fall a bit harder and this part of the ride was still mostly on regular roads where we were moving along at a good rate of speed.  It didn't take long for the rain to soak into the deepest layers of my clothing.  Honestly all I remember about the next few hours was being very cold.  I kept thinking we would hit a trail section soon where the speeds would slow down and I would be working harder (to help keep warm) but it was just miles and miles of roads.  In retrospect it probably wasn't that long but it felt like it with the cold.

At the next gas stop we had a much longer than usual stop.  I figured it was critical to eat something since the cold was sapping my strength already.  Robb went into the gas station and got a big trash bag which he cut holes in to make a makeshift rain coat.  I wish I had done the same but sitting there I was starting to warm up (because we were not moving).  We were probably at that stop for 20 minutes or so.

Eventually the rain did let up and we started hitting more interesting terrain.  We were at about the 1/2 way mark on distance.  400km (250mi) down, another 400km to go.  That is when we got to what was probably the most amazing thing I think I have done on a motorcycle.  That is when we hit the big crossing.  Someone else posted some video of it:

We had been told ahead of time that your bike needs to be able to handle 18" of water.  There were times I am certain this one was closer to 2 feet deep.  It was a lot longer than I would have imagined, I heard it was about 1200 meters long.  With the small trees overhanging the "path" you could not see the other end.  It just felt like it would go on forever.  The trick to these is 1st gear and keep moving.  Try to create a bow wave and ride at that speed.  Of course the real tricky bit is it isn't just flat ground under the water but loose round rocks.  I would be going along just fine and bounce off one.  As long as I kept myeyes forward and stayed loose on the bike I was fine but I still kept wondering if there would be a really big rock or a deep hole that I was about to hit.

I would have never thought my DRZ would have handled water like this but it made it without as much as a sputter.  I had put dielectric grease into most of the connectors and sprayed them with silicone on the outside as part of my prep.  After hearing of others who didn't make it through this without stalling I was glad I had done the extra prep.

We had some decent but somewhat slick trails after this but then made it in to the lunch stop without much trouble.

to be continued....

Sorry for the delay.  Been busy with work and some projects around the house that I promised Jane I would get to after the P2D.

One thing I ment to add to the first post was this link:Local TV news story on the P2D.  Ignore the fact that they say "motocross riders".  Few of us consider ourselves motocross riders, that is what the 18 year old kids do.  Also they pronounce Dacre several different ways, none of which are correct (it is "day-ker") but otherwise it is a good little bit with interviews.

Ok, on with the story....

4:31 am and we are off.  Due to the luck of the draw we were the final team to leave so only the sweep riders would be behind us.  It was still quite dark at this point.  The full moon was low enough on the horizon to not give much light and we would not see the light of dawn for another hour or so.  In previous years they had said the fog was very thick at the start but it wasn't too bad this day.  Robb was in the lead followed by myself and Brad.  The first couple of miles were pavement then we turned onto the first gravel road.  This part of Canada really does remind me of where I grew up in Kansas.  Lots of farmland connected by gravel roads.  The roads were in good shape so nothing tricky at this early hour.

The organizers loaded the route into each rider's GPS the night before.  Even though Robb was leading I was still watching my GPS just to make sure none of the turns surprised me.  The speed limit on most of the roads we were on was 80km/hr (about 50mph) and we keept the speed fairly sensible at around 95km/hr (a little under 60mph).  According to my GPS the fastest we hit all day was 105km (still under 65mph).  The pre-dawn hours were fairly uneventful, or at least that is what Brad and I thought.  Later Robb mentioned he nearly hit a deer standing in the road.  Of course it was so dark we never saw it.

About 20 minutes in we passed a team on the side of the road.  They appeared to be working on one of the bikes but gave the thumbs up that they were OK.  We keept on going, happy that we were no longer the last guys on the road.

We were 100km in to the ride when we hit the first gas stop.  My DRZ has a nice large tank so I was no where near needing fuel but Brad and Robb have smaller tanks like most dirt bikes have so needed to stop.  Nutrition is important on a long day like this so I figured I should eat one of my cliff bars.  This is when I learned my first key lesson of the day.  A proper helmet should fit snugly and put a little pressure on the cheeks.  The good news is my helmet fits properly.  The bad news is when you quickly bite down on a cliff bar with your helmet on you bite your cheek!  Ouch!  Normally I take my helmet off to eat but I was trying to save time.  I learned to eat more carefully after this.

Not long after the fuel stop we hit the first section of off-road trail.  It was muddy and rocky but nothing too difficult.  It was probably under a mile long but had some sticky mud and rocks.  I had to slow down and be careful but was certainly no more difficult than many of the trails I had been on in the past.  However we managed to pass several other teams in this section.  There were several BMW 800GSs and KLR 650s stuck in the mud and lying on their sides through this bit.  These bikes are really a bit heavy for real trail riding and the riders were finding this out.  My DRZ400, Brad's Husqvarna 450 and Robb's Yamaha WR250 were great bikes for this kind of trail.  It was nice to know that we most certainly were not the last team on the road at this point.

The morning continued on with mostly gravel roads and a few trails here and there.  I was feeling rather confident - perhaps too much so - and was doing a decent job of trying to keep up with Robb.  Robb is a big enduro racer and also is on a nice lightweight 250.  So, of course whenever we hit a trail section he speeds up.  I had told myself I wasn't going to worry about keeping up on the trickier bits.  No sense in wiping out and hurting myself.  However, did I say I was feeling confident?

We were on what in New Hampshire we would call a "class VI road" which means unmaintained and travel at your own risk.  It was in pretty good shape so we were carrying a good amount of speed.  This is when I learned the second, and most important tip of the day.  PAY ATTENTION!  It is roads like this that will bite you.  I am not sure if I was checking my GPS or looking in my mirrors to make sure Brad was still behind me or just daydreaming but we came up over a little rise and suddenly there was a giant washout in front of me.  It was about 4 feet deep and had a nasty rut at the bottom.  It was too late to miss it but I thought I could still ride through it.  Most of the time if you keep your eyes forward and don't panic you would be surprised at what the bike can get through.  Well, not this, or at least not for me.  I flew down the 4ft washout and landed in the rut and went a bit sidways.  I came off the bike and tumbled pretty good.

Now, that alone would have made it a good wipeout.  But the nasty part of it was I landed right in a wet mud puddle.  As I slid through it water was forced up and into my helmet.  Add to that the heavy breathing and I injested a bunch of muddy water and for a second felt like I was drowning in my helmet.  Granted, it was only a couple inches of water but when it gets shoved up your nose it is unpleasant to say the least!

Thanks to the miracle of modern off-road safety gear I was unhurt.  I really am amazed at how I can bounce right back up after a spill like this.  Makes me feel like I am 20 again.  I am sure one of these days I am going to injure myself but so far knock on wood I have done well in that regard.

Once I got my face sheild up and had some fresh air (fresh being not filled with mud) I was OK and got going again without too much delay.  Robb was waiting a little ways down the trail and just as I had almost caught up I managed to get my wheels into a deep muddy rut and went down again.  Where the first one was mostly wet this one was much stickier mud so I really looked the part of a "dirt bike" rider.  Or perhaps a "dirt" bike-rider is more appropriate.  But, once again nothing hurt but my pride.

I managed to keep in upright for the last bit of this trail then we were on regular roads again until we hit the first pit.  The organizers give 2 GPS routes.  Once is the bike route and another is the support truck route.  There are 3 areas where they have pit locations to make it easy to meet up with the trucks.  My wonderful wife Jane was driving the truck and meeting up with us at the first stop.  I was able to get a cold gatorade from the cooler and had a spray can of cleaner and a clean rag to clean the face sheild of my helmet (inside and out).

I said goodby to Jane and off we went again.

and then the rain started.....