october 14-17, 2004 by John Siebenthaler: photos©john siebenthaler
Trip resets were common, necessary to stay on course. The Three LostKeteers – Martin (left), Marc (center), and the guy with the really good digital odometer in charge of keeping track of turns and mileage who's never done this before – that would be me. This at end of Day One and a full parking lot. I'm ecstatic at a)being in one piece, and 2)realizing I'm having the time of my life.
After shot of Motonation's Sidi boots, ordered over the phone in the good ol' US of A. Great out of the box fit kept feet comfy, dry, and my ankles stable while careening off boulders. clik for lg view
Accustomed only to cowboy boots, I felt like I was wearing pine stumps for shoes. Shifting and braking were hit or miss for the first half hour, but it wasn't long before gear changes became second nature, balance adjusted, and worry about dragging the pipes or grounding the primary vanished.
Dust was another story. After months of draught, following too close immediately turned to panic when the haze cut visibility to zero. Treating the goggles with RainX (another tip) helped tremendously. As the dust settled, and with the exception of an occasional moment of blinding early morning glare, we followed the trails using the trip roll clamped to the bars and the readout from my digital odometer.
Turn left at busted tree trunk. Right fifteen feet at big rock. Bear left at chipmunk burrow. Straight ahead when owl hoots. Hey, this is fun! Whoops! Next thing I knew, Marc was missing from my rear view mirror. I wouldn't see him again for another half-hour, and then he was minus a mirror, riding a bike with a front end that looked like David Letterman's grin.
A little fork tweaking and his equipment was as good as new, except for the left side good luck mirror he now carried in his backpack. We were about two hours into the ride, and coming up on my first ever rock strewn creek bed water crossing.
Tossing the KLX around on the fire roads was impulsive, until getting a wee bit close to the edge of a serious drop off had me looking nearly straight down on the tops of the pine trees below. This tempered my enthusiasm, even though I'd deprive Marc, riding a few bike lengths back, of comedy relief.
Another hour and half or so passed before we emerged from the woods onto a paved road opposite Bass Lake Camp. We stopped to check coordinates. Nothing seemed to line up, but that didn't really matter because I could barely decipher the map's small print without reading glasses.
That's when Martin Auger, from Kimpex, happened along. After intros all around, we set off in what I took to be the right direction. By this time I was fairly comfortable with reading the trip roll, and didn't think a thing about navigation until we'd gone several miles without hitting any of the landmarks for the reset.
Cattle guard? Can't find. Bear right? Didn't see. Paved road? Yeah, but heading the wrong way. What does this mean? A U-turn took us back to Bass Lake and the Team Honda support truck that was just then passing by. The driver wanted to know what we were doing here, although it seemed fairly obvious to me: we were lost. He checked our map and got us going in the right direction for the pizza and gas stop at North Fork, about five miles up the road.
Even then we weren't exactly on target, managing to cruise right through town past the Pizza Factory restaurant's parking lot not once, but several times. We doubled back again and found ourselves among the first wave in. Surprise! We weren't the only ones to have wandered off course.
We stayed just long enough to eat, anxious to get back on track for the afternoon half of the journey. According to the trip roll, the Easy Way we'd just finished was 79.9 miles: since I'd forgotten to set the total trip odometer before leaving the motel, the actual mileage was anyone's guess.
We gassed up at the Chevron station, ready for the final section of the day, then followed Redinger Lake Road to it's intersection with Italian Bar Road, where I'm thinking rest stop for a few bites of bruschetta, some nice proscuitto, perhaps a little Italian ice to cool us off. After crossing the bridge spanning Redinger Lake, I learned you can make a canyon rocket out of a dirt bike. Sort of.
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