I was utterly unable to concentrate on anything. Rather than working on the computer 3rd period, I read bike tests and shootouts. By the last class of the day, I was fidgeting constantly watching the clock. Since mid-October, I had wanted just to ride, but the Oregon weather kept it from happening until last weekend. When the bell rang, I went out the door and went down the hall toward the outside. Everyone was walking quickly to get out on that warm, sunny Friday but I passed all of them. I was one of the first out of the parking lot and was home within fifteen minutes. Instantly, I went to my computer and put on "Don't Stop Me Now" by Queen at a volume normally reserved for testing stereo equipment for The Who. I spent the next fifteen minutes darting about the house like a pinball, gathering items I thought I would need.
All week, my dad had been squeezing in 15mins of overtime each day, so he could get off an hour early Friday and B-line to my place. As soon as I had my stuff together, the big green Ram 2500 pulled in and lined the tailgate to the garage door. Within ten minutes, the Husky was loaded and we were off to get the rest of our riding stuff at his house. We pulled up, eased the 390CR out of his showroom-style garage, and crammed it, just barely, in a V-pattern next to mine. Then we brought the truck back to the trailer hitch and got ready to set off. Total damage since the bell rang at school: less than 90mins.
We basically sat around for a half hour or so after this, shooting the bull about riding, why 2-strokes are superior, etc. The riding area was so far away that it would be approaching dark by the time we got there, regardless of how quickly we acted, so there wasn't any point in getting there 2hrs ahead of the other guys. Meanwhile, my uncle John calls and asks if the ride was still on, and told us that even though he had a Husky and everyone else would be riding a Husky, he was going to bring his anemic Honda enduro. After a while, we grabbed a portable DVD player he has, put in Season 3 of Trailer Park Boys and set off, with the player resting on the cup-holder. We stopped off at Paola's Pizza Parlor and got the biggest meat-lover's pizza they had, and ate half of it in the parking lot, still watching TPB.
When we got to Pine Grove (a very small town in Central Oregon on the border between the forest and the desert) we found that our favorite camping road was loaded with Turkey hunters. There were no fewer than ten camps taken, and not one open, which was ironic given that we made every single one of those except for two. We hauled the trailer around and saw the Blazer (with uncle Scott and cousins Mark & Andy) coming down the road. Behind the Blazer, madman Steve was following with his '79 YZ250 in his truck. We picked a somewhat open patch of forest and turned into yet another camp. Following tradition, we all stayed up until about 4:00 in the morning.
^^ From left-to-right, you're looking at Scott, Steve, and my dad. My shoe in the foreground, Scott's trailer in the background.
Saturday, 18 April
When I got up, it was well into the daylight hours and John had arrived with his Honda loaded up in the back of the ancient Dodge Caravan he drives around, complete with twin 18-packs of Bud Light. There was an hour, maybe two, of bull before we unloaded the bikes from the truck and my dad tested out his 390. When he got back, I noticed that his forks had traveled something like 7" out of the 12" they have, just from going down the road. Even pulling into camp at 5mph, they were going up and down by almost 2" as they absorbed every slightest hint of a bump. He shut down the bike and raved about how perfect and soft the suspension was. This looked like it was going to be a good day.
Since the last ride, my bike had the packing removed from the silencer and all the gunk torched out, so performance was bound to be much improved. More in tune with the subtleties of a bike than I, my dad started up the 250CR and took off down the road. It wasn't long before he came back, noting with disgust that the gas cap leaked like a sieve, all over the brand-new yellow paint. We took off the cap and tried turning the gasket around, didn't work. We added a makeshift cardboard gasket to help it seal, didn't work. After more than an hour of fiddling with it, we just drained 1/3 of the gas from the tank and committed to carrying a Gatorade bottle of pre-mix in a backpack while riding. It didn't leak noticeably after that. We also drained a bit of oil from the forks, because they were too hard.
Finally, we set off for the first ride. I got on the bike taxied it out to the dirt road and gave it the berries, banging into second. My eyes were nearly watering with the unbelievable performance compared to what it was last year. The powerband was incredible, the front-end was drastically improved, the seat was more comfortable and the handling was more true and precise. Dirt soon turned to gravel and I made the front tire bite through the corners, while down-shifting just right to get the powerband working in the straights. After ten minutes, we stopped at a frog pond on the side of the road and talked about how our bikes felt.
Steve repeated "Yeah, baby. Get it!" about once a minute, like he always does. Mark was speechless, because he had made the jump from a somewhat weak '77 250WR to his dad's insane '80 250CR that had so impressed everyone the year before. Andy was riding the same blue Franken-Husky he had last year, but it had been rebuilt to give an explosive high-end. My dad's 390 was a cream-puff and absorbed the bumps and drainage ditches as though they were figments of the imagination. Scott's 1981 430WR had been geared down and given a new silencer, allowing it the same acceleration and top-speed as my dad's 390CR. John cracked a beer, then a second.
About half an hour later, we started up again and headed off down the road. I quickly ran away from mark, lofting the front-end over the drainage ditches and coming down with a satisfying cush from the suspension. Pretty soon, the rocks ended and became a well-worn gravel road. A sane man in a truck might hit 35mph on this road.
Cresting the top of a hill at with a gentle right-and curve at 45mph or more, I nailed the power in 4th as Steve cranked on the juice in the other lane. The Husky exploded forward next to the YZ as I shifted into 5th, then into 6th gear, not bothering to use the clutch but only letting off the throttle for a quarter-second while prodding the shifter to the next gear. The shifts were almost unnoticeable, with just a smooth blast of power shooting the bike forward. Steve disappeared as his low-geared YZ fell into the dust of the long-legged Husqvarna. He later said he kept looking for a 7th gear to keep up.
A surprise was coming our way as we continued down the road. In spite of the 75-degree weather, patches of snow were distributed occasionally along the road, and we all had to slow to first gear to make our way carefully through the little 6" wide trenches in the snow. Soon, we came to the White River Canyon, where we stopped to take in the view. Stupidly, I left my camera in my backpack and missed the photo opportunity that arose from being almost a thousand feet above the river, with green forest stretching all the way to Mt. Hood glowing in the distance.
After taking in the viewpoint for some considerable time, we set off again, and headed for a trail that we take just about every time we ride in the McCubbins area. It's a gradual climb up to a gravel road above, but makes a series of incredibly sharp 180 degree turns which provide a challenge for a long bike, particularly one with a high 1st gear. Before we could even get to the trail, we hit more snow. This time, it was 6" deep and untouched by any bikes before. It wasn't a patch, either, it just continued. We managed to do some bushwhacking through the woods, and made it to the trail head. Except for a few tiny patches, the trail was clear and we stopped at yet another frog pond right at the base of the hill-climb portion of the trail.
^^ From left-to-right, Mark, Dad, Steve, and Scott.
More bull, and then we hit the trail. Though there were some snow patches on the trail, the trees had mostly protected it, and all the hairpins were free of snow. More troubling, though, were the broken branches lying over the trail. They weren’t big or anything, but they indicated that winter had not been kind to the area.
When we emerged on the gravel, there was snow once again. The way back to camp involved more altitude and we battled the patches of snow for two or three miles. One drift was a good 14” deep. My dad was in the lead, and he took the bonsai approach, popping the front wheel up and attacking it with the back alone. The tire cut like a razor blade, but the front slammed down half-way through the drift and hit the snow like cement, sucking up 11” of travel and stopping the big 390CR, quite literally, cold in its tracks. He backed up a foot, and blasted another foot forward, and again, and again, and again, until it was over.
I was riding behind Mark, and just before he reached this massive trench, his bike began revving up into the five-digit range, as though his throttle was stuck or something. He tried to kill the bike by dumping the clutch. The 250 bucked and spun in place, but the brake held it firm and the bike died reluctantly. Mark looked down and found his has had been off, and the fuel starvation had caused the revving. Shaking with exhaustion and fear, he turned on the gas and began trying to push his way through the uphill trench. It didn’t work, so he kicked it over and rode to where the others were waiting.
A little ways up the road, a small tree lay over the road. There were two ways to get around, either by going around in ultra-slippery goo on the side of a respectably sloped hill, or take the bonsai approach. I went bonsai, and the back wheel went out and the yellow Husky fell with safely with the throttle grip in the snow. I brought it up as soon as possible, knowing that the gas cap wouldn’t like that at all. In the process, I tweaked some muscle in my foot, and I’m still limping today.
On the way back to camp, I got sprayed with gravel as Steve mindlessly went all-out in trying to get to camp before Andy and me. After that, I put the bike in sixth and held it there until the long gravel straights were gone. I wanted to leave that asshole as far behind as I could. I’ll never ride fast next to him again. Ever.
When we got back to camp, we found that my kickstarter had come off somewhere between the tree and camp, a good 10-mile stretch! We compression-started the bike so Mark and I could go back and try to find the $300 part. We crawled along as slow as possible in 1st gear for half an hour, constantly scanning the gray road for the gray shifter. After passing over 9000 Husqvarna-starter-shaped pieces of wood, Mark found it. Apparently, while I was hauling balls away from Steve, the bolt had vibrated loose. “Motorcycles is mean toys.” ~ Movie: Little Fauss & Big Halsey
At camp, we stayed up until 2:00 in the morning, sharing cutting firewood, sharing pictures, and talking about the good ol’ days when these gray-haired old men were teenagers and had to hide their bongs from their dad. Scott and my dad are both excellent story-tellers, not so much for John. My foot was so mangled, I could barely limp around the camp. I seriously questioned my ability to ride the next day, let alone kick a bike with a left-side starter.
Sunday, 19 April
We woke up to a new morning, feeling much better. My foot, while noticeably unpleasant, was no longer killing me and the weather was promising to go right past 80 degrees. Everyone got up late, so we didn’t set off on the day’s riding until just before 1:00 in the afternoon. This was unfortunate, because we had to leave no later than 6:00 and considering the time it would take to pack everything up, any ride that took us past 4:00 would be cutting it close. We originally thought we’d try riding the Warm Springs reservation, but considering the vastness of the terrain and our time constraints, we’d have to go back to McCubbins.
We shot down the road again. Past the first frog pond, over the drainage ditches, and again shattering the 70mph mark on the long gravel straights. Damn I love that sixth gear. We arrived at a viewpoint of Mt. Hood, though not the White River point. We lined all five Huskies in a row and got some excellent shots.
^^ From left-to-right, we’ve got Mark’s 1980 250CR, Scott’s 1981 430WR, my 1982 250CR, my dad’s 1979 390CR, and Andy’s 1980 250OR. The rest of the links are single-bike shots, in that order. Mark is standing by his bike because he doesn’t have a kickstand.
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After we got a bunch of pictures taken a number of stories told about the time my dad jumped a 350 Kawasaki Bighorn into a river, we headed off down a bit of pavement to a road we thought would be clear. No such luck, we ended up going through more snow, but fortunately, it wasn’t very deep and we got to the end of the road with relative ease. That is, easy compared to that nightmare on the trail on Saturday. We didn’t have much to do so I got some more pictures.
^^ This shot is the 430, notice the sticker on the tank. When in doubt, Gas It!
When we went to leave, both Scott and Andy had trouble getting their bikes started. Mark ended up pushing both of them to get started, the poor guy. Right as we’re about to go back through that trench in the top picture, I got a tap on the shoulder by a guy holding a Husqvarna chainsaw. He indicated to us that having a dirtbike there would net a $250 fine if we were caught by the Forest Service. I pretended I didn’t already know and told him that we would be sure to get out ASAP, and that he had a kickass saw.
By the way, what kind of world is it where you can drive a Jeep SUV into an area and go into the woods with a tool specifically designed to damage the forest, but you can’t park a motorcycle on the side of a road? The Forest Service does more damage to the forest than any other single organization I could name. They do damage to the environment to keep us from damaging the environment. Real men of genius, them guys.
We got out of there and started heading down around the White River again, but took a spur road and found ourselves doing some Baja work through deep snow and clearing trees out of the road. We had to stop numerous times to let our bikes cool after working hard at 5mph. You may think that riding through snow would be a cold experience, but I’ve never been as warm in August as I was navigating the trenches through the ice crystals.
Through one section on another trail heading back, the snow was so deep that when I stopped to wait for Steve to plow through (stopping = bad) the snow actually clicked the shifter into neutral. When I let out the clutch, the bike did like Mark’s had done, and went straight up to an RPM that you won’t see on the dyno chart for a 1982 Husky 250CR. I pulled in the clutch, banged the shifter down, backed up a few inches and dumped it. The tire spun and I managed to paddle my way through. On the other side of the snow, I shut off the bike and rested for a minute while Mark and Andy made their way through.
We got back on the main road and headed to a place we used to camp way back when we were 3yr old. It was a camp with a nice deep stream running through it, and lots of interesting things to ride on. Steve thought he’d try getting some air off the biggest jump in the place, but he never got more than a foot off the ground. The slope was just too creamy and wet.
To head back to camp, I traded bikes with my dad and tested out the 390. Remember, this is a 2-stroke with a 385cc engine designed for torque. Initially, I didn’t like it so much because the 1st gear was higher than I was used to. But when I got on the road and gave it maybe 1/8 twist, it felt like a locomotive had been tied to the steering head. It didn’t explode forward, just pulled. All you fools who wax poetic about how an open-class 2-stroke would be uncontrollable and explosive simply haven’t tried one, or at least not a good one.
On the long straight, I rode next to Andy on his 250OR (the fastest 250 there) and was just toying with the guy. He had it tapped in sixth, while I was able to just cruse comfortably. On the suspension, it was definitely easier for my dad because he weighs more and gets a “Cadillac Effect” going. He was also going faster. This all adds up to him being able to hit a 3” hole followed by an 8” ridge and not even feel it (literally) while I would bounce into the air a bit. It was still the fastest bike I’ve ever ridden by far. I didn’t like the long throw in the shifter, though.
So, that’s the story of the first ride of 2009. I hope you enjoyed it. If you read it all, then go into the kitchen and have yourself the best cookie you can find. No cheating, now!
