Month: May 2021

Snakes Alive!

When I was a kid growing up in rural New Jersey, we convinced ourselves that the local lakes and streams were inhabited by water moccasins.  All the books said cottonmouths didn’t live that far north, but we had seen them (or so we thought).  I even caught one in a pond on a fishing lure…I saw it sitting on a rock, I dangled the lure in front of it, and the snake went for it.  That scared the hell out of me:  I was the classic case of the dog that finally caught the bus he always chased.  What do I do now?  I ended up cutting the line to let the snake (and my lure) get away.  It was, after all, a water moccasin (or so I thought).

And then, of course, many years later there was that rather unsettling scene in my favorite movie, Lonesome Dove:

Last week Sue and I were back in Sopranoland for a wedding, and the next day we rode around so I could show her my old haunts.  One was the Old Mill in Deans (not to be confused with the Old Mill Hotel in Baja).  It was behind where my grandma lived and it was basically a dam that created a huge lake where we used to play back in the day.  So we’re walking around and I snapped a photo or two when this woman said “there’s a snake down there!”

A panorama of the lake at the Old Mill…five photos stitched together in PhotoShop.

I checked and what do you know, she was right.  The snake was on a log downstream of the dam where a bridge carried traffic over the spillway.  The snake was almost directly beneath the bridge.  As usual, I didn’t have the perfect lens on my Nikon (that would have been the 70-300 Nikkor), but what I had on the camera (Old Faithful, my 24-120 Nikon lens) worked a lot better than a cell phone.  I zoomed all the way and grabbed some awesome photos.  Then I looked around and I saw another snake on the same log.  And then another slithering through the water.  And then two more that might have been making even more snakes.  Snakes alive, I was in the middle of a moccasin orgy!

This spot is at least a couple of hundred years ago. There used to be a mill located here, powered by the water held behind this dam. We played here as kids. It was a good time and a good place to grow up.
And another!. The lower snake is the same one you see in the big photo above. Then I spotted the one you see at the top of this photo!
This guy was next to the log, slithering around in the water.
I saw these two looking straight down from my vantage point on the bridge above the stream. I leaned waaaay over the bridge railing to get this shot. Water moccasins making whoopee?

I was so intrigued by the above photos that I Googled “water moccasin” to get photos of the real McCoy.  After spending decades believing there were indeed moccasins in New Jersey, I convinced myself that what I was seeing in my photos were common New Jersey water snakes.  Moccasins have a more triangular head and a slightly different pattern.  Still, these snakes are pretty big (the big one on the log in the photo above was about 5 feet long) and I would not want to tangle with any of them.  You never know…I might be wrong and maybe they are moccasins.

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The Springfield Mile

That photo above?  It’s the Springfield mile, with riders exiting Turn 4 at over 100 mph on their way up to 140 or so. These boys are really flying.  It is an incredible thing to see.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.  Two blogs back I wrote about the East Windsor half-mile dirt track, which has gone the way of the dodo bird.  The Springfield Mile is bigger and better and last I checked it’s still with us.  A dozen years ago I made the trek out to Illinois watch the big boys (and a lady or two) mix it up and it was awesome.  I don’t know if this is accurate or if it’s more biker bullshit, but the guys claim the bikes hit 140 mph in the straights and maintain a cool 100 in the turns.  And “straights” is a relative term.  The track is basically a big oval, with the straights being less of a curve.  What’s nice about oval track racing, though, is you usually can see all the action all the time.  When you go to a grand prix type event, you get to see the bikes or the cars for just an instant when they scream past wherever you are.  Oval tracks are a better deal, I think.

We planned to ride to Springfield from So Cal, but just before it was wheels-in-the-wells time my good buddy Larry passed and I stayed for his funeral.  We flew instead and because that gave us a little bit more of our most precious commodity (time), we bopped around Springfield a bit more.  We visited Springfield’s Lincoln Museum and had a lot of fun getting there. I drove our rental car and we promptly got lost (it was in the pre-GPS era). We pulled alongside a police officer and he gave us directions. As soon as I pulled away, I asked my buds which way to go. “I don’t know,” they answered, “we weren’t listening…” Neither was I. We all had a good laugh over that one.

An interesting Norton in the fairgrounds parking lot.
Another shot of the Norton.

The Illinois State Fairgrounds has two tracks, on a quarter-mile dirt oval and the other the big mile.  The quarter-mile races were awesome.  This racing, all by itself, would have been worth the trip out there.  I love watching the flat trackers.

These boys are kicking up some dirt coming out of Turn 4 on the Illinois State Fairgrounds quarter-mile track.
One of the riders lost it coming our of Turn 4 and he crashed hard directly in front of us.
I didn’t think he was going to get up, but he did.  The next day, this guy won a heat on the 1-mile track.  The announcer said he was “tougher than a $2 steak.” I believe it.

The next day, we went to the 1-mile track on the other side of the State Fairgrounds.

The field entering Turn 2 at over 100 mph on the Springfield 1-mile track. The noise is incredible and there’s nothing like it.  These guys are drifting sideways at 100 mph, just a few inches apart!
The same shot as above, but with the two fastest riders at the Springfield Mile identified.  The arrows point to Chris Carr (National No. 4 in the white and orange leathers) and Kenny Coolbeth (National No. 1 in the black leathers).  Coolbeth won on Sunday and Carr won on Monday.  This photo was just after the start.
One lap later: Coolbeth and Carr are riding as a closely-matched pair well ahead of the group.

I was really happy with these shots. I had my old Nikon D200 and a cheap lens (a 10-year old, mostly plastic, $139 Sigma 70-300). I zoomed out to 300 mm, set the ISO to 1000 for a very high shutter speed (even though it was a bright day), and the lens at f5.6 (the fastest the inexpensive Sigma would go at 300mm).  The camera’s autofocus wouldn’t keep up with the motorcycles at this speed, so I manually focused on Turn 2 and waited (but not for long) for the motorcycles to enter the viewfinder.  It was close enough for government work, freezing the 100 mph action for the photos you see above.

Kenny Coolbeth, after winning the Springfield Mile.
Nicole Cheza, a very fast rider. She won the “Dash for Cash” and the crowd loved it.
A Harley XR-750 rider having fun.

As you might expect, there were quite a few things happening off the track, too.  Johnsonville Brats had a huge tractor trailer onsite equipped with grills, and they were serving free grilled brat sandwiches.  It was a first for me, and it worked…I’ve been buying Johnsonville brats ever since.  There were hundreds of interesting motorcycles on display and a vintage World War II bomber orbiting the area.

An old B-17 flying above the track…it made several appearances that weekend.
An old Ariel Square Four. The owner started it and it sounded like two Triumph 650s.
An old two-stroke Bridgestone, a marque that never quite made it in the US. Imagine the marketing discussions in Japan: “Let’s logo it the BS…that will work!”

So there you have it, along with a bit of advice from yours truly:  If you ever have an opportunity to see the Springfield Mile, go for it.  I had a great time and I would do it again in a heartbeat.

More epic rides are here!

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Riding With The Carrizozo Mud Chuckers

Sixty-one miles north of my place in La Luz, New Mexico lies the town of Carrizozo. The seat of Lincoln County, Carrizozo’s streets are laid out at an angle to the intersection of Carrizozo’s two main highways, 380 and 54. There are colorful donkey statues stationed around, a junkyard church on the outskirts of town and the Carrizozo Mud Chuckers motorcycle club.

The Mud Chuckers MC, founded by my riding buddy, Mike, is primarily a dirt-based riding club. The area around Carrizozo has hundreds of graded farm roads and tight mountain trails. It’s an ideal spot for racking up miles on the dirt. I recently joined them on one of their frequent moto-camping rides. The Chuckers shun traditional campgrounds preferring instead to camp anywhere they can find a spot with no people around.

Like all the ‘Chuckers rides I’ve been on the pace was downright leisurely with frequent stops to look at old mine sites, hunt for geodes, gold deposits and old metal objects or just sit in the shade to discuss unimportant things. The ‘Chuckers are in no hurry to get anywhere and that suits me just fine.

On this day we rode west to Socorro, NM and took the Escondida Lake exit to the Back Country Byway. The Byway meanders generally east-west then south with the terrain ranging from desert scrub to medium-high trees. At the speed we operate it’s best to look for a campsite early because ‘Chuckers don’t like stress. We checked out several places but nothing looked appealing. There was either no shade or no firewood or a stinky dead cow rotting nearby so we pushed on.

Eddie dropped his KLR 650 in a sand wash and bent his clutch hand so that it didn’t want to work right. He was doing 45mph so the impact, while soft, still hurt. The ‘Chuckers are not spring chickens. In perfect tune we can hardly swing a leg over the motorcycle. Eddie called it a day. Since we never leave a man behind we short cut the Byway and followed him back to his house in Carrizozo where we had begun this adventure.

With Eddie’s DNF, that left me, Dan and Mike still on the lead lap. By now it was getting late so we abandoned our plan to camp on the Back Country Byway and decided the higher mountains behind White Oaks would be the best option. It was late and we still had a 30-mile ride to the forest.

We found a spot with plenty of firewood and soft ground. We managed to get camp set up just before dark, which is always a good idea. Once they find a place to roost the Carrizozo Mud Chuckers really come on the pipe. The fire was roaring, Mike brought along pork chops and a metal grill to cook with. I don’t know where he stores all that junk on his 390 KTM. Sizzling pork chops, boiling coffee, cookies, beef jerky, Wheat Thins: man, things were hopping at camp this evening. The altitude we were camping was around 7000 feet, it got pretty cold, probably in the 30’s but around the fire it was 75 degrees.

Campfire nights last longer than regular ones and I turned in at midnight. Mike and Dan sat up longer. Flickering lights and murmured shadow conversation played across the inside of my tent. I felt safe knowing the bear would go after them before me. The next morning The Mud Chucker’s were in no hurry to leave. We restarted the fire and had coffee with whatever scraps of food we had left over from last night’s feast. The Mud Chuckers always leave their campsites cleaner than they found them and the way they put out a campfire borders on obsessive.

When I got back home it felt like I had been away a month instead of only two days. Camping on a motorcycle seems to distort time and distance. Changing your observation point really does have a profound effect.

Mike and Eddie want to start a motorcycle tour business. Their plan is to buy a few TW200 Yamahas and run all inclusive, guided camping tours around New Mexico. It sounds like a pain in the butt to me. Why ruin a nice motorcycle ride with business?

I’ll let you know if the tour company idea works out. Maybe a full ExhaustNotes.us tour review or something. Get the ‘Chuckers to kick in a free tour as an ExhaustNotes subscriber gimmick?

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