I like Singapore and I fly there a couple of times a year on business. I know, I’m supposed to be retired, but I’m finding I’m not very good at it. And I don’t need much of an excuse to fly to Singapore. The flight is a bruiser (it’s 16 1/2 hours from LAX to Singapore on a nonstop, and it usually goes over 24 hours if you can’t get a nonstop), but I don’t mind doing it. Singapore is worth the trek. I say I go there on business, but my visits are more like vacations than work. I like the place.
Orchard Road: Singapore’s Rodeo Drive
Orchard Road is Singapore’s upscale shopping area, and the architecture, the night scenes, and feel of the place is amazing. These are scenes from a walk along Orchard Road with an 8mm fisheye lens on my Nikon. It had just rained the evening I took these, and it made for dramatic photography.
You see two kinds of buildings in this area, and I captured both in the photos above. Old Singapore consists primarily of shop houses…two-story structures where folks have a business on the first floor and live on the second floor. And there are the modern skyscrapers. The mix of both makes for interesting scenes.
See those trees along the sidewalks? They’re quiet during the day, but at night, the zillions of birds roosting in those trees are deafening. You literally have to shout to carry on a conversation because the birds drown everything out. It gets interesting when there’s a thunderstorm (very common in this part of the world). When the skies thunder, the birds all fall silent for a second. Then, after a brief pause, they start chirping again. It’s all very cool.
Little India in Singapore
On another visit, I poked around Singapore’s Little India section. There are four major ethnic groups in Singapore, and folks from India comprise one of them.
Singapore Industries
Singapore has a rich maritime heritage (the four major industries in Singapore are shipping, oil refining, finance, and tourism). The shipping industry came about as a result of Singapore’s central location between India and China (the Chinese are another major ethnic group here). There are all kinds of interesting things to see in Singapore, and it’s a walker’s paradise if you like to explore on foot.
You can see all kinds of things in Singapore you won’t see anywhere else in the world. Check this out:
The structure you see above is a shopping, apartment, office, and entertainment complex comprised of three huge buildings capped by a roof styled like a ship (complete with gardens and a swimming pool). The buildings are supposed to be waves, with the ship riding along top. I’ve never seen anything like this. You might have seen it on television when President Trump was in Singapore meeting with the North Korean guy. But that’s Singapore. It has a lot of things you won’t see anywhere else.
Singapore Museums
To me, all of Singapore is a museum with architecture, dining, street sculpture, automobiles, and more that makes getting out and walking around a hell of an experience. There are many museums, including one focused on Singapore’s World War II history I found particularly interesting. Here are a few photos I grabbed in it.
Exploring Singapore on a Motorcycle?
Nope, I haven’t done that (not yet, anyway). But I’m tempted to spend an extra day or two over there on the next trip and see if I can find somebody to rent me a motorcycle. I’ve seen RX3s in Singapore. That would be fun, and I think the RX3 would be a perfect bike to poke around on in this tropical urban paradise. The entire country is only about 24 miles long, and most (maybe all) of it is city. It seems to be very safe, too, so I don’t think I could find myself in any dangerous areas. The only problem is they drive on the wrong side of the road over there, and that would take some getting used to.
Want to see more of the world’s great places? Check out our Epic Rides page!
Marty and his 145,000-mile BMW K1200RS. That’s my RX3 in the background.
I’ve been riding with good buddy Marty since the early 2000s (it’s been close to 20 years now), and we’ve covered miles all over the US, Mexico, and Canada. Marty has owned the BMW K1200RS you see in the above photo since it was new. He owns and has owned a bunch of exotic bikes (Ducatis, Aprilias, Triumphs, other BMWs, and more), but he prefers the K1200RS and he told me he’s keeping it forever.
I’ve got a bunch of good friends I ride and socialize with, and I know all of them through Marty. We all get together for coffee at the Brown’s BMW dealership on Saturday morning. That’s followed by lunch, and maybe we’ll talk about the next big ride. We frequently talk about rides we’ve done in the past. Sometimes the conversation turns to politics, and we all have strong opinions. Some of the guys are right (the ones who agree with me), and some of them are wrong (the ones who don’t), but it doesn’t matter. Every once in a while I inject the thought that the problem in America is that the guys who really know how to run the country are screwing around drinking coffee at Brown’s and riding their motorcycles. It usually gets a laugh, even though the guys have heard that line about 800 times.
I like the get-togethers at Brown’s, although sometimes I’ll go months without getting over there. I don’t know why, because I always enjoy it when I go. And I like riding my RX3 to our Saturday morning meetings. It’s an excuse to get out on my favorite motorcycle (not that anyone needs an excuse to go for a motorcycle ride). Sometimes folks ask about my motorcycle; more than a few motorcycle riders have never seen an RX3. Some folks think it’s a BMW, even though BMW has their own competitor in the small adventure touring motorcycle category (that’s the BMW G 310 GS and you can read our road test of it here). Whatever. My RX3 is slathered with decals denoting some of the big rides I’ve done, and I guess that gets it some credibility in a crowd known for high mileage.
While I’m at the Brown BMW dealership, I like to check out the vintage and new motorcycles. The old bikes are beautiful, and some of the new ones are, too…
A mid-’60s 600cc BMW. Those old bikes are drop dead gorgeous.A new old stock (that is to say, a leftover) 2017 Boxer café bike. It’s stunning. It’s a hell of a deal, but there’s no package deal for a chiropractor, and I’d need one if I rode this bike. I can dream, though. The styling on this bike really makes it for me.I tried to show the difference in size between a brand new GS 1250 and the mid-’60s BMW, and I failed. The photo doesn’t do the bikes justice. Side-by-side, the difference in size is shocking. The GS is outrageously huge. The older BMW seems to be the perfect size for me.
So that’s it for today, folks, except to ask a quick question: Do you have a riding buddy like Marty in your life? Hey, we’d love to hear about it, so drop us a comment or two and let us know!
A scene from the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument boonies. The cactus on the left is the star of this show.
The latest Motorcycle Classics issue has a great story in it on Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, the National Park that’s tucked in along the Mexican border, south of Ajo and Why in southern Arizona. It was a fun visit for us, but wow, was it ever hot and desolate out there! The two closest towns, Ajo and Why, are remote. As in extremely remote.
Arizona has towns with unusual names. Ajo means garlic in Spanish (I didn’t see a single garlic when I was there). Why is name that makes you wonder, well, why anyone would put a town in that location (it’s not much more than two or three buildings out in the middle of nowhere). The good folks in Arizona wanted to simply call the place Y, as it was built at a fork in the road (you know, like the letter Y). But Arizona requires their towns to have at least three letters in their names (don’t ask me Why).
So, another day, another Destinations piece in Motorcycle Classics, one of the world’s great magazines. Other motorcycle magazines are dropping like flies, but MC keeps on keeping on with the best stories and photography in print. I’ve been writing for Motorcycle Classics for over 10 years now, to the tune of something like 64 articles. You can get to all of them online, or you can order your very own copy of Destinations, the book with all of the travel pieces I’ve done for MC (we have both black and white and color options). They make great gifts. You should buy several..buy two or more and shipping is free!
And speaking of stats, we’ve been publishing ExhaustNotes for a little over a year now. In that time, we’ve posted 512 blog posts, and we’ve had 2100 comments. We love your comments, so please, keep them coming. Do you have anything special you want us to write about? Hey, let us know. Post a comment!
Regarding blog topics, one of the things we’ve tried to do is steer clear of politics. Joe went there a little bit with the title of his recent blog (something about never getting a free gun when Obama was president). The problem with discussing anything related to politics is nobody listens to understand; they only listen to respond. That’s true no matter which side of the divide you live on (in my opinion, which of course is always the right one on all political issues). Do you want us to go there? There’s just so much to write about, but the deal is that no matter what position we take, we’ll infuriate half our readers. But wow, the topics are so tempting, and they’ll excite so much discussion. Get this: Illinois just imposed a tax on trade ins (they tax you on the car you’re buying, and they tax you on the car you’re trading in). I could have fun writing about that. But, it’s politics. And it’s Illinois (you know, Chicago, the place where stringent gun control laws are working so well). Should we go there?
Ah, let’s see, what else is going on?
Well, lots. I received my .257 Weatherby Ruger No. 1 back from the repair center with a new stock, and we’ll be posting photos of it along with a range report in the near future. I’ve got some good inputs on good loads from my good buddy Mississippi Dave, and we’ll put them to the test.
And things are going great guns with Gear’d (how’s that for alliteration?).
My Gear’d ZX2-1116. I am loving this watch!
I’m wearing my Gear’d watch as I write this, and the more I wear it, the more I like it. I’ve been checking its accuracy, and it is spot on. I’ll have an update on my Gear’d in the near future, and so will good buddy Joe Gresh. Joe’s watch is on its way to him, and he’s got a torture test in mind similar to the one I posted recently. Joe tells me it has something to do with concrete.
You know, we’ve done a lot of product reviews here on ExNotes, and as promised, we’re adding a Product Reviews page on the site to provide an index to all of them. Stay tuned, and we’ll post a link in the next few days. I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this, but we recently updated our Tales of the Gun page. Take a look. It’s better organized, and we’re all caught up with adding each of the gun blogs to this page.
And that’s a wrap for today, folks. As always, there’s lots more coming your way right here on the ExNotes blog. Keep your comments coming; we love hearing from you.
I’ve seen a lot of interesting things in the world, and I’ve seen some really interesting things in Asia. Mind you, all this is filtered through the mind of an East Coast boy who really didn’t get out of Dodge until he finished college, but boy oh boy, I’ve sure covered a lot of ground since then. And I’ve covered a lot of it on two wheels. And because of that, I’ve always been intrigued by how other people in other countries use their motorcycles.
One of the wilder things I’ve seen is how small motorcycles do duty as taxis, and in particular, how they do so in Thailand. One night a few years ago I was wandering around in Bangkok, one of the world’s more sultry and exotic cities, and the action on a typical street corner just off Sukhumvit Road (one of the main roads through Bangkok) was both mind numbing and mesmerizing. I recorded about 10 minutes of it. Sit back, grab a cup of coffee, or Scotch, or whatever floats your boat, and enjoy.
One of my good buddies who lives in Bangkok owns a couple of small bikes and he invited me to tour Thailand. I’m tempted.
We’ve probably all felt it, and nowhere is misery more pronounced than on a long motorcycle trip where there is no end in sight. The rain, the cold, the heat…it all makes us wonder why we do it. Good buddy Juan Carlos said it best when we were riding through an extreme freezing rainstorm in Colombia’s Andes Mountains. “We sometimes wonder why we suffer through this kind of misery when we could be home with a warm cup of coffee,” or words to that effect, was his take on it all. Indeed, I’ve had the same thought many times myself. I’ll share a few of my most miserable moments with you and then I’ll provide my answer to why we do what we do. And there’s an invitation at the end of this blog…if you’d like to share the misery (misery loves company, you know), we’d love to hear from you.
Super Hawk, and Super Cold
My first ever memory of misery on a motorcycle was riding on the back of my Dad’s Honda Super Hawk back in the 1960s. It was a 305cc twin-carb black-and-chrome beauty, and Dad bought into the dream during a time when you really did meet the nicest people on a Honda. What the Japanese marketing gurus left out, though, is that you sometimes also met the coldest people on a Honda, and two of them would have been Dad and me that morning. It was early on a Saturday in September, I was 14 years old, and we were riding the Honda to Cooper’s Cycle Ranch in Ewing, New Jersey for its first service.
Yours truly in the Summer of 1966, when things had warmed up a bit. Dad would let me ride the Super Hawk in the land behind our house. When he wasn’t home, sometimes I rode it elsewhere, too.
It was really cold that morning, as only New Jersey can be that time of year. Really, really cold. We weren’t dressed for the weather, the bike had no windshield or fairing, full-faced helmets and good moto gear hadn’t been invented yet, and the cold was brutal. I remember we stopped at a diner somewhere on Route 130 and Dad bought two copies of the newspaper. After a hearty and hot breakfast, Dad stuffed one of the newspapers in the front of his jacket (not a motorcycle jacket, as that kind of gear didn’t exist yet), and I did the same with the newspaper he gave to me. The newspapers helped a bit, but not enough to really make a difference. But I remember that ride like it happened yesterday.
Canada: My First International Adventure
For me, this thing about international adventure riding started early, as in college. I was in my junior year at Rutgers when good buddy Keith Hediger and yours truly decided a motorcycle adventure from New Jersey to Quebec was just what the doctor ordered. It was Spring Break, our engineering courses were brutal, and we needed a respite from hitting the books.
Keith on my 750 back in the day. I didn’t get a photo of him on his Kawasaki 500cc Triple. He bought the jacket after our trip to Canada.
Canada. It would be great. As they say, it’s almost like going to another country. Both Keith and I were ROTC students, and we joked that we would be draft dodgers. The ride north was great, Canada was great, and then it rained the entire length of Vermont on the way home. I’m not exaggerating. It was raining when we crossed the border back into the US, and it rained all day long without a single break.
We didn’t have rain gear in those days. Keith was on a Kawasaki 500cc two-stroke triple and I was on my CB-750 Honda. For us it was bell-bottomed jeans, nylon windbreaker jackets, open face helmets, and tennis shoes. We were soaked to the gills and we were indeed miserable. And cold. But we had ridden to Canada and back on our motorcycles. I didn’t know anybody else who had ever done that. It was fun. The rain notwithstanding, it lit a fire in me for international motorcycles rides that burns to this day. And I remember it like it happened yesterday.
Mexico: Soaked Again!
Fast forward thirty years or so and good buddy John Welker and I were on our cruisers headed to Baja’s Cabo San Lucas, a ferry ride across the Sea of Cortez, and then Puerto Vallarta, Guadalajara, and other points in mainland Mexico. I had a ’92 Harley and John had a Yamaha Virago I called the Viagra. Most of the ride was in great weather. But that first day was terrible. It was raining I left the Los Angeles area, it was raining when I hooked up with John down in San Ysidro, and rained nearly the entire day. It rained when we blew through Tijuana and we rode through the rain to Ensenada. We were experiencing the tail end of the El Nino storms that hit our part of the world that year.
We didn’t let the rain stop us, though. We stopped at La Bufadora south of Ensenada, a spot where there’s a natural opening in the rocks, and when the waves from the Pacific come crashing in, it shoots a spout 150 feet in the air. That spray soaked us, too. But it had rained nearly all day, so the extra La Bufadora spray didn’t make us any wetter. We were already soaked.
John Welker, me, and our two V-twins during a very brief break in the weather on that brutally wet day in Baja.
We rode nearly 200 miles south into Baja the first day, and then I threw in the towel. I had to stop. I was soaked to the bone (we didn’t have rain gear, even though we started the ride in the rain…smart, huh?). I was so cold I couldn’t ride, so we stopped in a little hotel in Colonet. I remember feeling the water seeping through my leather jacket, and I remember shivering so badly I could hear my teeth clattering. The hotel had an old-fashioned register you had to sign when checking in, and I was shaking so badly I couldn’t sign my name. Even soaked and freezing, though, I couldn’t remember when I had ever felt better or more alive. And you know what? I remember that day like it happened yesterday.
Steamed Mustangs
When I was a consultant and I wrote the blog for CSC Motorcycles, in the early days the company made Mustang replicas. They were cool little bikes that looked like 1950s Mustang motorcycles, and I had this bright idea that we would make a splash if we rode the little 150cc Mustangs to Cabo San Lucas and back. You know, ride the length of Baja on little 150cc tiddlers. It was a story that guaranteed press coverage, and my idea worked. Half a dozen magazines picked up that story.
What I didn’t realize when I scheduled the ride was that September is the hottest month of the year in Baja. I mean, who know such a thing? I grew up in New Jersey, and in New Jersey, September means you’re rolling into winter. In my mind, September is not a month one associates with hot weather.
Simon Gandolfi, novelist, blogger, and motorcycle adventure rider on a CSC 150 somewhere on the road to Cabo San Lucas. Damn, it was hot that day!
But not in Baja. As soon as we crossed Parallelo 28 and Guerrero Negro, the heat went from bad to you’ve-gotta-be-kidding-me misery. And then as we rolled into Santa Rosalia and approached the Tropic of Cancer, the humidity hit us. We were riding in a crock pot, and the setting was on high. Those little bikes would barely make 50 mph the way we had them loaded, so we couldn’t make enough wind to stay cool. It was, without a doubt, the worst heat and the most physically-challenging ride I’ve ever experienced. But (and you can probably guess what I’m going to say next), I remember that ride like it happened yesterday.
Why We Do It
Guys, I ain’t the smartest person in the room, and I don’t have any great insights here. I can’t speak for everyone, but I can speak for myself. I ride because it’s fun. If a little rough weather comes along, hey, that’s part of the deal. It’s miserable when it happens, but it sure makes for some great memories, and oddly, the off-the-scale misery moments are the ones I remember best.
Do you have a particularly miserable motorcycle day, you know, a ride through rough weather, you’d like to share with us? Hey, leave a comment!
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Snacks at an engineering seminar in Singapore. Those are hard-boiled quail eggs and they were good!
I’m back after a 3-day hop over to Singapore, and it’s good to be home. I thought I’d do sort of a catchall blog to mention a bunch of things. For starters, Singapore was fun (it always is), but that 15-hour time change is a bear. I was over there to teach a class, something I do two or three times a year. They treat me well in Singapore and I love traveling to Asia. I think I’m back on California time already, thanks to keeping an altered sleep schedule while I was in Asia and a good sleeping pill that let me sleep through the night last night. If you’ve never been to Singapore, you might want to add it to your bucket list. It’s one of the world’s great places.
I kept up (as many of you did) with Joe Gresh’s Endurofest fun in Flagstaff, and it looks like the only downside to that adventure was his good buddy Hunter crashed and cracked a bunch of ribs. Hunter, we’re thinking of you. Get well soon.
At the spot where Joe’s buddy Hunter crashed. He got through it with six broken ribs. Ouch!
And speaking of cracking things, you’ll remember the story on my .257 Weatherby Ruger No. 1 cracking its Circassian walnut stock and me shipping it back to the factory. I called Ruger, but I still don’t have an update on the fix. They were supposed to get back to me later today, but it’s already later today so I expect I won’t hear anything until tomorrow or Monday. I’ve got a bunch of .257 Weatherby brass polished and primed, and I’ve got the Barnes monolithic copper bullets my good buddy Mississippi Dave recommended. I’m eager to get that rifle back and continue the load development for it.
A 200th year Ruger 77 in 7×57. You’d think with all those 7s I’d get lucky, but I haven’t found a way to get tight groups yet. I’m working the problem.
In the meantime, I’ve been playing with a beautiful 43-year-old Ruger Model 77. It’s a 200th year Ruger in a very classy chambering, the 7×57, which is the old Spanish Mauser cartridge. I bought it used in 1977 and it is in pristine condition, and I think I know why the previous owner sold it. It doesn’t group worth a damn. But that makes it more fun (half the fun with these things is searching for a good load). Stay tuned, because if I ever find a decent load, you can be sure there will be a blog on this one.
The carb on my TT250 is gummed up and it won’t idle. That’s not the bike’s fault. It’s mine. I sometimes go months between rides on that bike, and that’s what happened here. I’ll take the carb apart to clean out the passageways, and when I do, I’ll photodocument the approach so you can see how I go about it. I’ll have to re-read the tutorial I did for CSC Motorcycles on the TT250 carb first. These bikes are super easy to maintain, and they have to be one of the best deals ever on a new motorcycle.
Hey, another cool motorcycle deal…my good buddy Ben recently published a book titled 21 Tips For Your First Ride South Of The Border (and it’s free). You can download it here.
Let’s see…what else? Oh yeah, we have a bunch of stuff in the blog pipeline for you. There’s the Yoo-Hoo product review (we haven’t forgotten about that one). There’s a very cool watch company (Gear’d Hardware) that follows the ExNotes blog, and they recently sent two watches to us for review. The review will appear here in the near future. That’s good; we’ve been meaning to start a watch review series and this will get the ball rolling.
A Gear’d Hardware watch, one of two Gresh and I will review for you here on the ExhaustNotes blog.
More good stuff: I’ve been playing with another Ruger No. 1 chambered in yet another Weatherby cartridge (the mighty .300 Weatherby), and I’ll be posting a blog about that soon. Another product review that’s coming up is one on turmeric, the dietary supplement that’s supposed to work wonders for arthritis. I don’t have arthritis, but that crash I had on my Speed Triple 10 years ago has bothered me mightily for the last decade, and taking turmeric is getting it done for me. I don’t normally believe in these supplement wonder pills, but folks, it’s working. Watch for the blog on this stuff. And we haven’t forgotten about a near-term ride up the Pacific Coast Highway (good buddy TK and I have been talking about that one).
California’s Pacific Coast Highway: It doesn’t get any better than this.
Stay tuned; there’s always good stuff coming your way here on the ExNotes blog!
A fresh, new Enduro rider joined Endurofest 2019 today, Husky Dave on his 1975 DT400. We celebrated by scrambling around the trails behind Flagstaff’s miniature airport.
Only a few miles out of town the single-track through the trees was a new experience for me. The track itself was narrow, like 12 inches wide, and deep enough that if your tire got scrubbing along the wall you’d have to dab a foot to keep the front from washing out. The trees were both close and low. It was a place you had to pay attention or a branch would slap you upside the head.
We did ok there, or at least we thought we were doing ok until a kid on a modern T-2 Husky ripped past us. The guy was just flying through those woods, sticking in the rut and dodging trees like a humming bird.
The tight stuff was mentally exhausting so I was glad when we headed back up into the mountains north of town. The trails are wide up there and a guy can do a bit of sight seeing. Until he hits a damn rock the size of a basketball, which I did. We were slowly climbing a mild grade, the trail was very dusty and the dust lingered. Big tree roots cut across the trail making a stair-step type of surface. I rode into the dust hopping over the roots and the next thing I knew I was on the ground. Godzilla kept popping away like nothing happened. I switched off the motor and looked back to see what the heck I had ridden over. I couldn’t believe the size of the rock. It was huge. How could I not see the bastard?
I restarted Godzilla and continued the climb. The motor was bogging down. Turns out the brake lever was bent and the bend applied the rear brake. Meis stopped by and we had to loosen the brake adjuster to allow the rear wheel free movement.
After sorting out my crash we went through a few gates and found some interesting snowshoe trails, then we circled back to Hunter’s crash site. At the exact spot Hunter’s ribs augered into the ground Greg built up a wood and stone memorial and we held a mock ceremony to honor Hunter’s busted ribs.
Hunter is feeling much better now. We visited him in the hospital and when he saw the monument and photos of us standing around with our heads bowed he called us assholes. So things are returning to normal.
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Hey, want to catch up on the Yamaha Endurofest and Gresh’s ruminations on the whing-ding-ding-ding-dingers? Well, here you go!
What with Hunter going on injured reserve yesterday I didn’t get a chance to work on the now dead Godzilla, my 360 RT-B Yamaha Enduro. There was a Flagstaff-morning nip in the air when I checked for spark at Godzilla’s sparkplug and found none. I then moved on to the spark plug cap, the coil wire itself and found no spark. I checked the coil windings, it had resistance so was probably ok. Then I cleaned the points, but nothing worked: Still no spark.
One thing about riding old motorcycles at Endurofest, you’ll be with a bunch of guys that know more about Yamaha two-strokes than anyone else save for Yamaha.
Meis brought over his flywheel puller and we removed the flywheel to gain access to the points. We couldn’t get the points to break. It was like they were grounded all the time. We started unplugging harness wires trying to find the problem but no joy.
Don, our resident Enduro Guru took a look at our ohmmeter readings and said, “Something is incorrect.” Don got down on his knees and pointed at a tiny silver piece of wire, like something from a wire brush, that was shorting against the point connection nut and a part of the aluminum boss that the stator screws into. “That’s it, take that wire out and it will run.” I grabbed the needle nose pliers and removed the tiny wire bit. It was probably 1/16-inch long.
Godzilla had spark! After reassembling the bike I still couldn’t get it to start. I figured that one out by myself; it was out of gas. I switched to reserve and Godzilla roared into life. The wire must have shorted the points out at exactly the same time as the bike went on reserve. What are the odds?
While the rest of the crew ran down to Sedona for lunch and trail riding I went to the Flagstaff airport to retrieve Hunter’s wife Lori.
We were riding in Brumby. I was sure she wasn’t going to like the old rattletrap but she’s made of sterner stuff than I thought. I could have gone riding and let Lori take a cab to the hospital but I felt I needed to make some brownie points with Lori. I’m not sure she’s all that into the Brumby-Godzilla schtick. Hunter and me are always playing around in the dirt on old motorcycles and here I broke her husband again.
At the hospital, Hunter looked much better. He wanted out now. I left those two to plot their escape.
Back at the motel I briefly considered trying to find the main group but with Godzilla acting up a bit I decided a nap was the better option. That’s how Endurofest goes, you’re free to ride or nap or do nothing. It’s a relaxed get together of like-minded dirt riders.
I try not to be “That Guy” but sometimes being “That Guy” finds a way. Seven old Yamaha Enduros showed up for the first trail ride of Endurofest 2019 in Flagstaff and the sound of all those cackling dirt bikes was magical. I could listen to that carbon-based music all day long.
Our first stop was a gas station top up. One of the guys knew a short cut through town and we were going to follow him. In all the gassing up and bikes moving around I kind of lost the plot. I took off down the road following a guy on a motorcycle that I thought was one of our group. That bike turned out to be a VStrom Suzuki so I pulled off the road and waited. And waited. Several motorcycles passed by but no smoking old two strokes. I turned around thinking, “Where the hell is everyone?”
I went all the way back to the gas station without seeing the group. I figured I’d make another slow run to see if I could find them and if I couldn’t I would just go for a ride. I caught a glimpse of a bike down one of the side streets and it turned out to be one of our group. He led me back to the gang and they were not exactly glad to see me.
“Rule one: If you don’t know where you’re going, don’t go!” they told me. I felt pretty bad holding up progress and all. I tried explaining how I followed another motorcycle but it was pretty quiet.
My wing man, Hunter had gone off looking for me. We waited and waited. The thing turned into a cluster and we had not even make the first turn. Once Hunter returned we headed up into the mountains north of Flagstaff. The trails were fairly smooth but you had to stay alert because often a big rock would be in the middle of the trail. Also it was hunting season so a big, lifted pickup truck might be coming the other direction and you don’t want to end up a hood ornament.
With all seven strokers ripping through the woods I’m sure more than one hunter drew a bead on us after we spooked their game.
Don’s 1973, hot rodded 175 Enduro broke its kickstarter stop and the lever was bouncing against the frame making a hell of a racket. He sorted it with a bungee cord.
In areas with trees the shadows on the trail made it hard to see rocks. It all looked like rocks! Hunter nailed one and it knocked the front end sideways. The bike went down and Hunter landed hard.
I was the 4th rider to get there, Hunter was on his knees hunched over cussing so I figured he was ok. We kind of stood around, asking Hunter if he was ok. He mostly just cussed.
“Help me up.” We got Hunter vertical. I knew he was hurt bad because he said we better call an ambulance. I’ve seen Hunter ride one-handed with broken bones through some rough trails. We got the ambulance on the way.
Hunter asked me, “Can you go get my Jeep and take my bike back to the motel?” Another rider, Larry, and I headed back to town. It was a rough couple miles to get to pavement and I was wondering how that ride in an ambulance would feel.
Four-tenths of a mile from our motel Godzilla died. No sputtering, no hint anything was wrong. It was like someone turned off the key. I kicked the bike until I could kick no more. Then Larry have it a few hundred kicks. It was dead. I could see the Motel 6 but to get there I had to push down Prospect Street over to Butler Street. It was a round about way because of all the fences blocking a direct route. I was fairly gassed so Larry pushed me the last few hundred yards.
We got Hunter’s Jeep and drove back out to the crash site. The boys were still there waiting. Hunter uses one of those bumper mounts to tote his motorcycle and with the rough trail we were worried about breaking the thing. Larry decided to ride Hunter’s bike back to the motel as it seemed undamaged.
Everyone made it back safe and sound but Larry said Hunter’s 1975 DT400 handled like crap. It wasn’t until we were loading the bike onto the bumper carrier when we noticed the entire rear section of the frame was broken. Did it happen before the crash, after the crash or on the ride home? We didn’t know but we blamed Larry and said he was riding too fast.
Hunter is in the Flagstaff hospital with 6 broken ribs on one side. I’m not sure how many ribs there are per side but that seems like most of them. We are working on logistics, sorting out how to deal with Hunter’s stuff. Hunter’s wife is flying out to take charge of the situation.
Hopefully the rest of Endurofest will be less exciting.
After Payson, Arizona and just a little past Pine, Arizona there’s a steep grade that climbs up into the mountains. Hell, it’s all mountains out here in northern Arizona. Ahead of me was a older Chevy truck, one of those faded metallic burgundy ones that is only burgundy underneath. The topsides were more of a peeled silver with just a hint of grape jam. The truck was struggling on the grade; it sounded like three or more injectors had lost their tips and raw fuel was pouring into the cylinders. Thick, black smoke flowed out of the tail pipe and I could hear the engine stuttering from 150 feet back.
Brumby, my 2.5, 4-banger Jeep smelled blood. This had to be the first and best opportunity to pass a car on the entire 500-mile trip to Endurofest. A series of tight corners opened into a short straight. I shoved Brumby into 3rd gear and gunned the little 2.5, neatly slotting Brumby alongside the old Chevy. I could see the driver of the Chevy now. He was long-haired, thin, with no shirt. He resembled one of those backwoods reality TV stars and when he saw Brumby’s hood hove into sight his expression changed from complacent anger to rage. He gunned the Chevy and a noxious cloud of almost pure dinosaur squeezings engulfed the road behind us. Damn it! That Chevy was picking up speed! I dropped Brumby into second gear and mashed the throttle to the floor. My efforts were rewarded as the Chevy dropped back, still missing and smoking. All this was happening at about 15 miles an hour. It was slow motion road rage for sure but Brumby passed the test.
Me and Hunter arrived late to the party and as we pulled into Endurofest headquarters several cackling two-strokes were already on their way out to explore our new digs. Next door to the Flagstaff Motel 6 was a combination Subway sandwich franchise and massage parlor. I thought that was pretty cool. I considered going into the massage parlor after eating a foot-long veggie delight but I had pretty good cell reception so I just looked at them on the phone.
Tomorrow I’ll get Godzilla started and join the fun.
