Today I did one of those things that is so easy to start and so hard to finish. A nice relaxing ride up to Crown King sounded like the perfect way to spend a Sunday morning and afternoon so off I went on an easy ride planning on not spilling the coffee in the tail box of the KLR so that it would last through breakfast. And it did too.
The ride was leisurely and care was taken over the hundreds of thousands of bumps on the washboard riddled road. But at breakfast there was a group couples who had ridden up on those little 4 wheel drive golfcart like things called crawlers. They had come up the back side from Lake Pleasant. I had made that trip on a “real” dirtbike a few years ago and recall that it was a fairly nasty road so I asked if they thought it would be passable with the KLR. “Sure, no problem”.
So after a false start I found the road leading down and asked another couple on quads how the road was. She assured me that it was a little rough but passable. Ok, let’s do it.
After about 2 miles riding steeply downhill on loose shale filled with 1 foot diameter rocks bordered on one side by a steep stone wall and the other by a sharp drop-off, it became clear that I couldn’t turn back. Shit!
When I finally ran into more riders it was a group of guys on quads stuck in the bottom of a ravine that I had to enter over a piece of road that they couldn’t get up. Shit again! I turned off the engine and walked it down to the bottom where they informed me that it didn’t get better ahead where they had just come from.
I won’t bore you with the a blow by blow two and a half hour struggle to get out but let it be enough to say that I crashed 3 times and am sitting here typing this with an ice pack on my sprained right ankle. The repairs to the KLR are surprisingly moderate, only a cracked shift lever and an even more bent handlebar. I had thought of doing this trail when my eldest son, J, next comes to visit but it would be best to consider the ride to Prescott over the Old Senator Highway from Crown King. Or maybe just sitting around talking about it.
UPDATE: The shift lever was just loose, not cracked. Saved $35 on that one! And I’m not even limping anymore, just driving at an angle (the bent bars, you know).
2 comments:
Sounds like a true dirt bike was needed. Watch your noggin out there, young man.
Yeh, fighting that extra 200lbs of dead weight didn't help a bit especially when I had to lift it. Whew! At least I never fell going up hill, that would have been a bitch.
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