dirt dame

I hope all you SDAR members have a great Easter Sunday, whether out on the trail or relaxing at home with family.

I miss McCain.😥

Up where I live, I spend most of the winter trying to figure out how to escape "snow day". This usually entails checking to see if the highway 191 is open to through traffic between my town and the Utah border. If it is, I check the Flaming Gorge webcams to see if there is snow or not. If not , I hightail it down the road to places like Manila or Dutch John to enjoy a snow free (or at least snow freeish) day in the back country.😎

Yeah, that's what they said back in the day too. I guess nothing has changed.

Years ago, you could take road licensed 4 wheel vehicles in there for a day fee. Not sure when or if they let motorcycles in. I think vehicle travel as been limited, compared to the old days, for other than camping and hiking access.

Seems like he gave up the public riding life after he and his wife bought a place with a nice house and enough acreage to set up a few single track routes. He was still running his suspension tuning business out of the garage while looking after their first son that they had recently had. I guess the stay at home, suspension dude dad life appealed to him. Some people just move on after they start a family.

Yes, that's why it's "artificial" intelligence.

This is what AI thinks the average adventure rider looks like.🤣

I thought to myself "if that's average, I'd hate to guess what the extremes were".

There are lots of how to videos on Youtube. Some involve heat guns, some don't. I chose this one because it had Rolling Stones music.

The brake problem that you have described happens when a bit of air leaks into the system. Best is to pump the brake a few times, and then without any pressure on the pedal, slowly crack the bleeder and retighten. Repeat until pressure returns to normal. My 2011 Husqvarna WR300 has this problem. First I tried readjusting it and got the same results as you. Then I tried bleeding it thoroughly, but found that the method described in my second sentence worked the best. The best I can describe it is that it's like burping your brake system system.😂 Even coyotes wouldn't eat coyote melons.

Rick Sieman AKA Super Hunky passed away yesterday. If you were an aspiring dirt bike enthusiast back in the early 70s, you probably remember hotfooting it down to the local news stand or magazine rack to pick up the monthly Dirt Bike magazine, in which "From The Saddle" was a regular editorial piece. From this position of journalism, Rick spun the tales of the "every man", from racing adventures to garage misadventures that had to do with off road motorcycling. He had a page on Facebook....and in the last year or so, his health had been declining at an accelerated pace, so finally his daughter Cindy took over his page. Unfortunately, yesterday, he ran out of time on this earth: "SuperHunky · Dad has gone on his last ride. I am numb as I am writing this. I am thanking the gods that I was able to be here when he took his last breathes. I have been blessed to be able to spend as much time with him as I have the last months. Thank you everyone for all the letters, cards and support over this time. He was able to go on his own terms and and in his own home. All my love...from my family to yours. Cindy Sieman EXIT By Rick Sieman/February 1982/Dirt Bike (When I wrote this piece, an avalanche of mail followed. A whole bunch of people thought the story was about me, and that I had a terminal illness. Luckily, that was not the case. However, the story was based on reality. I will not say who, why, or how.) It was the pain deep inside his chest that forced him to see a doctor Oh sure, he knew something was wrong, but, like most people, he put it off And put it off. How long had that pain been gnawing away? Two years? Three? At least three. It'd been there so long it was almost taken for granted. But, lately, it had worsened. It was affecting his riding, walking, eating, sleeping and his work. Motorcycle racers don't like to go to doctors, even though they are forced to seek their services now and then. The occasional trip into the Twilight Zone, the harsh crack of bone against rock and it's Plaster City. Frank had been there before. Not too often, but enough to keep a healthy respect for just how far he would let it all hang out now. He raced a bit more cautiously now days. Still fairly fast and competent, but the years and the close calls and the bumps and the bruises had all taken a tiny bit off that racer's edge. Still racing was fun and that's what counted, right? Frank sat in the doctor's office idly flipping through a tattered copy of National Geographic, wishing he'd had the foresight to bring a bike magazine with him to help pass the time. He'd been in this cold, white office too many times in the last month what with all the check-ups, X-rays blood tests and other mysterious things they did to his body. The pain was still there. Always the pain. The white-haired doctor called him in to his private office and closed the door quietly behind them. Frank knew at that moment that something was desperately wrong. The doctor told him very quietly, patiently and calmly what was up. He did it so professionally that Frank listened in an almost detached manner, as the white-haired physician told him he had only a few months to live Ö perhaps five or six at the most. What got Frank upset was that he'd never even heard of the disease. A lot of Latin words strung together. Why didn't they just call it a ball of pain in the chest? With more calm in his voice than he could believe, Frank asked the good doctor about operations and alternatives. With an obvious tremble in his hands, the doctor explained the whynots and the where-fores of the situation. He took a long time and ignored the blinking light on his phone. When he stopped talking, Frank fairly well understood the mechanics behind his doom. The doctor wrote out a prescription for the pain and told him to use it as needed and to call any time the pain got too intense. There were stronger things available for stronger pain. They shook hands and parted. Frank drove his pickup truck home, head whirling with thoughts. He stopped off at a drive-through, ordered some burgers and junk food and ate as he put in the 22 miles that separated his home from the medical center. By the time he got home, Frank knew exactly what he wanted to do. He grabbed a beer and sat down at his wobbly old desk. A yellow-lined pad and a felt-tipped pen were extracted from the center drawer, along with his savings account and checkbooks. Very slowly and with much thought, Frank made a list on that clean yellow pad. After each item, he put a price. Frank knew just about what things cost. Nine hundred bucks for the trick frame. Twenty-five hundred for the bike. Exotic forks, special shock, aluminum this, magnesium that, chromoly goodies, lightweight plastic, special parts for the engine, the best tires money could buy. . . in fact, the best of everything. When he completed the list and added it up, he gave a low whistle. The total came to over eight thousand dollars. A check of his bank and checkbooks showed that he had more than enough to cover the cost. He slowly savored three more beers that evening and made page after page of notes on the yellow-lined legal pad. Sleep came easy, in spite of that ever-present pain in the chest. The next morning was spent cleaning out his garage. He shaped it up to perfection, then made a trip to the bank and withdrew a tidy sum of cash. Frank then stopped off at his favorite place and spent a considerable amount of that cash on new tools. The good stuff. Snap-On, S-K, top-of-the-line sockets and wrenches. And then he bought a shiny new red Craftsman two-piece roll-around toolbox. It gave him an odd feeling of pleasure to peel off the twenty-dollar bills to pay for the tools. The salesman helped him load everything in the back of the pickup and Frank then headed down to the bike shop. The man behind the counter knew him by his first name and they exchanged the usual pleasantries. Casually, with a slight smile of glee, Frank told the man to load that bike....that one over there....in the back of his truck, and started counting out one hundred dollar bills on the counter to drive the message home. After the paperwork, Frank placed an order for some special parts and goodies. The man totaled it up and Frank once more proceeded to count out bills on the glass top of the display case. He was offered a discount, but refused it. His only request was that everything be delivered to his home before the end of the week. Frank made two more stops before he headed home to his garage. One to order a special frame and another to pick up a cardboard box full of speed parts for the engine. He spent that night sorting every thing out on his work bench and checking off items on that yellow legal pad. Sleep came hard. Early the next morning, Frank rolled the new bike into the center of the garage and put it up on a milk crate. Parts were carefully removed with the shiny new tools and placed in various cardboard boxes that were marked with a thick felt pen; then he placed them on shelves. By noon, only the engine sat there. Frank opened the thick workshop manual and proceeded to tear the big four-stroke engine down. He made notes, put nuts and bolts into small boxes and, at four o'clock, took the barrel down to his local machine shop with instructions to bore it out to match the new, huge piston. The days went by slowly and pleasantly. Frank did not answer the telephone and did not open any mail. He only left the garage to make trips to the machine shop, or to the bike shop for needed odds and ends. With the arrival of the frame and forks, the bike started to take shape. Parts started to fall into place. Some things required drilling, bending, shaping and fitting. Frank carefully fitted each and every piece with patience until he was satisfied that it was perfect. By the time two weeks had passed, Frank was forced to stop by the pharmacy and get that prescription filled. The pharmacist looked a bit startled when he read the doctor's scrawl and placed a call to check it out. Frank took a double-dose of pain killers to sleep that night, but he woke up so fuzzy-headed the next morning that he flushed the remaining pills down the toilet. It took one more week before the bike was completed. Naturally enough, the last two bolts were snubbed in place well into the wee hours of the morning. Frank poured some straight gas in the tank, twisted on the petcock and depressed the choke lever. It took three kicks for the big bike to light off, but when it did, the sound from the megaphone was pure music. Frank ran the bike for three minutes, ignoring the blue haze filling up the garage, then shut off the lights and went to sleep. Early the next morning, he rose and went out to the garage. An hour was spent checking all of the nuts and bolts with a torque wrench. Frank then loaded the bike up into the back of his truck with all of his riding gear and headed out the Interstate. He stopped off at his favorite restaurant and had steak and eggs and several cups of scalding-hot black coffee. The waitress smiled from ear to ear when he left the whole twenty dollar bill with the check. Twenty minutes later, Frank arrived at his favorite riding area and unloaded the bike. He fired it up and let it idle comfortably while he put on his riding gear. Frank slipped the goggles in place, then swung a leg over the bike and blipped the throttle a few times. The engine responded cleanly and instantly with a rapping snarl. Good Frank nudged the shift lever into low and eased away. The bike pulled strongly, satisfyingly, through the gears. Not a hint of a flat spot, or even a burble, as the revs rose. Frank followed the two-track road through the valley and then caught the old fire road heading up the mountain side. The smoothly graded road had just the perfect surface for letting it all hang out. Once he got the feel of the bike, Frank started to stuff it into the turns with the rear end hanging out, the exhaust note wailing off the steep canyon walls. As the road climbed, Frank was forced to use a lower gear and rev the engine harder to maintain his speed. A thin sheen of perspiration covered his forehead and face. He breathed harder, worked the bike deeper into the turns. As Frank neared the summit, he saw the last wide sweeping corner before the road ended and the narrow trails began. It was clearly marked with white barriers to keep wayward vehicles from plummeting off the vertical drop. Frank smiled, took a deep breath, let the revs rise and aimed the front wheel directly at the flimsy barriers. The white wood snapped cleanly and the bike sailed out into the clear blue air. Frank held tightly onto the bars and sailed and sailed and sailed. He had always wondered what it might be like. And now he knew." He was one of us, and we were one of him....motorcycle enthusiasts, all. Rest in peace, Super Hunky.

I have heard that you will need to show an Arizona driver's license to go with your registration. Just sayin'....

The weather was doing well up to yesterday. Then a cold front moved in. It is currently 14 degrees and snowing right now. Autumn may be over for good.

I hope all members of SDAR are having a nice Thanksgiving day, this year, whether you are eating a turkey dinner with friends and family, or out on the dusty trail....or possibly both.

Seems like somebody is a little too introspective. Just sayin'....

It's all on one body of water. Flaming Gorge reservoir is 463 feet deep at the dam (in Utah), then it goes 91 miles north on the course of the Green river (also fed by Henry's Fork, Blacks Fork, and numerous drainages) , and has 375 miles of shoreline. We were riding on the east side where there are more dirt county roads and Jeep trails.

We had our first little snow squall a couple of weeks ago, but then the weather warmed back up....a far cry from last year for sure. I spent a lot of that time out at Flaming Gorge, fishing for trout at the Firehole recreation area. But Friday night, Kim gave me a call and said "hey, it seems like quite a while since we went for a ride. We ought to go again before winter weather sets in". We discussed it a bit, but didn't really come up with a solid idea, so we chatted again in the morning. After a late start actually for both of us, it was decided that we would explore some of the trails and shoreline around the Flaming Gorge reservoir. Kim was to arrive around 11, but got hung up with something out at the ranch, so we ended up launching our endeavor by about a half an hour later before the old trailer rig rolled into the parking lot. We had to pick up my bike from the storage shed, and then head down the 191. We staged out of the boat launch parking lot at Flaming Gorge. A madhouse in the summer months, it was practically deserted on a fall day, as was the "beach" area, and most of the gorge, for that matter. The weather started out sunny around midday, but with a slight bit to the air, as we rode along dirt highway routes, ducking down two tracks from time to time that would, with any luck lead us to the water's edge. We really didn't have an itinerary. We were just poking around, talking to stray anglers we chanced upon here and there, and enjoying the scenery. As the afternoon wore on, some clouds began to move in, and the air got a little more nippy. We were looking to get to some cliffs that Kim remembered from days past, but we couldn't seem to find the trail that led there. Around 3:30, we realized that the trailhead for that venue was further down the 33 than we had anticipated, so we turned around and moseyed back towards the staging area, with a detour to a flat on the water, with some brush along the south side of the trail. There was about two dozen muley deer bedded down there. They were hidden from sight until Kim rode past. Then big ears began to pop up in the brush as the deer began to stand up and have a look at the two motorcycles passing through. We also had seen some antelope earlier in the day, further west on the hills. All in all, it had been a pretty casual day on the trail, and I spotted some nice looking fishing spots as well.

The first storm of the winter should arrive today. It should not bring too much snow to this region, so hopefully there will be more rides to be scheduled before the new year arrives. But you never know. Last year, it snowed up here two weeks before Halloween and we managed one ride at the beginning of November....and that's all she wrote until May. So Kim and I did a 75 mile loop on Monday. Between our last ride and this one, I have been busy fishing the lakes up in the Uinta mountains. We visited some petroglyphs, went down to the shore of Flaming Gorge (the fish weren't biting), took a run down Cherokee trail, crossed Sage creek (was running better than last year), then made our way back to the truck. Lots of hunters out on the hills right now, so we encountered a few of those and their camps. It was mostly a mellow route on major dirt highways, but with a few two tracks thrown in, and of course a couple of annoying spots.

Yes. It was mostly wet, except for very high elevations. Looks like a bit of nice weather for at least a few more days.

Welcome to the forum.

The weather was supposed to be fair on Monday, with no real threat of rain being a reality....but Mother Nature had other plans. By the time I realized this, Kim and I were well down the highway with our bikes in tow, heading for the Uinta mountains. We both had rain jackets packed into our gear, so there would be no worries if we were caught in a shower or two. We also had brought a little extra layering besides our jerseys....since it is Indian summer and we would be riding well above 8000 feet. Clouds and rain squalls were evident, even in the first 30 miles of our journey to the staging area on top of the mountains. But there was plenty of sunshine in between the storms, so we were hopeful. The sun was still shining for the most part as we embarked on our adventure to find new routes and new fishing spots. By the time we had worked our way west on route 58, the sunshine was an all but gone commodity. First stop was Beaver Dam lake. It looked nice on Google Earth, but in reality....it had been completely drained. So, that would be crossed off the fishing list. We crossed a couple of small streams on our way to Hoop lake. Luckily, this lake had remained intact, and appeared to be brimming with happy trout that were kissing the water's surface and occasionally jumping for joy. I wished at that moment in time that I had brought some tackle with me. The weather got dicey at this point, the wind whipping up so much that the resulting dust storm temporarily made it impossible for me to see where I was going. I had to stop and wait for a few moments before heading onward. Following the wind, the rain began, it was gentle and intermittent at first, obliging us to don our rain jackets. We continued on, exploring a bit of side trail, before deciding to head in a different direction. By now, we could see some snow showers on nearby peaks. The ride now traced the route we took out, with a stop to see some fall colors in a stand of trees. Then we had planned to hit the main road and head up to Spirit lake lodge, maybe stop and eat a snack and then proceed after we re-accessed the weather. But by now, a light rain was coming down pretty steadily and the air temperature had dropped by an estimated ten or 15 degrees. We were not really prepared for this turn of events and when we got to the turn off to Spirit lake I glanced up at the peak just above it and saw a snowy curtain veiling the mountain. At this point, we had to make a decision, and preferably a rational one....so we called it a day and turned around to had back to the staging area. We were not too chilly or uncomfortable at this point and we wanted to keep it that way. The rain increased and the temp fell a bit further. Sleet stung our faces as we rode back. We hung out in the trailer until there was a break in the precip, then we loaded the bikes and headed down the mountain. We had gotten some miles in, saw a lot of beautiful countryside, and we didn't freeze to death, so all in all it was a great day.

It was one of those rides, where your buddy says "it's just a mellow, easy" ride. I should always know better, but I keep being hopeful. Hopefulness gets you nowhere, and the ride was actually one of those where your trail leader stops every ten minutes to assure that "this is the worst part of the trail and the rest will get easier", or "it wasn't like this, last time I rode it". I'm sure that most of us have been there at one time or another, probably either when you very new to riding or when you finally got old enough to value self preservation over proving that you still "got it". Well...at least it was mostly all downhill...and of course, I didn't die. Sorry, no pictures of the tough parts. I was too busy clawing and bulldogging my bike down those sections.

Gortex is a thin membrane that is added to whatever material a garment is made of. Cordura is a type of fabric, a heavy duty denier nylon fabric. So if it doesn't have a coating, treatment or laminated water repelling feature added of some sort, it will leak. Clothing made of Gortex or some other water repellent treatment typically also have waterproof taped seams, so that the garment won't leak at the stitched joints. Gortex and other treatments will sooner or later start to leak. Also, even though they are advertised as breathable, once the exterior water repellent treatment starts to wear off and the exterior gets saturated with moisture, any interior moisture vapor is now trapped by that exterior barrier of water, and the wearer starts to feel the effects of that in the form of getting that damp, clammy feeling. Gortex types of treatment still work better than coated, vinyl, rubber or other solid barrier materials when it comes to shedding both exterior and interior moisture.