dirt dame

Well, one thing I learned over the years of taking care of motorcycles(and I used to be in the business) is how to make one type of tool out of other types of tools. While I was knelt down on the hot pavement fixing brakes on my Jeep, I figured out how to make a tool to spread the new pads apart and push the piston back out of two tire irons, a ratchet and two vise grips. It may sound silly, but it was very efficient.

It's a national forest parking permit called an adventure pass. You need it to park anywhere in a national forest, at least around these parts. You'd need one to park anywhere along a road or off the road for that matter.

I love those. I don't get out to catch em very often, but when I do I usually do pretty well. Biggest Calico I ever caught (or plaid bass as I like to refer to them ) was just over 6 pounds. Caught him on a live 'diney. I forgot how sharp their teeth are, especially when they are that big, so when I made the mistake of grabbing 'im by the mouth, he chewed my fingers up like an industrial food processer with fins. My friend took a picture of me with the prize, but later in the day I managed to slip on a slimey deck and fling my camera into the ocean as I fell and my hand hit the railing If we are playing name that fish, I'll name your two Fred and Wilma

I read an article in the paper this morning about a young navy man who died in a motorcycle accident on Otay Lakes road. He was wearing a helmet, but died of major head injuries. I would never ride without a helmet, as I have landed on them more than a few times and land on one so as to damage it in such a way that the damage was immediately highly visable. (not scrapes, but huge fracture lines) I generally don't wear much other protective gear-leathers with internal armor on the road or kneeguards and a kidney belt along with the usual offroad outfit for the dirt. I will wear body protector and elbow guards if I am riding in a competition or a very large group event. I have broken my right arm, my right femur, my right hip, torn my right rotator cuff, torn my right thumb out of the socket and poked a hole in my right knee cap. What I need to do is quit falling down on my right side, although I have not been seriously injured since 1988. And when I tore my rotator cuff, I didn't even fall off of my bike; I was riding a section in an observed trials event and got off balance while unexpectedly negotiating a floating turn on a boulder and it pulled my arm right out and tore that rotator. I feel like the article posted above was written by my old orthopedic surgeon who wished I would quit ridng after the head-on that broke my femer and hip in 1975. He advised my to NEVER ride again. The point I am trying to make is that I just want to be careful and alert, enjoy my sport and not think about all that horrible stuff. I went through some and was pinned up in traction and then in a cast which took close to a year out of my life. I am lucky that I am in as good a shape as I am in today. Stuff can happen anywhere, any time beyond our control. One of my teen times riding pals whole family died when their small plane crashed into Volcan mountain back in the 70s. He wasn't with them, but he lost everybody and never really recovered. Ride safe, be alert and above all, enjoy-because you never know WHAT will take the joy of motorcycling away from you.

Oh the memories! thanks guys! I just remembered why I love my LC4. Hope you have some fun with the Rokon. I used to have such fond memories of my first Elsinore CR 125. I had one and so did my boyfriend at the time. We used to race at Four Corners, Dehesa, Saddleback, Indian Dunes, Escape Country as well as Carlsbad on our little flimsey green and silver grenades. Once I was fondly recalling a time or two about the Elsie, when a friend of mine said he had one leaning up against his garage wall. It'd been there for 13 years and was in none too good a shape, so he offered it up to me for free. I couldn't say no and soon had it apart in my garage. Once it was restored good enough for practical use, I fired the little sucker up and took it for a spin in the field next to my house. I put it up for sale the next day. So much for fond memories! The bike was alot nicer as I remembered it than it actually was in the moment of rediscovery. A vintage racer came out and paid me 350 smackers for it and I happily went on my way riding modern bikes, which at the time was mid 80s, not so far off from what we are riding today. I still have an 86 model trailbike that sees some dirt from time to time

I have always added grease to new bearings, packed 'em full. Make sure it's a nice high temp grease so it won't soften up and ooze out. I have noticed that some manufacturers don't grease alot of the bearings on their motorcycles very well right off the assembly line, so after one or two rides on a new machine, I will often take the chassis apart and inspect the steering stem bearings and all the rear linkage bearings. When I lived in the Pacific Northwest where there is alot more mud and water, I repacked my wheel bearings as well, if I could get the seals off of them without removing the bearing from the wheel. On more occasions than not, new motorcycles need to be repacked before you get into any really dirty or wet adventures, or very soon you will be forking over some dough to replace bearings that otherwise would take years to wear out. I had a new Honda years ago, and in 3 months, my steering head bearings were shot, just burned up, dry, rusted and black. If I had greased 'em up right away, nothing would have happened. So for most bearings, I say the more the merrier as far as grease goes.

Next week on Kawees Cuts, the chef will demonstrate how to fricassee a ferret while out in the backcountry using nothing but a camelback, some tin foil and the exhaust pipe of a trail bike. I always knew squirrels liked nuts, but I didn't know they liked them so much that they carried them around in a little bag with them. Wow, ya learn somethin new every day!

I think you could use ground squirrels in any recipe that called for ground round

mmmmm. That looks almost as tasty as fettichini al fido.

Those things were actually raced in National enduro competiton back in the 70s. I remember pictures of them in my old Dirt Bike magazines, which I probably still have in a box out somewhere in the garage. I can't remember who the riders were. Nobody famous, I guess

Without having seen one, I agree. A few years ago the there was this guy who was building an enclosed motorcyle which he had hopes of putting into production. I tried to drive this darned prototype, but it felt awkward and foreign, neither car nor bike. It didn't seem to have enough protection from the elements or comfort to fit into the car catagory, and was too clumsy and closed in feeling to offer the benefits of riding a motorcycle. Needless to say, that although others have followed in small production runs, this fellows bike never made it to market. What makes a motorcycle a motorcycle is so unique and wonderful, that any modification to the formula just waters it down and ruins the true "motorcycling experience". A three wheeled "cycle" would fall into that catagory....a sort of non-motorcycle catagory.

I just purchased a new helmet to add to my collection. I needed one that would match my TE 450, so I went out a-shoppin till I spied a black,white,red and silver HJC CL-X5 Sapien at my local dealer. The perfect match and not expensive either, retailing out at about 160 bucks (I paid less). It was plastic composition and lightweight, had nice styling and the little owners booklet assured me that the helmet was designed to reduce lift and noise at speed. I was soon to find out if this was true or not, by wearing the lid on my Saturday afternoon ride. It was pretty warm that day and I took part of the "Newbie Ride" route through the Lagunas and added in a little other stuff. There was some slow stuff and highway speeds, so I found that the helmet was well ventilated and pretty darned quiet at 60 mph and stable too. I thought it was quite nice for a dirt helmet on both the street and the dirt and would recommend it to anybody looking for a dirt style helmet. They come in enough colors to satify any brand owner, including an orange one for all you KTMers

Ever since the Evolution motor came out, Harley Davidson has been a fairly reliable ride. They have hydraulic valves, so you won't need to worry about much other than keeping the motoroil nice and fresh. I had a 1990 XLH883 STD (a Sportster, for all you non-HD fluent folks) and it was pretty much trouble free. Some of the big non-unit construction motors still had some oil dripping problems at that time. I don't know anything about those V Rod motors though.

Happy birthday you little whippersnapper I hope you are having a fun day

I've been on some of the rides husky4me is talking about. My Verizon razr didn't work where his Cingular (I guess it's AT&T now) phone did. I agree with Two, I had Cingular, but switched to Verizon and can't get bleep for coverage in the boonies. I don't know if it was the service or the fact that I switched to a new fangled phone, an LG or something like that....I can't remember exactly what it was, because somebody liked it better than me, and took it from where I am employed

Hooboy, that looks like fun. I have never fished for brookies or fished in the Sierras. The rules and regs are so nutty, you have to drag the little reg book with you just to keep things straight. It might read something like this; Upper Horsepotootie creek from Prozak Valley campground to Phoonman Crossing, 2 rainbows per day between 14 and 20 inches, Lower Horsepotootie creek from Prozak Valley campground to Slackers Bend, 0 take, artificials, barbless hooks only, no live bait unless it's Tuesday, but not during leap year etc... I can never plan to get away on such adventures. That is why I fish locally. A little bassin, (OK, mostly bassin) some panfish and maybe the bays or inshore. I'll even stoop to fishin for putntake trout sometimes. But I'd have to get off my motorcycles to do that, and that's tough to do. I have had bad days of fishing, but I have almost never had a bad day of motorcycling. I guess that's because when I go fishing, expecting to get fish and I don't, I am disappointed. When I go for a ride, that is what I went for, and I always get it I guess that's why I'm Dirt Dame instead of Trout Dame

I carry the Genuine Innovations brand pump too. It is the Second Wind model and I bought it on line from Rocky Mountain MC. It was about 26 or 27 bucks and takes the non-threaded cartridges (16 gram) and also will inflate by hand if need be. Rocky mountain carries replacement cartridges, threaded 2 packs are 7$ and non-threaded 3 packs are 4$. I bought some pre-stickied tire patches called attractively enough "Scabs". I haven't had to use any of them yet, so I don't know how well they work.

I have heard that people like to ride this border road. Is it fun, scenic, relatively long etc? I have never ridden it I'm only asking because it was mentioned in an earlier post that there might be a ride added to the festivities and then it was pointed out that the border road was right close by. Maybe I should just drive my jeep down and leave the trailbike at home.

Overheating must be a 4-stroke thing. My two stroke KTM has been labored through slow terrain in hot weather and has never lost a drop of coolant in two years. Every time I check or change it, it's full. The Husky, I will never know....it's jetted a little rich and I have tried to get it into a heat-up situation on a grungy little single track full of rocks and bushes on a hillside, but the only thing that seemed to overheat on it was me. It came with a coolant overflow bottle and I checked that, but it didn't look any fuller during the attempt. I'm probably just too light to make my bikes work very hard

So! You admit that you have been too busy having fun with your new car to get on-line And I noticed that your jacket was KTM orange in that photo at the slide...sneaky, sneaky you were planning secretly to get a KTM all along!

I agree with J. there, especially Rodriguez which has a shorter set of scarier rocks, while Chariot has a long stretch of not so scary rocks. Both has more gradiant and rocks than Thing Valley.

Well, people in the club had good rides going on Saturday and Sunday. But I just have had too much to do and not enough time or energy to do it, so I missed out on Papaalex's desert ride and will miss out on the Sunday Corral Canyon ride because I have to go to work Corral Canyon is my default ride in a pinch, so late in the morning I levered the TE450 onto its little perch behind the jeep and motored out to Pine Valley. I rode over to Corral Canyon via Kernan trail. The weather was perfect, breezy and sorta humid with a smattering of clouds in the sky. I wondered if the desert gang was roasting or what By the time I got over to the Corral Canyon campground, after covering some of the surrounding trails, I ran across XR Bill and his fiance from up north.(She needs a good bike handle too) We teamed up for a ride up spur meadow trail and then went down to see what Espinoza looked like. Although it was a nice jaunt with pleasant company, I was bummed to see that the once somewhat rocky and rutted canyon stretch was all manicured and pruned to a fairtheewell from the fire efforts last summer. And of course you can't ride the loop anymore, with the gate locked in the bottomlands, so that's a bummer too. But it was still pretty countryside and I stopped for soft freeze icecream on the way back in Pine Valley-and I didn't drop my tall heavy bike anywhere, so all in all, it was a good riding day I know, it probably seems like a boring ride to most of you, since there was no mention of beer in it and no photos. I've noticed that most everyone in this club likes to read the "purty pitchurs" more than the written part of the posts,(I certainly do, as well) and as Joliet pointed out in his posting, he was going to get a camera as soon as he could. I think I'll go out and do a little bit of price and feature shopping on some cameras right away

With all this talk about revoking plates on green sticker conversions that were done later than Dec 2002 (or when ever the cut-off date was ) it made me a bit nervous, since I did my conversion on my KLX 300 in April of 06. It is one of the reasons I bought my TE this spring. Right after that is when I started hearing all the rumors about the DMV yanking plates on these late bikes. The other day I was chatting with a motorcycle salesman about this subject. He told me what he thought would happen is that nobody who presently owns this type of machine would actually have to give up their street registration, but as soon as they sell the bike, the new owner will not be able to register it for the street. Anybody else hear anything along those lines?

Hmmm Haven't seen or heard a peep from papaalex yet. He usually chimes in about a ride he's been on, and it's been a couple of days now. He must really be feeling poorly I hope he'll be feeling good soon and hops back on-line and his bike