From the people who brought you the Spring Ride of 2009, comes the 2010 Ride Report!
Friday, 09 AprilI sat at the kitchen table at 4:30 in the afternoon. School had been out for about an hour and a half, and that time had been used to pack anything that could conceivably be needed in the forest. Let's see... spare pants, Bigfoot shirt, 50lb math book, iPhone, that's about it! After a few minutes, the big green '98 Ram pulled into the driveway and backed aimed the tailgate to the garage. Ten minutes later, the '82 Husky 250CR was loaded in the back and we were rolling to his house. Another driveway, another garage, and soon another Husqvarna was loaded into the truck, this one a '79 390CR.
By around six, we had the trailer hooked up and were on our way to the camp, located on what will be identified only as the "Archery Camp Road." To conform with tradition, we played the "
Rollin' Free" by Johnny Cash. It's a perfect song for our style of riding.
Rollin' free Johnny CashWhen we got there, we got a surprise. The Archery Camp Road, which is notorious for having tons of washouts and great holes, making it one of the most dangerous roads to ride, had been "fixed." The owner had laid down some gravel over all the bad parts and left a road that could be traveled by a Husky at 80 miles per, without much worry of danger. Sure, the "gravel" did seem to be absolutely massive 5-inch minus with sharp edges, but the muddy dirt beneath had let the rocks sink and get pounded down until they formed a virtual brick road.
We met up with our fellow riders (uncle Scott and cousin Mark) at the end of the road. There were no camps available on the road, because it was the meat of Turkey Hunting season. So, in typical fashion, we carved a new one out of the woods, and made our campfire in this great pit that was sitting there for an unknown reason. The night was cold, and we struggled to get enough wood to feed the campfire enough to stay warm, but we all stayed up to about 3:00am.
Saturday, 10 AprilWe woke up at a time. Who knows what time, but it was one of them double-digit numbers. Maybe. We all stood around and bullshitted a bit, before it came time to unload the bikes from the truck. It was around this time that my other uncle, John, arrived in his old Dodge Caravan with horrendously mediocre Honda MR250 inside.
With the bikes unloaded, the testing ritual began. Scott had been talking big about how all his Huskies started perfectly. Dad took the 390CR aside, turned on the gas and choke, and proceeded to wait a few seconds. A few gentle prods on the ridiculously short shifter got some gas swirling around in the cylinder. Then, on the first genuine kick, the big open-classer came to life in all its triumph and majesty. Take that, Scott!
The 250CR was next. After a few kicks, it too came to life. But strangely, it died suddenly and without notice and refused to start or even make a pop afterward. The problem turned out to be the kill-switch, which was taken apart, put back, and gave no more troubles throughout the rest of the day.
Eventually, everyone's bikes were tested, though both of the Huskies (an '81 430XC and '79 250OR for Mark) took more than 15 kicks to fire. With that, we took off on the ride. It started easy, with no craziness or banging of gears (for the most part), although there was some occasional... quick shifting taking place.
After about fifteen minutes of riding, I noticed that my 250 was exhibiting some odd power delivery characteristics. There was nothing major, but it did feel like it was jetted richly or something. Then, without warning, the engine noise of the thing doubled. This was significant, considering that the silencer was unpacked to begin with. I stopped in the road and looked down at the bike, which is when I noticed that the tip of the silencer, with inner screen attached, was no longer bolted to the silencer itself. It was just hanging there! I killed the bike, wrapped the oily thing in toilet paper from my backpack and we continued on. For the rest of the trip, I rode about with what amounts to a straight stinger with a megaphone.
After another fifteen minutes, we stopped at the top of a big windy hill under some powerlines. As we meandered about, listening to the lines crack and sizzle, I took the opportunity to demonstrate the absurdity of my exhaust, and get a picture of Scott and Dad looking bad-ass.
We soon took off again, but Mark's 250OR refused to start. Even a run-and-bump failed. Fortunately, we were on the top of a great mountain, so a few hundred feet of walking, and there was an adequate hill for a compression start. When the bike fired, rocks and dust went sailing from Mark's rear tire in triumph as the OR blasted toward the horizon.
We soon ran out of gravel roads, and the terrain switched to dirt. This was a bad thing, because the snow had only recently melted and left much of the roads gooey and covered with mud puddles. Several times throughout the day, there were near-misses as the bike tried to slide one way or another into a bottomless pit of brown slime. After some significant miles, we passed
The Devil's Tee (so named because for about ten years, there was always someone who broke down before getting there) and headed out to "The Ford." This insanely rusted 1949 Ford was abandoned in the desert long ago, and been burned, covered with "so-and-so-was-here-on-this-date-with-this-bike" sign-in scratches, as well as the occasional initials written in bullet holes. Welcome to redneck territory.
The next stop was the fabled "Rock Quarry," where a mining operation had once been set up to carve bright red rainbow rock from the side of a mountain. On the way past the devil's tee, we bypassed the road entirely by cutting through the field to the left of it. Little did we know, this section of field was more of a swamp than a field at this time of year, with standing water cleverly hidden by the grass. With throttle wide open in third gear, the 250s struggled to maintain speed through the mire as tires sank a good 10" into the ooze. A 125 would likely not have made it, but the torquey 390 seemed comfortable.
After this point, Mark and I ended up behind John, which was a bad sign. Like James May from Top Gear, Johnson's sense of direction can best be described as sketchy. After passing the intersection I thought led to the Rock Quarry, we continued for five miles more, not wanting to turn around and let John keep riding all the way to Canada. Eventually, he stopped, turned around, and led us past the intersection
again. Another five miles past the turn-off, another turn-around was in order, and Johnson once again took the lead. Annoyed with this navigatory performance, I cut off the road, through a field of grass and boulders, and led the proper way to the intersection. Mark and I then waited for five minutes for John to catch up.
When we arrived at the Rock Quarry, I noted something else strange about my bike. The shocks suddenly seemed to have no dampening, as though they were just a set of springs and nothing else. When the bike was stopped, the cause was obvious. One of the O-Rings in one of the shocks and blown, and spewed oil over everything, leaving that side of the bike undamped, and the whole bike unbalanced and springy. Dammit.
(^^ From left to right, we have me (with sun in my eyes) and my '82 250CR, dad's '79 390CR, Mark with his '79 250OR, and Scott's '81 430XC. Blue, by the way, is possibly the single least common gas tank color for Husqvarnas. How in the hell did that happen?)
After exploring around the quarry for a while, ratchet-jawing about the good ole days when the place was actually a functioning quarry, we took off for camp. The suspension on the Husky was horrific. Over every rock and bump, the rear wheel would grab huge amounts of air, spin in futility, then tap the ground briefly again before surging back into the air. Grip over rocks was minimal. Eventually, though, rocks gave way to a fast gravel road where we got to cruise along comfortably at 60mph in sixth, down a hill with the throttle barely cracked. Ah, mileage.
The next stage was risky. We'd ventured so far from the way we'd come, that we really didn't want to go back all that way. Besides, we'd already ridden all of it! So, we gathered up some balls and hit the pavement, keeping the bikes at a comfortable middle-of-the-road RPM in sixth. This was a virtually abandoned little road, but afterward, we had to spend about a minute on the highway, and then another five on the road leading to camp, the way we'd driven in the night before.
Trying to keep low-key with the almighty bazooka-exhausted Husky of death riding on the world's most oingy-boingy shocks, I happened to let Mark pass on an uphill section after a 90-degree turn. That just wasn't going to do! So, I rolled on the power in fourth, letting the RPM build until the 250 went into a great shrieking wail of horsepower and doom, at which point I clicked fifth, then sixth as I sailed by Mark doing 85. The sound of that fly-by must've been Biblical.
About five minutes later, we arrived back at camp. Scott revealled that half-way through the return trip, his clutch had completely shat itself and gone from working perfectly, to scarcely working at all. Almost any application of throttle would make it slip relentlessly.
After everyone had a chance to rest a while, not one, but TWO chainsaws were fired up, and we went into the woods to do what Oregonians do best. Cut down trees! Don't worry, we only cut the dead ones, which actually provides a service to the live ones who need sunlight. After half an hour with two men cutting and three carrying 4-foot logs two-at-a-time to the wood pile, we were done, with well over half a ton of timber.
Unlike the night before, Saturday night's fire was a beast. When sitting around it, it was recommended to keep the chairs at least ten feet away at all times, or else the heat would become unbearable. We did an experiment, and found that if you took a long stick and held one end of it in the air at the bottom of the fire, it would take seven seconds for it to catch on fire. Just from the heat in the air.
(This fire stood about 5-6 feet high, from ash pit to flame top.)
Sunday, 11 AprilThe next morning, we got up and realized that three remarkable things had happened. First, almost all the wood we'd harvested was gone, and there was nothing but fine ash and a resilient piece of steel remaining.
Remarkable thing number two was that my dad's beloved Sony Cybershot camera was missing. After a search all around camp, Mark decided to poke through the fire ashes with a stick, and found the metal backing to the camera, with a little hole where the viewfinder once was. And nothing else. All the rest of the camera was incinerated and vanished into the ether.
Remarkable thing number three, was that one of the nuts that holds the rear axle on my bike was missing! So on the way back on that last ride, in addition to having the most-pitiful suspension on Earth, I had been dealing with a rear wheel threatening at any moment to detach itself from the motorcycle. Not quite able to wiggle itself free, it had made sport of wobbling about and making me thing the suspension was even worse than it actually was. Dammit!
With all this, as well as Scott's decimated clutch, we really didn't make any attempt at another ride, even though the weather was fairly warm. At about 6:45, we were all packed up and headed home.
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