Iron Man Poker Run 4/10/2010
Posted: April 11th, 2010, 12:40 pm
Hit the road at 6AM for Odessa. It was a nice uneventful morning drive. Pulled into the lot at about 7:40 AM and started the hunt for a place to park. About a minute later, my phone rings. It's Matt. "Where are you at?" Me: "Just came through gate." Matt "Oh. I guess I'm right behind you. <short pause> Ha! We got your sign in sheet." Funny.
Finally found a spot to park just outside the camping area on the Northeast corner. Went and paid entree fee and came back to truck and unpacked our crap. Everyone's ready to go. Bikes are all started and we're staring at Tim as he's kicking Old Faithful. Tim has an 03 XR650 that has a crapton of miles on it and has never been cracked open. ... Nothing but backfires. So he goes about tapping the side of his carb with a rock thinking it the float is stuck. He insists it started fine Thursday and it's just not getting fuel. I'm wondering if he got any sleep. Backfires = fuel and spark. Everyone takes their turn kicking it. I get on it and it seems strangely easy to kick to me. Red flag. WTF? Anyhow, some time passes, someone suggests starting fluid. Again, I'm like "Really?" You have fire. I don't think that's gonna do it. Someone produces a can of fluid and I go ahead and feed it a shot while Tim kicks it. He kicks a few more times and then tells me to feed it some more. I oblige. Next kick, backfire through the airbox. Starting fluid in airbox.... FIRE!!!! OH SHIT OH SHIT! Tim hops off the bike just before he catches fire himself and we commence to patting it out as quickly as possible. Yeah, clearly that was a bad idea. Some more conversation and Tim finally listens to reason. We all seem to agree that he was past due for valve adjustment and the intake valve is not closing. He's done for the day before he even gets started. Poor guy drove with Matt from Bothell and spent the night at a relatives place in Moses lake only to have to sit all day in a dust storm and not ride. Looks like he's got a bit of maintenance to do. I am anxious to hear what he finds.
Ok then. Shall we get to it? It's almost 9:30 now, we need to hit the trail if we are going to get a lap and lunch in before they close up the trail for the day. Off we go. This year the course is reverse from last year. The dust is a LOT worse than last year. They were only 5 of us in a group and it was hard to keep track of everyone. SO MANY PEOPLE, SO MUCH DUST. At least it was windy and blew the dust away fairly quickly.
The first 10 miles or so went well. We stopped and regrouped a couple of times. After one stop, Matt left ahead of me at a pretty good clip and I decided to go ahead and keep pace with him for a bit. I did ok for a short while but my forearms lit up big time. Yeah, I suck, I'm a wimp, panzy, whatever. Matt is not slow. ;-) The terrain is pretty much talcum powder with a lot of larger loose jagged rocks. I start noticing the back end is considerably looser than I'm used to. I pass it off as just the talcum powder terrain. At the next stop, I take off first and just get settled into a pace and suddenly Matt is next to hollering and pointing at the back of my bike. So I pull off to the side and look. I don't see anything. Matt yells, your tire is flat. Is it? Oh, well, will you look at that. Wonder how that could have happened. It's not like there were any rocks or anything nasty to hit. Matt asks if I want to stop and fix it. I shrug it off. Fixing a flat in this environment doesn't sound too appealing. Blinded by dust, nothing to prop the bike up on, idiots racing by at 30 mph. Yeah, no thanks. There's nothing nasty enough to actually _need_ air in the rear tire on this course anyway. Onward! I rode it that way for another 20 miles back to the truck. By this time my forearms and shoulders were screaming. I must say it was funny to watch people struggling up some of the hills only to wheelie up them myself with a flat rear tire. I'm not really sure why so many people struggled with the hills in the first place. They really were no big deal. There were kids on PW's climbing them no sweat.
We all sat down and had lunch. After that I went over to vendor row and bought myself a new tire, tube and had them install it. Handy. Had a choice between a Maxxis, a Sedona and a Dunlop MX51. I've never heard anything about any of the modelsthey had. I went with the Dunlop. Hope it works well. Remounted and off we go for lap 2. Strangely my rear brake starts resonating kinda like rubbing the rim of a wine glass. Crap. They put my tire on using WD40 to help it slide on. The guy must have gotten it all over the brake disc. Ok then, lap 2 with no rear brake. Lovely. Ah well. By now the talcum powder was getting 3 and 4 inches deep in places. The new back tire and no back brake did not improve things in the least. It pretty much showed me that what I really needed was a new FRONT tire. Matt and Co. went their own way and I stuck with my dad and son. The 3 of us were getting a bit tired toward the end of the lap and so this lap was a fair bit slower but we did the full 65 miles. That's about 5 times my normal distance at twice the average speed, but entirely different terrain than I'm used to.
There were sure a lot more injuries the second lap. There must have been 8 people down with injuries and people tending to them while others redirected traffic. It's amazing to me how many retards still treat a situation like that by acting like it's a race, ignoring the people redirecting and blasting through at high speed. It's a freaking poker run people!!! Too many idiots riding out of control for my taste. Knowing that, I really have to question the wisdom of those people who brought their kids on their PW's.
All in all I enjoyed it. It's not the kind of thing I think I would do more than once a year though. I'm still coughing up dust.
Finally found a spot to park just outside the camping area on the Northeast corner. Went and paid entree fee and came back to truck and unpacked our crap. Everyone's ready to go. Bikes are all started and we're staring at Tim as he's kicking Old Faithful. Tim has an 03 XR650 that has a crapton of miles on it and has never been cracked open. ... Nothing but backfires. So he goes about tapping the side of his carb with a rock thinking it the float is stuck. He insists it started fine Thursday and it's just not getting fuel. I'm wondering if he got any sleep. Backfires = fuel and spark. Everyone takes their turn kicking it. I get on it and it seems strangely easy to kick to me. Red flag. WTF? Anyhow, some time passes, someone suggests starting fluid. Again, I'm like "Really?" You have fire. I don't think that's gonna do it. Someone produces a can of fluid and I go ahead and feed it a shot while Tim kicks it. He kicks a few more times and then tells me to feed it some more. I oblige. Next kick, backfire through the airbox. Starting fluid in airbox.... FIRE!!!! OH SHIT OH SHIT! Tim hops off the bike just before he catches fire himself and we commence to patting it out as quickly as possible. Yeah, clearly that was a bad idea. Some more conversation and Tim finally listens to reason. We all seem to agree that he was past due for valve adjustment and the intake valve is not closing. He's done for the day before he even gets started. Poor guy drove with Matt from Bothell and spent the night at a relatives place in Moses lake only to have to sit all day in a dust storm and not ride. Looks like he's got a bit of maintenance to do. I am anxious to hear what he finds.
Ok then. Shall we get to it? It's almost 9:30 now, we need to hit the trail if we are going to get a lap and lunch in before they close up the trail for the day. Off we go. This year the course is reverse from last year. The dust is a LOT worse than last year. They were only 5 of us in a group and it was hard to keep track of everyone. SO MANY PEOPLE, SO MUCH DUST. At least it was windy and blew the dust away fairly quickly.
The first 10 miles or so went well. We stopped and regrouped a couple of times. After one stop, Matt left ahead of me at a pretty good clip and I decided to go ahead and keep pace with him for a bit. I did ok for a short while but my forearms lit up big time. Yeah, I suck, I'm a wimp, panzy, whatever. Matt is not slow. ;-) The terrain is pretty much talcum powder with a lot of larger loose jagged rocks. I start noticing the back end is considerably looser than I'm used to. I pass it off as just the talcum powder terrain. At the next stop, I take off first and just get settled into a pace and suddenly Matt is next to hollering and pointing at the back of my bike. So I pull off to the side and look. I don't see anything. Matt yells, your tire is flat. Is it? Oh, well, will you look at that. Wonder how that could have happened. It's not like there were any rocks or anything nasty to hit. Matt asks if I want to stop and fix it. I shrug it off. Fixing a flat in this environment doesn't sound too appealing. Blinded by dust, nothing to prop the bike up on, idiots racing by at 30 mph. Yeah, no thanks. There's nothing nasty enough to actually _need_ air in the rear tire on this course anyway. Onward! I rode it that way for another 20 miles back to the truck. By this time my forearms and shoulders were screaming. I must say it was funny to watch people struggling up some of the hills only to wheelie up them myself with a flat rear tire. I'm not really sure why so many people struggled with the hills in the first place. They really were no big deal. There were kids on PW's climbing them no sweat.
We all sat down and had lunch. After that I went over to vendor row and bought myself a new tire, tube and had them install it. Handy. Had a choice between a Maxxis, a Sedona and a Dunlop MX51. I've never heard anything about any of the modelsthey had. I went with the Dunlop. Hope it works well. Remounted and off we go for lap 2. Strangely my rear brake starts resonating kinda like rubbing the rim of a wine glass. Crap. They put my tire on using WD40 to help it slide on. The guy must have gotten it all over the brake disc. Ok then, lap 2 with no rear brake. Lovely. Ah well. By now the talcum powder was getting 3 and 4 inches deep in places. The new back tire and no back brake did not improve things in the least. It pretty much showed me that what I really needed was a new FRONT tire. Matt and Co. went their own way and I stuck with my dad and son. The 3 of us were getting a bit tired toward the end of the lap and so this lap was a fair bit slower but we did the full 65 miles. That's about 5 times my normal distance at twice the average speed, but entirely different terrain than I'm used to.
There were sure a lot more injuries the second lap. There must have been 8 people down with injuries and people tending to them while others redirected traffic. It's amazing to me how many retards still treat a situation like that by acting like it's a race, ignoring the people redirecting and blasting through at high speed. It's a freaking poker run people!!! Too many idiots riding out of control for my taste. Knowing that, I really have to question the wisdom of those people who brought their kids on their PW's.
All in all I enjoyed it. It's not the kind of thing I think I would do more than once a year though. I'm still coughing up dust.