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"ROAD TRIPS" by THE OLD SQUID |
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Email this page to a friend Previous columnsThe Manly Art of the Oil Change The Shroud of Sport Tourin |
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"Road Trips" by The Old Squid
I Meet Jesus And Elvis In A Corner
Remember that all riding stunts were performed by unprofessional riders on open roads. Don't try this at home! Stories contain descriptions of illegal acts of motor mayhem and should not be read by children, teens, or people with a tendency to get uptight at displays of juvenile behavior. You've been warned! One of the goals of this trip was to find some twisty roads and explore the limits of cornering. A well executed corner is a thing of joy on a sport bike. All motorcycles lean around corners. Its this dynamic nature that's so appealing about them, but sport bike do more than just lean. In a good, fast corner you actually build "G" forces and are pushed down into the bike as you sweep thru the corner. Racers compress their suspension dramatically as they turn. In a car, the same forces are there but because the car isn't leaning, they throw you to the outside of the curve. On a bike, a hard curve feels like pulling out of a dive in an airplane or hitting the bottom of a dip on a roller coaster. All this plus the sensation of speed and the earth tilting! Lovely stuff. We looked for these kind of roads. The first good one was on the third day in central Oregon. The Island Mob stayed at my sisters in Bend the previous night and after a slow start we headed out towards Sisters, Oregon to head over HWY 242, the McKenzie pass. This road rises thru the pine forests to break out on a huge volcanic wasteland between Mt. Jefferson and the Three Sisters. Nice sweeping corners but still a lot of traffic so we are a little conservative. Going down, the corners were even tighter and my wrists were sore from the pressure of supporting my weight against both gravity and braking forces. The main event of the day was soon to come tho: the Aufderheide road. This takes off west of McKenzie Bridge and goes south past the Cougar reservoir. Its a forest service road and nicely paved with very little traffic. In fact, almost no traffic. We were five miles into the road and stopped at the Terwilliger Hot Springs turn out to "pump the bilges" in the porta pottys there. I was suited up and ready to go when two Honda sport bikes came screaming by. I gave chase to see if they wanted to play. They did! We were flying through 20 and 30 mph marked corners that were perfect. No gravel surprises on the road, clear visibility ahead, and no drop offs on either side. The bikes ahead were a Honda 929 and a Honda F4. These were pure sport bikes. My XX was starting to show its touring DNA very soon as I started to drag the foot pegs on both sides. First a little, then -a lot-. In the country song "The Devil Went Down To Georgia", Satan is in a fiddling contest and when he "drug his bow across the strings, they made an evil hiss!". that's the sound of pegs on pavement! sssssssssssss! as they first lightly, then more solidly touch. My head is down behind the fairing and forward over the gas tank so I'm in a clear air space and can hear this very well. I also hear the metallic brake pads make a lighter hiss as I scrub speed approaching the corners. Out of the corners, the engine roars and moans as I accelerate. Moan, hiss, scrape, repeat. I lay my chest up against the tank and can feel the bike as it grabs and slithers on acceleration. We go 25 miles, pass only two cars and then the three of us stop to wipe bugs off. This is as good as it gets on public roads. We're all grinning like mad as we introduce and relive the special sections. The Mob soon catches up and we sit and calm down and chat. My foot peg feelers are planed off and my fairing is scraped too. In a couple of corners I got the exhaust pipes on the right and center stand on the left down. These are solid pieces though and it was unsettling to have them deck out. I'm tired from this so I hang back on the downhill section to come plus, the road has some dips that upset the XX's suspension more than the lighter sport bikes. Two days later, we were in Northern California in the Trinity Alps/ Klamath river area. Here the roads were state and not Forest Service so there was more traffic. These were mountain roads too and it seemed like it was always a drop-off on one side and a vertical rock wall on the other. Often, there would be broken rocks in the lanes that had dropped down from above. This was not comfort zone riding as the rock wall would block my vision ahead. I try to never ride faster than I can stop in the distance I can see ahead but here I found myself riding with people who seemed to want to ride on "faith". We had tanked up in Orleans, California when a group of new sport bikes screamed by. I caught them just out of town where we all waited for a flagger on some construction to wave us on. The lead four were a Buell, a Yamaha R-1, a 929, and a Honda RC-51. This last bike is the street version of Honda's race bike that I would see at Laguna three days later. OK, this was not a group I should be playing with. They could all corner way better than me. They had more clearance and when I drag bits, they still had a ways to go. "Well, we learn by finding what we can and can't do" I figured so off we went. I could keep up at first as the road had corners with enough straight stretches to allow me to use the Obrute horsepower and ignorance's method of riding that my bike allows. I would do the best I could in a corner and watch them drift ahead then I would hammer it in the straight and make up what I could. This worked until the straight sections became shorter and shorter. I finally got in over my head. I over cooked a corner, came in too fast trying to catch up. I had my peg and center stand down hard in a left hand curve and couldn't tighten my line up. I could see where my path was going to intersect the edge of the corner about half way through the turn. The worst part was I couldn't see anything but empty space beyond that edge. I knew the Klamath River was down there...somewhere but I didn't want to find out! That's when I met Jesus and Elvis. Jesus was flagging and Elvis was working a shovel. As I drifted closer to the edge in slow motion, Jesus said, "You're early. Don't you want to finish the ride and stay with your friends?" I said "Yes! I really do." Jesus nodded to Elvis who spread a wide gravel turnout for me. I stood the bike up and hit the brakes as I entered the gravel and came to a dusty, slithering stop. I told Elvis that he had done a mighty fine job and he said "Thank you, thank you very much." When the dust cleared and I looked forward, I was 10 feet from the edge...and 500 feet above the river! OK, I made a funny story out of a close call. How did I really feel? I was scared. Really scared. Rock back and forth on the seat to break suction scared. This slowed me way down and even though I rode briskly the rest of the trip, I felt that I had explored the limits just fine thank you and had nothing left that needed proving or experiencing. I started riding back in the pack instead of leading. I did what I always tell people you should do: "ride your own ride at your own skill level." I even stopped to smell the eucalyptus and to take pictures and just ambled along. Throughout the trip, I had been racheting up the intensity, trying to live up to my nickname as The Old Squid by riding in a squidly way. There is real danger in these group rides as they bring out this attempt to live up to unrealistic standards and images. Also, the competitive aspects of riding are brought to the front too. I was lucky the turn out was where it was. 95% of the corners had nothing but a vertical edge or a flat rock wall to the side. Maybe it would be fun to go fast on a track under controlled conditions but I've found my comfort zone on the street now. There are lots of faster, better riders out there and I can live with that. In fact, I hope to live a long, long time with that. Later, in Monterey, I talked to a woman on a Honda 996 Superhawk. She claimed to like the mountain corners and the feel of zipping around them blind, not knowing what might pop up on the other side. I thought as I walked away, "You ride a lot slower than I do or you have a death wish". Of the 11 people in the Island and Seattle groups three crashed on this trip. Bill, from the VFR group slid out and into a gully. He was banged up (nothing serious) and the bike totaled. Hegge, a Norwegian woman tossed her bike away doing a track lap at Laguna after the races and it was totaled. My friend Denny slid out on a corner as he was headed home and scuffed his Honda up pretty good. These are not good odds and say a lot about the intensity/insanity of our riding. I made it home without incident or tickets but I think I'll be riding real "Pro-Life" in the future! After all, you should live and learn or you don't live long. - The Old(er and wiser) Squid |
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