Kenny Carlile

Last Saturday, I was finally able to get back on on my bike. I met Paul on ThumperTalk.com and he invited me to go riding with his friend Mike out in the Trask OHV area in the Tillamook State Forest. We met in Newberg at about 10:00AM and were parked and ready to ride by 11:15AM.

Mike, who is a great rider and very fast, led the way through the trails that intersected the logging roads in the mountains. Paul, who is also an excellent rider, and I swapped middle and tail positions in the group throughout the day. I had never ridden this area before, and it seemed confusing, but Mike and Paul assured me that once you know the roads, you know the trails. While I certainly wasn't able to learn the roads very well, I did quicly understand that the trails simply intersected the roads from one section to another or from one road to another and there weren't any sections that were terribly long, so we were always relatively close to a road.

When we first took off from the trucks, I felt really stiff and awkward on the bike. I had a couple minor stumbles in a tricky uphill section right off the bat. Actually, looking back, it probably wasn't that tricky, but I had a lot of cobwebs to shake loose. The stumbles were enough to wake me up and after about 15 minutes, I felt loose and comfortable on the bike.

After about 90 minutes on the trail, we ran into a guy camped by two broken down 4x4s, one of them torn part-way down. He had broken something (I think he said it was a ball joint…that was the part he was trying to remove, anyway) and the other truck had a flat, so they had no way to get back out. The people he was with had taken the tire and started heading back to town to try to get it repaired and to get the part for his truck. As best I could tell from his story, they were on foot. They had a very, very long walk ahead of them. Paul lent him his file to try to modify a tool, which helped they guy out.

While we didn't have any major incidents, we did struggle with an oil leak mystery in Paul's bike. His bike was losing oil at an alarming rate, but we couldn't find an exact source of the leak. Additionally, his skidplate and case didn't show the amount of oil leaking that you would expect for the rate of oil loss. The oil level became alarmingly low at one point and Paul was forced to limp (read "coast") his bike back toward the truck.

Along the way, we ran into some kind ATV riders who had a spare quart of oil that they gave us. We used that quart to limp the bike back along the logging roads, stopping every few minutes to check the oil level and put a little more in. The level seemed to be consistently going down at every stop and then, once we had poured the last remaining oil in, the oil level magically seemed fine. We continued to check it periodically and, while the level wasn't great, it was good enough to ride.

We got to ride some really great trails, from the fun and relatively easy, to more challenging trails, including some that looked like they hadn't been ridden in quite a while. I had a couple get-offs, but no flying W's. Near the end of the day, my lack of conditioning really began to show as I started to feel exhausted. I was getting arm pump and monkey butt (yes, I know, I need to stand up more), which wore me out. I opted to take it a bit easy so as not to suffer from the "riding while fatigued = injury waiting to happen" paradigm.

It was a great day out on the trails and a really positive experience for me in my first step in getting back into riding on a more regular basis. Paul and Mike were very nice, patient guys that were more than willing to help and teach where they could. I hope to do more riding with them in the future.

My bike worked well once it was started. I had a tough time getting it started, but that's par for the course on this bike, unfortunately. This was the first ride out with my new fuel screw and pink wire and airbox mods. I did notice a difference in power on the bottom and mids and the roll-on seemed to be smoother. The bog as better ("better" as in "less"), but I'd still like more grunt and more snap off the bottom. I hope to remedy that with proper jetting and, most likely, with a new cam, such as the Hotcams Stage 1 cam, although that is going to be a big, scary project.

I also came to realize the value of two other pieces of gear that I didn't have but Mike and Paul did: QuickStraps and elbow/forearm guards. I thought it was interesting when we were getting ready that they both had elbow/forearm guards as I hadn't used them since I was a kid. Sure enough, the only bump I got from my get-offs was on my right forearm, so I'll be ordering some nice guards soon enough. In the woods, QuickStraps are far more necessary than in the desert. I used to rag on my dad for having them because I didn't think they were cool. I have since revised my opinion on them.

I only took a few pictures on this ride. I need to find a better, more secure way to carry my camera so that I can get to it quickly to take more pictures.