Kenny Carlile

We met some friends from Thumper Talk out at the Grassy Flat staging area of the Upper Nestucca OHV area outside Carlton, OR today. It was a great day with some crazy weather: sun, rain, sun, rain, sun, rain…. Dena got to do her first woods riding and she did fantastic. We spent most of the day riding with Theresa on some good beginner trails to get her familiar with the bike and riding off-road. She even got to try Brandon and Theresa's Raptor 250 quad, which she really liked.

I also got to head off the the guys and tackle some more difficult trails, which was a blast, but then we started hitting some dead end trails and a lot of gnarly hills, so I headed back after a little while to check on Dena. I didn't feel like potentially ruining my fun day with her because I got hurt or broke something on a wicked hill climb.

We got to see some beautiful scenery and do a little exploring in an area that neither of us had been before. It was a great day.

After work tonight, I headed out with Brandon to Crazy Acres for some track time. When we got there, there were a few track regulars there showing us how fast the track can be ridden. We got ready and hit the track to show them how slow the track can be ridden!

It was a great evening of practicing corners and catching air. Brandon tweaked his handlebars for better positioning and he helped me get my brake pedal positioned at a more comfortable level. (It was way too high for me.)

I cleared the two main tabletops, although the larger one was less impressive than the smaller one. I looped it out on the big one, but pulled out okay. I was even working on getting a little crooked in the air, although compared to someone who knows what they are doing it probably looked like I was having a seizure in the air.

I worked on committing to corners and trying to be a lot more smooth and it really made a difference. I felt like I really made some big improvements, although I still need to figure out how to commit to clearing the quad section. Yikes!

Thanks to Steve Corrie at Trackmasters for touching up the track on Monday. We definitely noticed the difference.

I was in a children's clothing store called Pumpkin Patch over the weekened when I saw these hanging children's torso mannequins that really creeped me out for some reason. There's just something about a replica of a naked child torso with a hook coming out of the neck that I find unsettling.

Special thanks to Steve Corrie at Trackmasters for sponsoring our day at the track!

We went out to the Crazy Acres motocross track in Buxton, OR for a private ride with our ThumperTalk.com friends last Saturday. Believe it or not, in 25 years of riding, I'd never been on a motocross track before, but it was a lot of fun.

The track was built by our friend Steve Corrie at Trackmasters and he did a great job. The owners of the track were extremely friendly and supportive. They kept the track watered and even barbecued lunch for us!

I had a great day, didn't crash, and hit some decent jumps. My bike is not setup for tracks at all and the weight and suspension really showed that. If I was going to ride tracks consistently or try to race, I would definitely look into a CRF250R or CRF450R. I looped out a couple of jumps and ended up a bit intimidated by big jumps at the end of the day. I still hit them, but I was much more hesitant and nervous hitting them than I was in the earlier part of the day.

Dena did great, especially for her first day on a motorcycle. She only crashed twice, but she was a toughy. On her third lap, she decided to try to catch some air on a tabletop. It was WAAAY more than I would have expected for someone on her first day riding, but she landed it…and then crashed off the side of the jump, but she was fine. She was enthusiastic and committed to giving it her all and it showed. She really learned a lot and did fantastic.

Stephanie, our next door neighbor, rode the XR50 and she did great as well, even if she was 3 sizes too big for the bike. She even caught some air on that tiny bike.

Everyone that we met at the track was friendly and encouraging. I'm really glad to have met everyone from ThumperTalk. I've been really missing motorcycling being a part of my life, but I didn't have anyone to ride with or talk to about it. Now my family is riding and I have a bunch of new friends that ride. It feels good and feeds my soul.

Oh yeah, I also got heat exhaustion/dehydrated and nearly had to go to the hospital…and I ran over Pax's bicycle with my truck.

Enjoy some videos and pics from the day at the track!

I went to Bend this last weekend to ride East Fort Rock with my dad. We've ridden there a lot over the past 12 years, but we always seemed to ride a lot of the same trails. This time, we found some new trails in some areas we hadn't ridden before. We rode 2 loops, one to the North and one to the South, 36 and 35 miles respectively. You can download the map above to see where we rode.

It had rained a few days before, so it wasn't as dusty as it could have been, but you can see from the pictures that there was still plenty of dust. You can probably guess who rode lead and who followed by looking at the pictures of my face and my dad's face.

Before we even started the bikes, I turned all of my suspension adjusters up 2 clicks, or half a turn, which seemed to help my suspension woes. I still think I'm going to replaces my springs, front and rear, this winter, or maybe just have it all sent off to Factory Connection for work.

The first loop, to the North, had some really beautiful scenery. It opened up and was flatter than the second half of the ride. We saw lots of cows and a few deer, which you can barely make out in some of the pictures. We ran into (not literally) a couple of quads on the trails, which were the only people we met on the trails all day. We were both shocked how empty East Fort Rock was for such a nice day after it had rained.

Whenever I ride with my dad, I'm reminded of how experience MORE than makes up for youth and a better bike. My bike is far more aggressive and race ready than his DR-Z400S, which is street legal and geared way too high for trails. However, I still have a hard time keeping up with him when he really wants to get on it. He's just so smooth, picks the perfect lines, and carries a lot more speed through the corners.

We swapped bikes a few times to try each others' ride. His DR-Z was way too soft for me and his handlebars were too low, but I've come to expect that from his bikes. The low-end power was really nice, but it flattened out on top, but that's okay because you can chug it in the bottom for hours. The gearing was so tall that I could pretty much stay in second gear the whole time.

After my dad rode my bike, he complained about the mid-range bog. We tried turning my fuel screw out from 2.5 to 3 turns. The bike really woke up after that. Later, I made one more quarter turn and the bike really seemed to come to life! The power was there, the thump and purr was there, and it felt and sounded like a whole new bike. He also pointed out that my brake pedal was really high. I knew it was, but his was crazy low. He had a good point though about it causing fatigue, so I'm going to try to lower it a bit.

We hit one section that was "Most Difficult", although it really should have been called "sandy whoops with some rocks and one REALLY gnarly downhill (or uphill, if you are coming the other way) section". After that, we headed back to the truck for lunch.

After some delicious sandwiches, we hit the trails again, this time heading out to the South around one of the buttes. For the first 40 minutes, we were riding as fast and as hard as we could without committing any Flying-W's. We both felt it, although my dad felt it more in his legs and I felt it more in my arms, which would become evident with a couple slow corner, front-end wash-outs later in the day. It felt great to be going fast and riding smart. I'm out of shape and out of practice, but I feel like I've got my riding brain back. I know what I should be doing, for the most part, even if my body doesn't comply sometimes.

We checked out the campsite that COMAC donated $10,000 to for improvements and ran into some people that were trying to find the Groundhog play area, which we helped direct them to. By the time our ride crossed the play area, they were there kicking up gravel. About 5 miles out of camp, I think we were both starting to get tired, so we slowed our pace a bit and had a nice ride back to camp.

It was a great day with a lot of fun trails. I love riding Central Oregon and I love riding with my dad because of how much I learn from him. I'd be a happy man to ever be as good a rider as he is, although I'm happy to compensate with expensive, fancy gear.