Kenny Carlile

We headed out to Diamond Mill today to try to cash in on a rare beautiful day in February. I'd never been to Diamond Mill, but I was quickly impressed. The trails, while sparsely sprinkled across the map, are pretty good. The day started out with a brief mechanical problem, but we resolved it and were under way. Pax and rode around the staging area while Dena watched him and the dogs since she didn't feel like riding today.

We hit snow a few times, but nothing major. The biggest obstacle was running into closed trails. There was a lot–scratch that, a TEXAS BUTT-TON–of downed timber from this winter's storms. We hit probably 5 dead-end trails because of down timber, which sucked because they looked like great trails. Still, we had a great day. Thanks to Paul for leading most of the day and navigating me around this new (to me) area.

This was also my first ride with the new DRD exhaust…and holy crap was it awesome. The bike finally has the power I wanted. It rides more like a 300 or 350, compared to the 250 that it used to be. Or rather, it probably just rides like a properly-breathing 250, more like the CRF250R version. I have no problem lifting the front wheel now and it has the grunt in corners and hills like I want. The DRD and the HotCam stage 1 are an awesome combination.

One thing that I need to remember is to take a photo of my GPS data at the end of the day. There's no way to save the real-time stats, like miles-per-hour, etc., and even though I turned off tracking, the real-time data kept going. Garmin, you should fix this in the next software release. Let us save snapshots of the real-time data, or at least freeze it. Still, I love this thing. I'm really enjoying learning how to use it and mapping my rides.

Hopefully later in the year there will be more open trails. I'm anxious to head back to Diamond Mill when the weather is warmer and I have a full day to explore.

Diamond Mill 2/21/09 Morning

Diamond Mill 2/21/09 Afternoon