Well, another Wudi ride in the books. Hard to believe we've been doing this for 7 years now. The time sure gets away from me.
Dave Grunklee (GrunkThump on KTMtalk) and I (jeb) had a great trip down in the RV. We left Weds late afternoon and drove to just south of KC. We ran into some snow and sleet so decided to just pull over for the night. We got to the TR camp about 3pm on Thursday after making a stop at the AG Russel knife company on the way through Springdale, AR. We met up with "Stormin' Norman" and John Arnett and took a quick ride on the A loop before dark. Norm gets through the woods in a hurry on his CRF230. Dave is riding an 03 YZ250, John is on an older Yam XT600 and I was on my 04 250E. The Canadian contingent was already there but they were off on a ride.
The ride was a lot of fun with one good hill climb on it. Some fun but rocky ridge trails, some nice single track, etc. A great mix and a nice way to start out. We all stayed together well and got back just at dusk in good shape except John's shock gave up the ghost. It was known as the pogo stick the rest of the trip. He was able to borrow one of Jim Cook's Spanish ladies for the weekend, though, so all was good. Actually, no one ever checked that shock out. I wonder if it was all just a big ploy to "ride up"? :-)
Not many folks there on Thursday but they were trickling in. We watched some DVD's, worked on our hydration via some brewed products from the good folks at Leinenkugel's (Dopplebock "Big Butt", HoneyWeis), The Big Sky Brewing Company (Moose Drool, Powder Hound) and The New Belgium Brewery (Fat Tire). All very good stuff.
Woke up Friday to see that Jim had parked his trailer next to us and camp was starting to fill up a bit. Did some visiting and got suited up for a ride. Jim held a riders meeting at 9am to let us all know how he'd arrowed up the trails, etc. A loop had red arrows (~ 22 miles), B loop used black arrows (~ 21 miles) and the C loop used blue arrows (~ 11 miles). We also talked about Deb's upcoming Gumbo feast and Jack Bondus' tire raffle for the ADR (Arkansas Dirt Riders), our hosts for this event.
'Bout time to give them a plug. The ADR is a great club that runs the Train Robbers enduro on this property. They're always super friendly to this ride and are just a great bunch of folks. I know we all really appreciate the hard work they put in for us and for the sport. Thanks guys!!
This is where I always have problems, remembering who was on each ride. I'm pretty sure Brian Jahelka, his friend Lance, Dave, Norm, Wade (KTMSwade on KTMtalk) and Wade's buddy (Eric?) were in this group. I intended to go on the B loop since we'd done the A loop already but I missed where they split off so we did the A loop again. This was a fast group of guys so the riding went pretty quick. We had some mechanicals, though. Lance lost his seat bolt on his KTM so we had to do a little trail side repair on that. Wade lost his rear brake on his 05 KTM 250EXC, though. Much bigger deal with the speeds we were going and some of the hills. He still kept up amazingly well. I'd have been looking for the C loop, personally! Brian is AA but didn't want to lead much. I think he liked seeing a Yankee flailing along in front of him so I obliged. :-) Lance led for a bit and is a very good rider, too.
Back at camp, folks were arriving in good numbers. We had some lunch, did some more visiting. We also bled out Wade's front and rear brakes with some Motul. As it turned out, Wade has one of the bad rear master cyl's that have shown up on a few of the 05 KTM's. Same MC as the 04's which seemed to have no issues so it's an odd deal. Tough to come that far (from KC) and have bike issues. But he had a spare bike to ride, at least.
We finally got out onto the B loop after lunch. I don't recall who all was on this ride but it seems like it was pretty much the same group as the morning. This loop was a little more two track but more of what us flat landers are used to with good sections of black dirt single track. Big Nasty and it's ridge trail was an option on this loop that we always took. Way fun option and probably my favorite ridge trail at TR.
When we got back to camp, I showered and decided to walk around the scrap/guest book that Bob Maki's wife had started for this ride. I was also selling raffle tickets for the front and rear tire set that I mentioned above. Thanks again to Jack Bondus of Road, Track and Trail in Anoka, MN for donating the tires and coming up with the idea! It was fun taking it around as I got to meet lots of great folks and see a lot of old friends. I mooched a bunch of beer, too. ;-) Gotta' stay hydrated, you know. Visited a couple of campfires, grilled some steaks and had a great evening. The camp was starting to fill up by now.
Got to wondering where Stewart Hall (Two Toes Gone/TTG) was. He was suppose to be there Friday but hadn't made it so I figured I'd better check my messages. And I got the bad news. He was one sick puppy. Bronchitis, cold, flu type thing going on so he was out for the trip. I called him on Saturday to see how he was feeling and he had some meds that were helping but was still pretty ill. It meant no guide at Chadwick but that was a minor issue as I mostly just felt bad for TTG. He just never seems to catch a break these days and I know he was looking forward to some riding time. Hope you're feeling better, Stewart.
Saturday saw lots of folks showing up to ride. Got a hug from Deb Cook who is the only person I know that smiles more than Jim. We had a great turnout of ADR members who took folks on "off the map" rides. Jim held another riders meeting to explain the rules of the road. I mentioned Stewart was sick and the Chadwick snag which we'd have to figure out later. I also sold some more raffle tickets in the morning. Everyone was very generous and quite a few bought four of the $5 tickets at a crack. Thanks folks!
We went out with Jonathon (Rocksmoker on KTMtalk) from the ADR for a really cool ride. We had Dave, Norm, Jonathon, Dave Schriner, John Arnett (I think?), Blair Dack and me on this ride (sorry if I forgot someone). This was a really fun loop. He mixed in some of the A, some of the B and lot of un-marked stuff which was mostly fun, fun single track and another great ridge trail. I ran on to reserve about 30 miles out (my bike is a gas hog!) but we were close to heading back anyway. So it was a good long loop which everyone really enjoyed.
The afternoon loop was the same group plus another ADR member, Jeff. I started having bike problems almost right away. It just wouldn't rev out. In hindsight, I think that's what I mistook for running out of fuel on the last loop. We changed the spark plug on the trail but I wasn't real confident it was the problem. It was still the OEM plug and 15 months old but it just didn't feel like a plug problem. And it wasn't. So I had to shortcut back to camp within the first 5 miles.
After dinking around with carb cleaning and some other stuff that didn't help, I finally started asking myself what I'd changed on the bike recently. I'd put an EE pipe and EE silencer on it with the screen type SA about 2 weeks before. I'd only had about 100 miles on the system by then but, sure enough, the screen was clogged. I had bought some spare screen inserts so I was back up and running after installing one. I rode part of the B loop and all of the C loop by myself to at least get some more miles in. I was just glad to find the problem. I had my 03 450EXC all ready to go in the trailer but I didn't want to wreck two sets of knobbies if I could avoid it. I'll be putting the FMF Q back on and turning the EE silencer into a wall hanger. As Ken Fastner noted when I told him about the problem, screen SA's only work well on 4 strokes.
Saturday night was a lot of fun. We drew the name for the tire raffle and Mark Reimler from MN won them. We raised over $650 for the ADR from that and I presented it to the ADR Vice Pres, Chris Butler, who was also the guy who worked the hardest on getting the trails ready for Wudi, from what Jim tells me. I sure appreciate everyone being so generous with buying raffle tickets and, again, thanks to Jack for the idea and the tires.
We also gave away the door prizes from all our great sponsors:
Smackover Motorsports in Smackover, Arkansas
Road, Track and Trail GasGas in Anoka, MN (Jack Bondus)
Cycle Zone KTM in Topeka, Kansas
Moose Racing
Motosports Factory in Waukesha, Wisconsin
Cycle Hutt in Bismarck, North Dakota
Anti-Monkey Butt
Mike Doherty's son Dustin was helping me give away the prizes when we suddenly realized almost everyone was gone. Dustin said "My dad left me!". :-) Turns out the Gumbo feed had started and that made us chopped liver. We sure understood the problem so we got done and cut into line in about 30 seconds flat. I missed out on Chris's seafood gumbo but got plenty of Deb's chicken gumbo. Man, talk about great southern cooking! That was VERY tasty stuff. She cooked up 7.5 GALLONS of it along with a big ol' pot of rice and it went really well. Thanks Deb and Chris.
The Cook's and Puckett's had a nice campfire going so I hung out there mostly Saturday night. Josh and Brandon Cook and Brandon Puckett were having trouble keeping the fire going to their liking so they decided the burn barrel needed some more ventilation. Several clips later, the fire was indeed going much better. I'm not so sure it was the ventilation that did the trick but it was fun anyway.
A few folks had left out on Saturday afternoon/evening as there were several races on Sunday in the area that they were competing in. Sorry to see them go so soon.
Sunday's forecast sucked. It was suppose to be a pretty rainy day. But the day actually turned out to be not bad at all. Couple of little sprinkles is all until mid-afternoon. The morning ride was a little slicker in spots but great riding overall. Dave, Norm, Blair and I did the B loop again and got through it in like 1.5 hours so a pretty good pace for trail riding. In the afternoon, Jeff Neathry and I did the A loop. He was riding well, as usual, and we switched leads a few times. He's a really smooth rider and it was fun to watch him ride. It started to rain pretty decent by the end of the loop so it was nice to get back when we did. Hot shower felt great that day! We had highs in the low to upper 50's most days, which is really nice to those of us from up north, but it was still a little chilly in the rain.
We were still talking about where to go instead of Chadwick. Brock Creek up near Russelville, AR was the leading candidate but it seemed it was not RV friendly. So in the end we decided to just stay and ride the TR trails some more. Some had gone up to Chadwick anyway as they knew some of the trails. I think some might have gone to Brock Creek, too. Sorry for the confusion on the 2nd part of the trip this year, folks. Sometimes stuff just happens.
Most folks had headed home by now, which is typical. Most only come for the Fri-Sun part of the trip. So camp was getting pretty empty. Dave and I decided to take a morning ride and head for home. He actually decided to do some mountain biking instead so Norm and I were the only ones left. We went out to find the fun loop that Jonathon had showed up on Saturday but ended up just finding the A loop. Which was still a lot of fun. All the arrows had been pulled but it was obvious where to go.
Jim was there when we got back. He was going to go pull arrows but we told him we thought they were done already. I took a shower, loaded the bike, picked up the tiny bit of garbage that was left around camp and started packing up. When Dave got back from MTBing, he said the A loop arrows were still up. Damn. I felt horrible letting Jim go out by himself to pick those up. Sorry about that, Jim.
The ride home was uneventful. We ran into some pretty good snow showers in Northern Ark but drove through them. Temps went down and NW wind picked up all the way back. I'm looking out the window at about 5" of snow and it got down to 7f last night. Anyone want to help me make a snowman? ;-(
The list of folks to thank is just too long but chief among them is Jim Cook and Chris Butler for all the trail work, Deb Cook and Chris for the Gumbo, all the sponsors for the door prizes and especially the ADR for letting us ride their awesome trails. No one got hurt beyond the typical scrapes and bruises that I heard about so that was great, too.
Already looking forward to Wudi VIII.
John Brunsgaard - jeb
Wudi VII page