- Joined
- May 20, 2004
- Messages
- 12,828
- Reaction score
- 655
- Location
- Austin, TX
- First Name
- Rusty
- Last Name
- Myers
Well, it's about time I finally got this typed up, but I came back from the weekend a little sore and with some work piled up. Enough excuses, time to right.
My original thought was to load up the Transalp and ride out, but a couple of months before hand a friend of mine, Clayton, started the process of getting a plate for his KTM 400exc. His hope was to get it done in time to do the TAR. It would be his first organized dual sport ride. He got the plate done, registered for TAR and we decided to trailer the bikes out.
However, about two weeks before the event another friend, John, expressed interest. One problem though, no street legal bike. The search was on and by Monday before the event he was on his way to Houston to load up a used 2008 KLR with only 270 miles on it. Now there was another part of this story. John is an old friend of Richard's and has been giving Richard excuses for a while as to why he couldn't come. The plan was to surprise Richard at the event. John had been setting this up for a while with phone calls and emails so Richard didn't expect him to show.
On to the pictures:
Left to right, John, Clayton (trailrider77) and myself
Before I get too far into the report I want to talk about some repeat images that came up. Some of you may have seen my post near the end of the TAR pre-ride thread about a couple of run ins with turtles the morning before I left. I conjectured that it could mean that I was going to be the king of the sweep riders or "turn turtle" like Tourmeister did on his GS. The turtle theme was driven home several more times on the way out as we dodged a couple on the road, with the last one being right outside Mason near a property called Turtle Ranch. We also had a conversation with Clayton as to why his screen name had 77 in it. Turns out it is a biblical reference about forgiving 7 times 7. That started a string of seven repeated 7's all over with the first one being a number plate on a dirt bike when we got to the hotel. Anyway, keep these two things in mind as the report progresses.
We had a little fun at registration surprising Richard and Connie with John showing up. He kept his helmet on and acted a little obnoxious. I saw Richard glance at me a couple of times with a funny look, but being the good host he is, he didn't let this "stranger" confuse him and he kept being gracious. Then John introduced himself and popped off his helmet to the laughter of those in on the joke. Good fun.
Here's breakfast with Lori (alphadog) and in the background is Bob, the other Transalp at TAR. You'd think there wouldn't be too many 20 year old bikes at TAR and we had matching ones.
Here is the only picture I have with both Transalps. We should have posed them.
Rider's meeting on day 1:
Our group for the day ended up being John, Clayton, Bob, George (green 2008 klr) and myself. We headed for loop 3. We didn't start to early to give the rest of the riders some time to get out in front. As it was we saw many riders on the way to CR313 trying to find there way along the interstate and mess of access roads. Since I had tried to clean up the gps versions of the routes, I was feeling a little bad and tried to wave to folks to follow us. I will do a GPS 101 for TAR thread later. We got on the dirt with no problem and picked up four more riders for a while. We learned how to do bump gates as a group and leapfrogged back and forth alternating opening regular gates for another big group.
At Rocksprings, over lunch, Bob decided to head back up 377 to Junction. It was his first time back out on dirt in many years and the Transalp is kind of a big bike for getting your legs back. He was feeling good about being able to do what we had covered so far, but didn't want to push his luck. Specially with those Tourances he had on the bike.
Right after lunch, the sun came out and the temperature went up some. Two of the extra riders we had picked up were headed down a different loop and we said goodbye to them. The other two extras we had picked up we split from in Rocksprings also. They were fixing what turned out to be a fuse issue on a KLR.
Heading out 674 was very nice; curves, scenery, generally good stuff. However this is were we learned that Clayton still had his 13 tooth front sprocket on and was really only comfortable running at 55mph. Too bad for us because those curves just wanted us to go faster.
So, not too many pictures for a stretch. Basically we hit the locked gate on Cedar Creek road and decided to head for Bracketville and the Alamo set instead of back tracking on 674. Alamo set cost too much for getting there in the afternoon, so on to Bracketville to top of the tanks. There we decided to head back up towards Barksdale and ride the lower part of Cedar Creek in the reverse direction, then pick up CR310 back into Rocksprings (reverse of last year's loop 3 in that area) We picked up three extra riders at the Bracketville Valero and off we went. I was leading and the group had kind of dropped back. I figured Clayton's KTM was slowing them down so I pulled over to fix an earplug that wasn't all the way in. My three riding partners pulled up, but the extra three didn't. I was told they pulled over looking at the map on the tank of one of thier bikes. So we figured they had second thoughts about our plans or something, but in the back of our minds we were concerned there was a problem. We did wait about 5 minutes then decided to press on. Later you will hear "rest of the story".
At the corner of highway 55 we took a break:
And the group that Ed29 was part of pulled up and visited some. They told us the other three riders were working on a KTM. Shoot, they did have a problem. However that was almost 30 minutes back the other way and they had given Ed's group a thumbs up so we kept to our route.
Saw this low water crossing of the Nueces and we had stop for gratutious bike photos.
As we got to Barksdale I was getting concerned about time since we were going to do a dirt loop, then have to slab it up to Junction from Rocksprings. I know a bit about deer in that area and really wanted to be back in Junction before about 7:30pm. On top of that there were some omnious looking clouds to the east. But, we needed some dirt after all that pavement.
Since I had done this route last year on the DRZ I felt pretty confident that I could handle the crossings. However, the sun was in our eyes and it made it a little harder to scope out what was lurking in the water. I should have been sending the KTM out first, but the TA really needed the dust washed off. Fortunately I only washed one side.
Clayton:
John:
Finally we reached Highway 55 again. Only to find that it was already 7:30pm, the clouds were really dark and there was this monster...
Okay, so he was only 12 inches long and smaller around than my little finger. I chased him off the road and off we went for more gas for the KTM in Junction. Everybody at the gas station kept warning us about weather moving in so we were getting nervous about that. Plus it was now dusk and prime time for deer.
The deer didn't keep us in suspense for long. We saw the first one before we even completely cleared Rocksprings. I started keeping count. One here, three there...and on we chugged. As the sun went down we kept slowing down. Every big bunch of deer by the side of the road meant another 5 mph slower. We dropped into a valley and I saw two sprinting along a fence line parallel to us. I knew one was bound to come my way and I wasn't disappointed. I had already started to back off, but had to grab some brakes too. Then all heck broke loose. I could see deer for a 1/2 mile up the road racing out of the field towards the trees on the other side. My count was up over thirty as we cleared that area, but we weren't done with critters in that area. We came upon a porcupine ambling across the road at the end of that long field too. Not a care in the world.
Now we are almost to South Llano State Park, five miles to go. Looks like we are going to make it...only 41 deer spotted so far. Wait, there's a dead on right by the side of the road...no, not dead yet because he was still waving a leg at us. So that's 42. Had two more cross in front of us just before town for a total of 44 deer between Rocksprings and Junction. Took us until 9pm to reach the hotel. End of day 1.
So, next morning we find out that two of our missing three riders had to ride up, get a pickup and head back to recover the ailing KTM. I'm really feeling bad about not going back at this point, but we have a chance to redeem ourselves since Scott (I can't remember his screenname) is at our hotel. He describes his problem as it will start and idle, but dies as he gives it gas. Our first thought is a plugged main jet. He drops the bowl on the carb to get to the main jet, but mentions that the needle doesn't seem to be going up and down. Bingo, clip came off, easy fix. Clayton and I point him to how to get to that part and we start getting our gear ready. Well, not so simple. The clp broke. Rusty to the rescue. I had my JD jet kit with me and had a extra clip. Clayton had his KTM manual with him and knew the stock clip location. Minutes later a KTM is roaring in the parking lot. So we have a new riding partner for the day and I feel better about not helping the day before. We wouldn't have been able to fix it anyway on the side of the road, but we did have the 5 cent part to fix it.
Our route for day 2 is one I called Dirt Maximus. Last year Lori (alphadog), Chuck (CeeBee) and I decided to modify route 6 to have a little more dirt. The because of a gas issue we modified it some on the fly. I liked parts of that so much that I spent some time with the maps and came up with a new route with more dirt. It starts and finishes just like 5, 6, and 7, but the middle is different. I'm going to pass it on to Richard and maybe he'll check it out and use some or all of it for next year.
Along the way we picked up another group so we were about nine bikes, one a KLR riding 2 up. One little detour we took was Loeffler Road where there is a nice old church and building:
Then we worked our way up Simonsville road to Mason for some Mexican food on the square. A quick gas stop for all and we headed south down the highway to Lower Willow Creek road. It was nice and we had a moderate speed going. Since that area had gotten rain the night before there were some damp spots, but no real mud. Once again confidence got the better of me though. I was leading and as I came around a corner the road dipped to a concrete covered water crossing. There was a stretch of about 10 feet of water only an inch deep. I figured it was run off from the night before and only backed down to 20mph or so (gps track log points were 25, 22, 9, 0). Steady throttle, no brakes, but about 2/3's the way across the back tire passes the front. I landed on the right arm and shoulder and could hear the crash bars sliding on the concrete. My first concern was the guy behind me...and him sending his bike sliding into me. There was no problem though as he was able to ride around my body and bike.
Sorry, no pictures, but the bike ended up past the concrete where the road started to rise up again. Back wheel toward the top of the hill with both wheels in a slight ditch. Suddenly my joking about the turtles and Tourmeister's GS upside down came to mind. So I wasn't the king of sweep riders after all. A quick check to make sure everything was still attached, a couple of folks heaved the bike up for me and I was ready to go. I will say that everybody else came across that water very carefully.
I found that the washboard road didn't hurt my shoulder/ribs much, but the occasional harder bump wasn't fun, nor were the sandy sections that started to show up. So when we finally got to pavement at Highway 29 we split up and headed back to Junction. This is were we took a break to figure out what the rest of them would do.
They ended up looping back on some dirt then finishing as planned. Probably missing 1/3 of the dirt I had on the route in the middle, but they seemed to have a good time. In fact I enjoyed it too, except for the crash. The pavement back was fun because I could finally run at the speed limit since the KTM was still riding dirt. Only caught up to two cars on the way and a quick twist and I was by them. Wish I had a car that could pass that easy on a two lane road.
Here is a picture Bob took of his Transalp by the ride sign:
Good fun at the banquet, but we got some rain overnight. This a picture of George, our riding partner from day 1, heading out in the morning for Abilene. Heard from him later that it was kind of cold on the way back, but he made it.
And here is John's odometer when we loaded it on the trailer saturday evening, notice the 7's.
Ah, good weekend riding and boy that Transalp has a comfortable seat.
My original thought was to load up the Transalp and ride out, but a couple of months before hand a friend of mine, Clayton, started the process of getting a plate for his KTM 400exc. His hope was to get it done in time to do the TAR. It would be his first organized dual sport ride. He got the plate done, registered for TAR and we decided to trailer the bikes out.
However, about two weeks before the event another friend, John, expressed interest. One problem though, no street legal bike. The search was on and by Monday before the event he was on his way to Houston to load up a used 2008 KLR with only 270 miles on it. Now there was another part of this story. John is an old friend of Richard's and has been giving Richard excuses for a while as to why he couldn't come. The plan was to surprise Richard at the event. John had been setting this up for a while with phone calls and emails so Richard didn't expect him to show.
On to the pictures:
Left to right, John, Clayton (trailrider77) and myself
Before I get too far into the report I want to talk about some repeat images that came up. Some of you may have seen my post near the end of the TAR pre-ride thread about a couple of run ins with turtles the morning before I left. I conjectured that it could mean that I was going to be the king of the sweep riders or "turn turtle" like Tourmeister did on his GS. The turtle theme was driven home several more times on the way out as we dodged a couple on the road, with the last one being right outside Mason near a property called Turtle Ranch. We also had a conversation with Clayton as to why his screen name had 77 in it. Turns out it is a biblical reference about forgiving 7 times 7. That started a string of seven repeated 7's all over with the first one being a number plate on a dirt bike when we got to the hotel. Anyway, keep these two things in mind as the report progresses.
We had a little fun at registration surprising Richard and Connie with John showing up. He kept his helmet on and acted a little obnoxious. I saw Richard glance at me a couple of times with a funny look, but being the good host he is, he didn't let this "stranger" confuse him and he kept being gracious. Then John introduced himself and popped off his helmet to the laughter of those in on the joke. Good fun.
Here's breakfast with Lori (alphadog) and in the background is Bob, the other Transalp at TAR. You'd think there wouldn't be too many 20 year old bikes at TAR and we had matching ones.
Here is the only picture I have with both Transalps. We should have posed them.
Rider's meeting on day 1:
Our group for the day ended up being John, Clayton, Bob, George (green 2008 klr) and myself. We headed for loop 3. We didn't start to early to give the rest of the riders some time to get out in front. As it was we saw many riders on the way to CR313 trying to find there way along the interstate and mess of access roads. Since I had tried to clean up the gps versions of the routes, I was feeling a little bad and tried to wave to folks to follow us. I will do a GPS 101 for TAR thread later. We got on the dirt with no problem and picked up four more riders for a while. We learned how to do bump gates as a group and leapfrogged back and forth alternating opening regular gates for another big group.
At Rocksprings, over lunch, Bob decided to head back up 377 to Junction. It was his first time back out on dirt in many years and the Transalp is kind of a big bike for getting your legs back. He was feeling good about being able to do what we had covered so far, but didn't want to push his luck. Specially with those Tourances he had on the bike.
Right after lunch, the sun came out and the temperature went up some. Two of the extra riders we had picked up were headed down a different loop and we said goodbye to them. The other two extras we had picked up we split from in Rocksprings also. They were fixing what turned out to be a fuse issue on a KLR.
Heading out 674 was very nice; curves, scenery, generally good stuff. However this is were we learned that Clayton still had his 13 tooth front sprocket on and was really only comfortable running at 55mph. Too bad for us because those curves just wanted us to go faster.
So, not too many pictures for a stretch. Basically we hit the locked gate on Cedar Creek road and decided to head for Bracketville and the Alamo set instead of back tracking on 674. Alamo set cost too much for getting there in the afternoon, so on to Bracketville to top of the tanks. There we decided to head back up towards Barksdale and ride the lower part of Cedar Creek in the reverse direction, then pick up CR310 back into Rocksprings (reverse of last year's loop 3 in that area) We picked up three extra riders at the Bracketville Valero and off we went. I was leading and the group had kind of dropped back. I figured Clayton's KTM was slowing them down so I pulled over to fix an earplug that wasn't all the way in. My three riding partners pulled up, but the extra three didn't. I was told they pulled over looking at the map on the tank of one of thier bikes. So we figured they had second thoughts about our plans or something, but in the back of our minds we were concerned there was a problem. We did wait about 5 minutes then decided to press on. Later you will hear "rest of the story".
At the corner of highway 55 we took a break:
And the group that Ed29 was part of pulled up and visited some. They told us the other three riders were working on a KTM. Shoot, they did have a problem. However that was almost 30 minutes back the other way and they had given Ed's group a thumbs up so we kept to our route.
Saw this low water crossing of the Nueces and we had stop for gratutious bike photos.
As we got to Barksdale I was getting concerned about time since we were going to do a dirt loop, then have to slab it up to Junction from Rocksprings. I know a bit about deer in that area and really wanted to be back in Junction before about 7:30pm. On top of that there were some omnious looking clouds to the east. But, we needed some dirt after all that pavement.
Since I had done this route last year on the DRZ I felt pretty confident that I could handle the crossings. However, the sun was in our eyes and it made it a little harder to scope out what was lurking in the water. I should have been sending the KTM out first, but the TA really needed the dust washed off. Fortunately I only washed one side.
Clayton:
John:
Finally we reached Highway 55 again. Only to find that it was already 7:30pm, the clouds were really dark and there was this monster...
Okay, so he was only 12 inches long and smaller around than my little finger. I chased him off the road and off we went for more gas for the KTM in Junction. Everybody at the gas station kept warning us about weather moving in so we were getting nervous about that. Plus it was now dusk and prime time for deer.
The deer didn't keep us in suspense for long. We saw the first one before we even completely cleared Rocksprings. I started keeping count. One here, three there...and on we chugged. As the sun went down we kept slowing down. Every big bunch of deer by the side of the road meant another 5 mph slower. We dropped into a valley and I saw two sprinting along a fence line parallel to us. I knew one was bound to come my way and I wasn't disappointed. I had already started to back off, but had to grab some brakes too. Then all heck broke loose. I could see deer for a 1/2 mile up the road racing out of the field towards the trees on the other side. My count was up over thirty as we cleared that area, but we weren't done with critters in that area. We came upon a porcupine ambling across the road at the end of that long field too. Not a care in the world.
Now we are almost to South Llano State Park, five miles to go. Looks like we are going to make it...only 41 deer spotted so far. Wait, there's a dead on right by the side of the road...no, not dead yet because he was still waving a leg at us. So that's 42. Had two more cross in front of us just before town for a total of 44 deer between Rocksprings and Junction. Took us until 9pm to reach the hotel. End of day 1.
So, next morning we find out that two of our missing three riders had to ride up, get a pickup and head back to recover the ailing KTM. I'm really feeling bad about not going back at this point, but we have a chance to redeem ourselves since Scott (I can't remember his screenname) is at our hotel. He describes his problem as it will start and idle, but dies as he gives it gas. Our first thought is a plugged main jet. He drops the bowl on the carb to get to the main jet, but mentions that the needle doesn't seem to be going up and down. Bingo, clip came off, easy fix. Clayton and I point him to how to get to that part and we start getting our gear ready. Well, not so simple. The clp broke. Rusty to the rescue. I had my JD jet kit with me and had a extra clip. Clayton had his KTM manual with him and knew the stock clip location. Minutes later a KTM is roaring in the parking lot. So we have a new riding partner for the day and I feel better about not helping the day before. We wouldn't have been able to fix it anyway on the side of the road, but we did have the 5 cent part to fix it.
Our route for day 2 is one I called Dirt Maximus. Last year Lori (alphadog), Chuck (CeeBee) and I decided to modify route 6 to have a little more dirt. The because of a gas issue we modified it some on the fly. I liked parts of that so much that I spent some time with the maps and came up with a new route with more dirt. It starts and finishes just like 5, 6, and 7, but the middle is different. I'm going to pass it on to Richard and maybe he'll check it out and use some or all of it for next year.
Along the way we picked up another group so we were about nine bikes, one a KLR riding 2 up. One little detour we took was Loeffler Road where there is a nice old church and building:
Then we worked our way up Simonsville road to Mason for some Mexican food on the square. A quick gas stop for all and we headed south down the highway to Lower Willow Creek road. It was nice and we had a moderate speed going. Since that area had gotten rain the night before there were some damp spots, but no real mud. Once again confidence got the better of me though. I was leading and as I came around a corner the road dipped to a concrete covered water crossing. There was a stretch of about 10 feet of water only an inch deep. I figured it was run off from the night before and only backed down to 20mph or so (gps track log points were 25, 22, 9, 0). Steady throttle, no brakes, but about 2/3's the way across the back tire passes the front. I landed on the right arm and shoulder and could hear the crash bars sliding on the concrete. My first concern was the guy behind me...and him sending his bike sliding into me. There was no problem though as he was able to ride around my body and bike.
Sorry, no pictures, but the bike ended up past the concrete where the road started to rise up again. Back wheel toward the top of the hill with both wheels in a slight ditch. Suddenly my joking about the turtles and Tourmeister's GS upside down came to mind. So I wasn't the king of sweep riders after all. A quick check to make sure everything was still attached, a couple of folks heaved the bike up for me and I was ready to go. I will say that everybody else came across that water very carefully.
I found that the washboard road didn't hurt my shoulder/ribs much, but the occasional harder bump wasn't fun, nor were the sandy sections that started to show up. So when we finally got to pavement at Highway 29 we split up and headed back to Junction. This is were we took a break to figure out what the rest of them would do.
They ended up looping back on some dirt then finishing as planned. Probably missing 1/3 of the dirt I had on the route in the middle, but they seemed to have a good time. In fact I enjoyed it too, except for the crash. The pavement back was fun because I could finally run at the speed limit since the KTM was still riding dirt. Only caught up to two cars on the way and a quick twist and I was by them. Wish I had a car that could pass that easy on a two lane road.
Here is a picture Bob took of his Transalp by the ride sign:
Good fun at the banquet, but we got some rain overnight. This a picture of George, our riding partner from day 1, heading out in the morning for Abilene. Heard from him later that it was kind of cold on the way back, but he made it.
And here is John's odometer when we loaded it on the trailer saturday evening, notice the 7's.
Ah, good weekend riding and boy that Transalp has a comfortable seat.