Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

TEARDOWN By Paul C8rruthefS . " Beaver fever," Tool Man Tim blurted out of nowhere. "Excuse, me...but what in the ell is beaver fever?" Someone else in our oupasked. "It's what we're going to get from rinking this water," Tim said. The water in question had two things oing for it. We were thirsty and it was Jere - right at our feet. Since we had early reached complete exhaustion and ere completely out of fluids, we really ad no choice but to drink. In 10 minutes e'd be drinking out of muddy puddles. IUs water was at least flowing downtream - and it was clear. Still there was pprehension. So after scientifically nspecting it for a good five minutes - we ooked .at it from every imaginable angle n our only clear water bottle - someone ·nally got the nerve to take a Sip. Since e g)linea pig didn't grow an extra arm d there were no other apparent side ffects, we all had a go at it. We started lowly, at first only wiping our lips with he water. Then we took sips, which rned to gulps. Soon we looked like four ks at happy hour. Despite our happiness, Tim did his '1 to rain on our parade. "The problem, ou see, is when beavers go to the bathoom somewhere upstream from where ou're drinking. 1hat's what makes you et sick. It's kind of like food-poisoning. ou get flu-like symptoms, you know. ever, dian..." "Enough, Tim/' someone belched. Meanwhile, I was busy looking pstream. I didn't have the heart to tell em about the dam, or the family of four at-tailed animals frolicking in ·the sunrune. And this was only the beginning of ur nightmare, the story of a dual sport ·de gone awry. What had started out as our yearly ee-for-all dual.sport ride through the ig Bear Mountains in Southern <:aliforia quickly turned into a harrowing perience - and we all came away from t a little wiser. At least in terms of prepaation. For the past four or five years, I'd aken off at the start of our dual sport ide with nothing more than an ear-toar grin. No water, no tools, no nothing. ey, it was simply a five-hour otocross. Tools were something the ther guys carried; water was something mooched from the other editors. To carry supplies would have been too burdensome. It'd just slow me down. Everything began as normal. There were about eigllt of us, battling ba.ck and forth in a wide-open frenzy of testosterone, slowed only by the occasional IUgh-speed encounter with a fellow editor, a dirt embankment, or a cliff. About halfway into ouI frolicking, it all got ugly. The terrain got rugged, a clutch got fried and a foot got broken. All within about 100 yards of each other. A broken foot you can live with. A totally destroyed clutch - well, that's a real problem. The foot problem turned out to be someone else's dilemma (they can write their own column) as we were now split into two groups, equally as hosed, separated by a gnarly, rockstrewn uphill section. My problem was with the clutch less motorcycle that wouldn't move. It wasn't my bike, but it might as well have been. The guy riding the broken motorcyc1e? He was the boss's son. "Keep your eye on Kory and don't leave him out there." Those were publisher Mike Klinger's final words to me as we prepared to depart the camp and head into Testosteroneland. In other words, if he doesn't come back, you better not come back. The boss-man was injured and couldn't ride, so Kory was my responsibility. We were in for a long day.. By this time, we'd already nearly lost the Tool Man. Tim, who works for Kawasaki, was in a little over his head on this particular trail, and he and his notso-trusty KLR650 weren't discovered until we'd given up fixing the DR350 and decided to circumnaVigate our way back - dead DR and alL When we found Tim he'd developed a serious case of the Barneys - he had already reached the exhaustion point and his face was a glowing purple. This wasn't looking good. To make matters worse, Tim's KLR650 now featured a dead battery. Fortunately, the engineer who had decided a kick starter wasn't needed wasn't on our ride - or we would have hunted him down and killed him. Or at least made him drink bad water. So here's the inventory at this point a DR350 that wouldn't do anything more than coast, a KLR650, that had to be bump-started after every crash (of which there were many), two perfectly running motorcycles - a second DR350 and a Honda XR250, and four (myself, Kory, Tim and ad salesman Forrest) tired, thirsty and grumpy dual sport riders. And it only got worse. Kerry managed to coast the sick DR to the bottom of the mountain (and to our water supply, the stream), and Tim also recovered enough to get the KLR650 down the hilL We drank, drank, and drank some more, filled our bottles and re-started the nightmare. Now we were in the bottom of a canyon and there was only one way out a single-track trail that went straight up, with a difficulty factor of hard to hideous. And we had to do all of this while towing and pusrung the DR, crashing and ~starting the KLR, and quickly running out of our "beaver fever" water. Halfway up, we decided we couldn't go on. We'd pushed, we'd towed, we'd crashed. We were done. ."Let's go to sleep for awhile," was Kory's answer to our problems. And we almost agreed. But with nightfall pending, a nap didn't seem to be the right option. I, in all my mechanical wisdom, decided to try and at least fix the KLR's battery problem. Okay, the Suzuki won't run, so let's put the Suzuki battery in the Kawasaki. Brilliant. 1 went to work, losing small parts and tools in the dirt, but somehow getting the two ba tteries exchanged. I said my Hail Mary's and hit the run button - nothing. Hmmmm... "Uh, Forrest, can you go get that Kawasaki battery?" In an earlier fit of anger at having to actually use tools (luckily, someone else had some), I'd thrown a tissy and tossed the KLR's battery down into a canyon. Now, I needed it back. Okay, so the battery switch didn't work. But we had no choice but to march o~ward - puslting, towing, craslting and bump-starting our way to civilization. The low point of my day came 30 minutes or so later. Tim had gone on allead, now riding the Honda while I battled with the KLR650. He returned to find me, flat on my back, KLR on its side, gas spewing from its overflows. Kory and Forrest were a few blind comers and hiJIs behind me, pushing and towing, puslting and towing. Tini tried to talk to me, but I couldn't respond. I was fast reaching the point of delirium as our ordeal started to reach the six-hour mark. Tim said things I didn't understand, and then he left. When the other two arrived, the KLR was still on its side, and I was still on my back. I'd lost the front end for the final time. Or so I hoped. The other two helped me pick the bike up. We decided right then and there that we had to get the KLR started one more time, and 1 would have to go find help. It was getting dark. It was getting cold. Once under way, I was a nervous wreck. The multiple crashes had pushed the shift lever up against the cases and the KLR was permanently locked in second gear. To make matters worse, crashes to the other side of the bike had caused the throttle to stick. I was a desperate man, a scared man. If I ·crashed and stalled the motor, there was no way I'd be able to start it by myself. The other two were counting on me to come back with help. I was counting on me. I rode like Scott Plessinger. Somehow I made it to the fire road at the top of the trail. And not a moment too soon, or too late. As I reached the top, I saw an ATV zoom by, and then another. I waved the second rider down and he radioed to the rest of his crew. As it turned out, they were volunteer forest rangers. They were gods. And we ,were saved. The ranger and his ATV went down the trail and returned 15 minutes later with the DR and Kory_ in tow, and Forrest close beltind. We made it the rest of the way on our own; towing on a fire road becoming a simple task after what we'd been through. Our last meal had been consumed some 10 hours earlier, so our main goal was to find cheeseburgers. We did. We ate, ditched the broken DR . behind the restaurant, fixed the shifter on the KLR and started a hell-raising street ride through the darkness to our camp 40 miles away. By this time, Tim had made it back to camp and was busy eating barbecued food and telling war stories. He was kind enough to send a search party before starting his meal, and we ran into them a few miles short of our destination. We had survived. And we had learned. Next year, I'm bringing water - SanS the beavers. .LOOKINGBACK~ .. orld 250cc Motocross Champion oel Robert, picured on the cover, howed the TransMA competition n Irvine, Califoria, just what he as capable of. r· obert ran away III ith the two;' temational roundi.s;-------J n his Suzuki, while his Swedish teamate O. Pettersson came in second in e first round and third, behind John anks, in the second... In Inter-Am OGcc competion, World Champion engt Aberg eked out a victory over 'val Ake Jonsson in Phoenix, Arizona. ch had a first and a second going into e third and final International moto, ut Aberg was half a second faster cross the line... Consistency paid off for Diggers' 22nd annual Rattlesnake Grand Ottakar Toman in the Houston, Texas, Inter-Am. Christen Hammargren, Arne Prix had some added drama when Gr~g Piorkowski came off a jump to discover Kring, and Sylvain Geboers each won a heat, but the slower-but-steadier CZa photographer in his landing area, mounted Czech took the overall win. A resulting in minor injuries for rider and shutterbug. Then one of the event's· first-moto DNF kept Kring out of the final standings, wlUle Geboers finished namesake reptiles was killed near where second overall allead of Miroslav Halm the dazed papparaza .sat. Mike Sixberry and Hammargren. frjr.:IT;~-rr,.,..,.,..L_finishedfirst in borrowed gear on a borrowed bike... Up-and-coming Ricky . Graham spoke with Cycle News about 15 YEARS AGO... IUs future. "I think I'm entitled to quite a bit more money," the 21-year-old said NOVEMBER 19, 1980 at the end of a season in which he or the third time recorded the first 100-mph-plus average in three years for a mile dirt track event. Larry Roeseler and Jack Johnson teamed up to win a 5YEARS AGO... Baja 1000. It took ~~.tI', NOVEMBER 14, 1990 them 12 hours and. '':.":::::' ormer billboard painter Lee 45 minutes to com- - - _ Pounders was the big winner at the plete the SCORE Baja AMA/CCS National Champi1000km route, 19 minutes less than their onship Sprints at Daytona International Yamaha teammates Bruce Ogilvie and Speedway in Florida. The 32-year-old Chuck Miller. Team Husqvarna's Brent Novice racked up four victories and a Wallingsford and Scot Harden were third-place finish. Fabian Cortez won third... The 250cc Expert race at the Dirt fi F F (ij;7Hf7f~,.,;-r-,..~_ the Expert Heavyweight Supertwins and Expert Middleweight Superbike finals... Team Mad Dog took a bite out of the competion at the 10th and final round of the EBC --'~~:4..::LJ Endurance Challenge, also at Daytona, with Mike Harth and Larry Schwarzbach the winners. Harth and Schwarzbach averaged 104.464 mph and won by 8 minutes, 34.101 seconds, over Jeff Rheaume and Jeff Stern... Aaron Hough was the winner of the final round of the National Reliability Enduro Series, but Dave Bertram's second place was enougll to take the series title. Kurt Hough, Aaron's older brother, had been the favorite to become the champ, but a broken dutch resulted in a DNF. l!) 0'\ 0'\ ...... u) ...... I-< C!) "S 6 C!) z 55

• Cover