DS Ride 06 - Feb '07 - Recap

PUTTING “SPOR” INTO DUALSPORT:

BALLINGER LOOP A

What . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dualsport Ride, full day
When . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Meet Sunday, 04 February, 7:00 AM
Where . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Meet @ BMW Ventura parking lot
Contact . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Laine_MacTague@verizon.net

DS RIDE 06: RECAP

The early arrivals were looking out the BMW shop window, admiring the cold morning they were now safe from, inside. Phil Wren was smoking the glass with his breath and drawing snow angels with his fingertips. It was the last kind of morning you’d ever expect to turn out weird and creepy – which is of course exactly what it did. Ride leader Laine MacTague glanced upward out the window at movement caught in his peripheral vision, and in the ensuing startled paroxysm of fear, involuntarily spewed a hot mouthful of 100% Columbian Blend Genuine BMW Motorcycles of Ventura County Hot Cocoa all over the inside of the glass front door of the shop. Down out of the cold dawn came certain proof that the Ride Series had finally caught the attention of the interstellar community.

Bright lights glittered in the silver-grey morning sky as the craft settled slowly down into the parking lot in front of the shop, extending a single short landing appendage. The ship settled, leaning slightly to one side. Riders stared, frozen. Dan Goldstien started babbling like Saint Brendan the Navigator the time he got rammed by the narwhal and fell overboard into the ice-covered North Atlantic. He ran and hid in the bathroom but the others could still hear him until he went suddenly white as sea foam and passed out.
You always see blurry, fake shots of U.F.O.s. Here’s a clear one:


Riders cowered. Nobody knew what to do. Then Phil finally glanced beyond the glass, through the wing of the angel he was working on.

“Oh, Kurt’s here,” he said. He went outside.

A being dismounted the craft, shook hands with Phil, and said something about being taken to the leader. That got him introduced to Laine—as Kurt Eichelberg, Goldwing pilot. He signed the release, got a cup of coffee, and to make a long story short, so did all the other riders, and off we went—even Dan Goldstien.

Watching Dan Goldstien get on his bike and ride off into the sunrise—or anywhere else, for that matter—is a lot like watching an old Roy Rogers flick, wherein Roy runs up to his horse and puts his left foot in the stirrup, at which point Trigger takes off like a horse out of hell, and Roy bounces his right foot behind him on the ground once or twice before gamely swinging it over the saddle—except, Roy had Tanto to hold the horse steady for a moment, and there was always the trainer just off camera, making calming hand signs at Trigger, and all that, whereas Dan is doing the same thing on an HP-2—which, come to think of it, is like swinging your leg over about a hundred horses, instead of just one—without a Genuine Bavarian Motor Works HP-2 Handler in a 3600 mile radius.

You should come on one of these rides, just to watch Dan do his thing.

Space aliens, Dan—multiple Dans, in fact: there was another one sleeping through the alien invasion in his bus in the parking lot—the Usual Suspects, and a road Warrior (rider Ali Mohempuur, on a Yamaha). Multi sport? Omni? Is “dual” quite enough, at this point?

The sleeping Dan we did not let lie, for he is none other than Dan Taylor, of DSR 04 fame: When the snow hit the ground swinging and DSR 04 became a two-person roulette ride inside of 6 miles off pavement, it was Dan Taylor who subbed in late, for everybody else, showing up out of nowhere in the middle of the Angeles Mountains on his 1990 R100 (with touring tires) and joining the ride for the last brutally cold 40 miles of National Forest roads covered with snow and ice and half-frozen mud. In the dark. Dan brought his Suzuki DRZ 400 for this ride—which, by the way, started with about 90 miles of twisty pavement…

Where was I? Space alien, Road Warrior, Usual Suspects, an abundance of interesting Dans, and oh yes, one rider who would be in front of his bike by about 2 feet for the first 90 miles. More on that after this:

The riders left the shop—in a short and snappy manner that puts the beginning of this Recap to shame—and managed to say goodbye to freeways for good in about 5 miles. They rode north on winding back roads through orchards and small towns, past grandmother’s, past Little Red’s, even past Laine’s house, and on and on, until forty-five miles later, they reached the Ojai gas station that is the last fuel stop before crossing the Los Padres range on Highway 33.

There was another group of riders at the station waiting to join the ride, one of whom began heading up 33 as soon as the Shop group arrived; he would be moving slower than the others and was in fact last to show up at the next stop. Ventura and Santa Barbara riders joined the Newbury Park group, bringing the total to 14. The next stop was over 50 miles away. The ride was designed so that individual riders could maintain whatever pace they wanted, but except for one rider far ahead, and Dan on the DRZ, who was soon a couple minutes behind, the group rode together at a pace on the quicker side of middling. Well and good; it was a beautiful day, warm, and all the snow had melted from the mountains with the last warm rains. There were small puddles on the shoulder here and there, but the pavement was dry, clean, and exquisitely tailored long ago by some motorcycle-loving civil engineer. The riders swept along through the hills and valleys like glittering (noisy) fish swaying easily through the topography of a reef.



Three hundred and eighty-six sweeping turns later, climbing up out of a broad, oak-infested valley, the main group finally overtook the rider who had left not only ahead of them but just ahead of his bike as well.



Due to an increasingly bewildering and tectonic series of logistical shakeups that would be impossible to describe in a blog post, Doug Ford had managed to buy a Dakar in San Jose, and carry it home to Morro Bay in his truck from Santa Paula. On the way home, he was joining us for DSR 06—a sturdy intermediate dual sport ride—after a hiatus from motorcycling (on pavement only) of about 10 years’ duration.

Cannon fodder.

Laine fell behind, stopping to take photos, which is how he and Dan Taylor were the only riders to see the Gorilla sitting on top of a telephone poll. At least, that’s what Laine thought it was at first. A short way after 33 leaves the mountains and begins to follow the Cuyama River Valley northward, Laine passed under it by and pulled over, hoping to catch a photo of Dan Taylor riding under the beast, but was too late for the shot. As Dan passed under, the animal spread its wings and glided off its perch and across the road. It turned out to be a positively huge female golden eagle. She glided over the tops of low oaks looking like a feather-covered Komodo dragon with a snowboard strapped across its back. As the riders watched, she slipped away over a distant ridgeline.

They hit the road again, Laine racing ahead to catch a few photos of Doug hauling his Captain USA bike.











In short order, the entire group was gathered at the Santa Barbara Pistachio Company in (or at least near) a microdot of a town called Ventucopa, in the Cuyama Valley. This was our staging area for the first unpaved portion of the day; an introductory tour of Ballinger Canyon OHV area. Tire pressures were lowered, ABS systems ripped out, shock pre-loads adjusted, and long, fervent prayers were sung in shaky, helmet-muffled voices. Arne Anselm and Jules Neale, both riding R100s over a decade old, exuded a sense of calm self-assurance they must have been channeling from the seasoned, more experienced bikes. It was beautiful riding weather, and Eric and Ali were debating over several good road-riding options for their return trip. They were headed back down 33 toward Lockwood Valley road only a minute or two before the rest of the riders turned the other way. In about four miles the group was riding up a narrow asphalt trail into Ballinger Canyon.

The best part of the ride came right away. That’s where you ride your big imposing dual sport bike—part of a convoy of 12, no less—up the paved entrance road, right off into the dirt and sand, through crowds of dirt-biker families camping at the OHV parking lot, and their necks all swing along as you ride by, like, well, remember that hologram face in the haunted house at Disneyland, that seems to look at you no matter where you stand? Like that. Then you try to get around a couple corners, so you’re out of sight before you do something foolish and end up breaking off a mirror.


Once that was over, we took a quick breather, regrouped, and went over the Plan again. The Plan was that capable, prudent, responsible riders would carry on up the main canyon on the main trail (you can tell it’s the main trail because it never gets narrower than 8 feet wide), and the foolhardy, irresponsible kook riders would attempt the dreaded Trail 23. You could tell Trail 23 was not the main trail because it was rarely over two and a half feet wide. I’m not naming any names, but Don Gordon and Phil Wren opted to join Laine on 23. Oops, I messed that up. Oh, and my Back and Delete buttons are both at the cleaners…


Dan Goldstien had lived through a previous visit to Ballinger, and offered to keep a weather eye on the main trail group. That may (or may not) be why, during a break on Trail 23 to rest weary forearm muscles, Laine heard on the radio that only one bike from the main group had gone off a cliff and into a tree (or bush; there was some static on the line), and that everything was fine and the bike would soon be retrieved.


[Okay; I lied: The Trail 23 group wasn’t just resting weary forearms. Phil had inadvertently hit a rock with his big toe, hard, and had insisted on his right to a brief whining stop, which Don and Laine—their offers to remove the offending appendage having been refused—were in the process of enduring. So if this was a lame reality show instead of the amazing monthly dual sport phenomenon it is, it would still be hard to pick which team won and which team lost, not to mention who was going to get sent home and have to do that snappy brief and bogus interview about how satisfied they were with the way things worked out, just the same… But I digress.]

Trail 23 posed several challenges. It begins very steeply, and is very narrow and twisting, requiring precise power control that only comes with constant feathering of the clutch, brakes, and throttle. Thus the tired forearms. It was mostly dry, but here and there, short sections of clay were still muddy; a rider might suddenly find himself sliding sideways on a trail about three feet wide—which is to say, might find himself in a bush. There were climbs covered in large loose rocks. There were steps worn into some steep sections, invariably spaced so the front and rear tires would drop off their steps simultaneously, causing a sudden drop during a steep and sometimes loose or turning descent. There were places where navigating the terrain required standing on the pegs, but the overhanging brush was touching the tops of the windscreens.

Trail 23 splits a ways before it meets the main trail (Trail 24) again, and Trail 24 ends just a short ways beyond. There was, apparently, some controversy about where, exactly, the end of Trail 24 was. For the purposes of this ride, it ends where Andy Trabucco’s 1200 GSA went off the edge and into a tree. Doug Ford was good enough to park his Dakar in such a way that it A) marked a fairly safe point to call the “end of the trail”; and B) kept all those smug dirt bikers from getting up far enough to see that one of us dual sport guys had rode off a cliff (again).

[Me again: I should mention at this point that I have no idea if any of that is correct: All blind hypothesis on my part; I was on Trail 23. Somebody just sent me this photo, and it seems like the obvious explanation. I do know that we only saw 4 dirt bike riders more than a mile from the parking lot, so if Andy did really pull a Carbine and ride off a cliff, his secret is safe with us (not to mention, he’s now in the club).]

[… As I was saying:] Trail 23 splits before it meets the main trail, affording one the option of either descending a veritable staircase of those irritating, engine-plate-bending, balance throw-offing steps through tight, pointy, dry, uncomfortable-to-fall-in chaparral, or descending a steep, steep, STEEP exposed ridgeline of rutted sandy soil with loose river rocks and nothing, absolutely nothing, to stop you from sliding and rolling all the way to the bottom of the slope if you fall over. Fools that they were, the Trail 23ers each chose one of these options.

Don, fully aware of the even steeper descents expected on DSR 07, opted to try the steep descent. Riders on the tail end of Trail 24 could see him inching down the slope. There are a couple tricks that make this sort of a descent a possibility. One is to largely avoid the rear brake, which will tend to make the rear end slide to the side, around, and eventually past the front tire on insanely steep, snail’s-pace descents. Another is to maintain a snail’s pace. Another often-useful tactic is to start in the deepest rut, from the very top: That way, there is nothing to accidentally slip down into. Using these tricks, and the hover-support system we stole from the spaceship in the morning, Don maneouvered to a point on the hillside from which he could safely coast the rest of the way down. A few moments later he came hurtling up to the waiting group, knobbies tossing bits of wet soil.

Phil, fully aware of the steep single-track descents expected on March’s ride, opted for the stairway. From Arne’s rest spot in the shade of a small Pinyon pine, Phil could just be seen edging through juniper and more Pinyon on the facing slope. We could see him bouncing now and then down sections of stairs. Phil too arrived in short order, and Andy’s bike having been retrieved, the group promptly split up again.


This time, one group headed back down 24 to Trail 40, another major trail, while another group explored slightly more challenging trails that paralleled the route of the other group.

Dan Goldstien opted for the main trail, and Laine lead the other group, which consisted of Don and Phil, Jules Neale, and Brian Voorhees.

Laine’s group enjoyed fairly tame single-track riding on some short loops along a meandering bluff that affords a panoramic view of Qatal Valley to the south. Everything was going well—until the mud. It didn’t look too bad, at first. It was a little slippery, not too wet… Laine slipped through about the third patch, a long bit at the base of a sharp turning climb into a section narrowed by overgrown brush. He stopped at a fairly flat, open spot, and waited. Jules came up. Some engines revved below, and in a moment, Phil came up.




Ten minutes later, Laine walked back down to the mud patch. He found Brian stuck in it, with Don waiting just behind him. The mud had built up on Brian’s front tire; when he moved the bike, the front tire would slide without spinning. He would definitely not be continuing up the climb; it took a lot of pulling and grunting and heaving just to get the bike turned around. After several minutes repeating Brian’s experience, Don had to turn around too. Here’s a shot of Jules and Phil feeling bad for them:




Laine, Jules, and Phil continued on to the point where the two (now three) groups planned to meet before taking Trail 40 back to Highway 33. When they arrived at the intersection, they found only Terry Eannetta and Arne Anselm waiting for them. It turned out that the trail Terry and Arne had taken to the meeting point was very muddy in places also. The others had opted to follow Trail 24 back to the highway. After a long, fruitless wait for Don and Brian, the group followed Trail 40 down descending ridgelines and canyons, finally emerging through Pistachio orchards onto 33. They returned to the Pistachio Company, only a mile or so away, to find the rest of the group re-hydrating in the shade, and trading stories—except for Brian and Don. Laine was just drawing up a search plan when they rode into sight. They pulled up to the bike awning; Brian stepped off, walked around to the front of his handlebars, and punched his bike right in the mouth.












It had been incredibly frustrating, apparently: The 1200 GSes ridden by Brian and Don have low front fenders, very close to the front tire. Mud had built up under the fender, and dried—rather quickly due to friction from the tire—into little adobe bricks. These bricks had been rubbing on the tire treads, wearing grooves and ridges into the tires! The riders had spent a lot of time trying to get the mud out, but the tight space between the fender and tire made the task next to impossible. The hunt is on for an aftermarket “low” front fender that is higher than the BMW version….

It had been a long, hard ride. They were tired. They were happy. There were 90 miles of pavement between them and the shop in Newbury Park.

“Time for Section Two!” said Laine.

Sane people offered to go home and check up on the Superb owl scores—uh, no… you know what I mean—for those who would continue riding. Sane people pointed out that they still had to drive to Morro Bay with their bike on a truck. For that matter, sane people pointed out that it was close to a hundred miles more just to get to the shop, it was already something-fifteen in the afternoon, and they were married. Sane people had read the DSR 06 Orientation and knew that Section Two was not only a long hunk of sandy riverbed, which every dual sport rider fears and / or loathes, but also that it would be followed by a Section Three, and a Section Four, one of which was an even longer, hunkier, sandier section of (even wider) riverbed.

Fifteen minutes later, a little over half the group was breezing along the open highway, enjoying the late afternoon sunshine and clear weather. Laine, Don, Dan Goldstien, Phil, and Andy Trabucco were sitting in the middle of Qatal riverbed, looking upstream from the relative stability of an unpaved crossing.

“It’s not that bad, once you get up to say, 22,23, 24, okay, 25-27 miles an hour,” Laine was saying. “It’s just that getting there is, well, half the fun. And steer with your knees, instead of the handlebars. Turning the handlebars will just make you fall over. And your feet, steer with weight on the pegs. And use the throttle, too. Steer with the rear tire. In fact, steer with anything except the handlebars… blah, blah…” He went on and on, not noticing that Don was already out there doing doughnuts and weaving around rocks, and Phil and Andy were not far behind. Dan was still listening intently and trying to wedge short questions into the cracks in Laine’s monologue. They weren’t wide enough.

Once Laine’s pull-cord was completely retracted, he and Dan joined the ride up Qatal. The sand proved somewhat firm--for sand. The most intriguing aspect of riding the riverbed might have been the absence of a clearly marked trail. At times, it was clear where many other vehicles had passed, but often, a rider had to choose his own line along a gently climbing swath of sand about 200 feet wide, broken up by randomly placed ruts, piles of woody debris, patches of scrubby growth, and the intermittent rock pile or large, water-smoothed boulder. It was a different kind of off-road riding, allowing riders to ride side-by-side, changing lines on a whim, carrying enough speed to cause a breeze.


At one point the riverbed is marked closed by the Forest Service, and a narrow winding dirt track leads through the sage scrub back to Qatal Canyon Road. The riders continued up the road to a picnic area before turning around and following the road back to highway 33.

Qatal Canyon Road offers another unique terrain. It is a very broad, generally well-groomed fire road that—except for four or five broad turns in about ten miles—runs straight as a dime across the gentle alluvial slope of the north side of Qatal Canyon. Being so placed, there are dozens of small washes crossing the road, and many, many tall erosion berms that cross the road at a slight angle, guiding potential floodwater off the roadway. The road is razor straight for miles at a time, except for up and down, in which direction it weaves more or less continuously. At least, at about 60 mph, fast enough to turn the erosion berms into wheelie launchers, it seems like you hit one every few seconds. The only drawback is, riding across a wash at that speed is either challenging or crazy, depending on whether the recent rains have caused a buildup of loose sand to flow across the road, or have dug a foot-deep, two-foot wide trench across the bottom of the huge, steep, suddenly appearing dip in the road you are flying down…

In our case, the washes managed merely to rip the tail light clean off Phil’s F650. Laine and Dan caught up to the others just past the wash that did it: It appeared that Phil’s bike had bottomed hard enough that the force snapped the light fixture’s plastic mounting bracket. Once freed—as shown in this photo—of the burden of hauling that taillight around, Phil road—as shown in this photo—with a newfound sense of freedom and joy.





Across the street from where Qatal Canyon abuts Highway 33 is a swath of grass backed by a low rock wall in the shade of some tall trees. You can see far up Qatal Canyon, and for miles in either direction along 33. The DSR 06 A-Team (why is it always 5 guys?) gathered up for a little R & R. The late afternoon sun was mild, the weather was perfect. They spent some quality time lounging around, chatting about the Phil’s 60 mph ballet routine, and polishing off the snacks. Andy was worried about the possibility of turning into a pumpkin—or of being turned into one, maybe—and started readjusting his tire pressure for the ride home. Dan “McGyver” Goldstien whipped out his “Rescue Tape” and raided his zip tie stash; in a few minutes Phil’s taillight was operating within normal parameters.

Not that we would need taillights on Section Four. Yes, there was still more unpavement, for those who just, don’t, know, when, to quit. That includes Laine, Phil, Dan, and Don. For the next fifteen miles of homeward riding, 33 paralleled the great, broad Cuyama riverbed. For almost half of that distance, the riverbed is a designated Forest trail. When the riders turned off the highway to access the trail, Andy waved goodbye and continued his long homeward ride.


Going from the Qatal riverbed to the Cuyama riverbed is like going from surfing at County Line to surfing at Maverick’s; there is a lot more sand in the Cuyama riverbed than there is in the Qatal. And a foot or two below it all is—more sand. In fact, the only thing at all in the riverbed other than sand is water mud two-foot tall sand-ridges tree-root balls derelict pickup trucks coyotes and big imposing granitic boulders which are really uncomfortable to hit at any speed which is exactly what Laine did at one point but first, the riders had to get by the moat and berm system piled up by some tractor. Don did not. His bike sank far enough into the loosened, piled sand that when he “fell”, the bike was left standing straight up like a fork in a can of Denison’s Chili.

After the extraction process, Don got the hang of it, and was soon sailing across the sand.

And over the rocks.

And through the mud.











The others kept up as best they could. It was getting late. As it got darker, the riverbed got progressively more challenging. Maintaining pretty good speed in the sand is key, and in a riverbed, doing that means keeping good tabs from a significant distance on any obstacles you are approaching, so that you can make smooth, early course corrections. The darker it got, the harder it was to see upcoming obstacles at a distance. We began to need to make sudden swerves, like this one.

It was at about this point that Laine hit his big granitic rock. The bike stopped dead, and Laine kept right on going for several feet, until he stopped gracelessly, on his back, on a bed of small boulders poking out of a thin layer of cold water—he had been trying to cross the river.

This was just the sort of comic relief that was needed. The riders took a moment to laugh and point, shook off the tension in their shoulders, and carried on. But the darkness was closing in quickly, and even the brief stop had cost them valuable light. In a short time, it was no longer possible to see beyond the headlights. The last stretch also proved to be more technical; the river was narrower and rockier, the trenches deeper, and there was more brush to circumnavigate. The riders got separated. From the unpaved crossing that marked the exit from the riverbed, Phil—who had taken the opportunity of an earlier crossing to exit back to 33—could see the three headlights bobbing around separately, just a few hundred yards downstream.

Laine won through to the crossing first, wet and plenty tired. He waited a few minutes. Another headlight approached, slowly resolving into Don on his 1200 GS. The three riders watched the riverbed for Dan’s headlight. They didn’t see it. Laine had found a comparatively clear route for the last bit, and now he road back down it in the pitch dark, to see if he could spot Don. He came to a slightly raised sand shelf, parked, turned off the engine and listened. Coyotes.

Yip! Yip-Yip! Yiiiip, yip yip RALPH!!! Yip! Yip-yip RALPH yip Yiiip!!!

Yip yip, “Ralph”? Why does that last coyote sound so close? And where the hell is Dan’s headlight?

Most mysteries have simple answers, and this one was no exception: Dan was a hundred and fifty feet away. He had fallen over after picking up his HP-2 about five times, alone, inside of fifteen feet, after ten hours of riding, much of it off-road. The headlight was pointing into the sand and he was beside the bike on all fours, blowing chunks. Mystery solved.

Laine walked over and watered him. Dan perked up like a wilted flower on time lapse, with the addition of a little water. Dehydration had not only made the repeated falls—well, let’s be clear: The repeated picking-up of the four hundred pound bike—more challenging to recover from, but had likely contributed to the falls happening in the first place. After a brief rest, the two met Don and Phil at the crossing in short order. Dan led the group well away from the sand; they parked on the side of Highway 33, and prepared for the ride back to Ojai. Dan had lowered the HP-2’s adjustable suspension, and pumped air into it in the light from Dan and Phil’s headlights.

Don led the ride back down 33 to Ojai, his headlight pointing up at a jaunty angle, illuminating passing trees. The only other traffic that far back in the hills was a suspicious-looking blue pickup. It pulled aside to let the riders pass, then followed fairly closely for miles before dropping back. Like a shark following a kayaker, Laine thought. Since the Silverado that turned left in front of him the day after last September’s DS Ride, causing him to leap over the truck bed at 35 miles an hour as his bike obliterated itself against the side of the vehicle, he’s pretty suspicious of anything with two too many wheels.

The group had an otherwise uneventful, even peaceful, evening ride into Ojai, and stopped at the first station to fuel up. Don was struggling hard with his obtuse headlight when the blue truck pulled into the station. Laine watched carefully. It pulled into the stall beside Don.

Some beanie-and-sweatshirt-wearing potential hoodlum hopped out of his pimped out Chevy with the low profile tires and approached the pump. He leaned across and addressed Don. He said something totally senseless and inflammatory, like, “Hi, I’m Chris. I noticed your headlight is tweaked. I’m a mechanic at BMW of Ventura County. Need a hand?”

Naturally, they jumped him. In a flash Phil had him up against the side of his truck in an arm lock and Goldstien was just about to start pistol-whipping him with the pump nozzle when Don came up with a great riposte to this cocky twerp’s verbal attack:

“What was that?”

Chris’s wife, looking on from the passenger seat, rolled her eyes. Chris and his kooky friends…

“I’m Luke Skywalker, I’m here to rescue you!” Chris repeated. Well, that was the general sentiment, anyway. The riders slowly worked out that having a professional mechanic show up at a gas station at night and fix your bike for you might be desirable, and eventually Chris ended up completely removing and reinstalling Don’s headlight. And he bored out the cylinders, too, so now Don’s horsepower is up 20% and his bike is slightly lighter than it was.

Chris and Official BMW Motorcycles of Ventura County Happy Customer Don Gordon shook hands goodbye. Chris and his wife headed back to Ventura, but the riders had one more stop to make. You know those great after-ride meals you get to read about once a month in these recaps? We had another one. After, we were just rejuvenated enough to pose for a last group shot before heading home, another day gloriously seized.

Ya might want to get that looked at, Phil...