CO and UT TAT

[Red Zebra]

June 26 finds Craig and I trickling out of MO and into OK. Eventually running at a good clip on US 64. It's hot. 100+F. We pass a bank sign flashing 105F. Arriving in Alva OK at a service station in the early evening. We ask the attendant where to find economy camping...."free camping". She does not know and asks a lump of flesh hunkered over a plate of tater wedges. Before he can answer a grissled gentleman two chairs down says we can camp "under the bridge" on US 281.
Pardon? Apparently he is the foreman for the construction on the "new bridge" and ok's us to camp under the new section being built. Said he would be by to "check on us" later that night.

We locate the bridge. Looks good....however we feel a little uneasy about the set-up. Thoughts of being assigned a roommate named Ben Dover at the Co Jail for trespassing in a construction zone dance through our head. Worse, the prospect of being "checkd on" late at night by the foreman is the final straw in the decision to relocate. We opt for a side road about 1/4 mile away that dead-ends into a man-made hill. Totally out of sight.
It's still 100+ and sleep comes with great sweat effort around 2am. We break camp the next morning and leave waving to the workers on the bridge.
We uneventfully make Tinidad CO by nightfall on the 27 and meet our two other riders; James and Don. We pick-up the TAT on June 28.

[Bootz]

So it’s Sunday. Don & I are staying in the Holiday Inn in Trinidad waiting for Jim & Craig. The hotel is charging a rate comparable to Waikiki, there’s no fridge, the elevator sounds like someone is dragging a brick down the street with a chain, the air conditioner is out, and the breakfast nazi won’t let us sit in the breakfast area because it doesn’t “open” for another three minutes. Having seen some trails about five minutes from the hotel, we decide to take the bikes out for a little test run. We were just going to be gone for a few minutes……

We jump off in the dirt and cruise around on some trails for few minutes before coming to this steep single-track disappearing up a hill. Don is ahead of me and stops to consider the wisdom of blasting up this blind, gnarly looking hill. Well, I’d spent way too much time & money getting the KTM ready for this trip and not having the riding chops to use all of her potential was beside the point! Being the “When in doubt, MORE THROTTLE!” kinda guy, I blast around him and start up the hill. After about 50 feet, my spidey senses started letting me know something was wrong. The ground is a mixture of scree & talcum powder that hasn’t seen water for millennia. RPM’s climbing, losing speed, crap! Feathering the clutch & surfing toward the right edge of the trail gives me just enough traction. Yes! I’m going to make it! What the devil?!?! My windshield flies off, hits me in the face and skitters out in front of me in the trail. I’m surging forward into what turns out to be a right turn switchback with me high on the inside and still trying to figure out why my windshield attacked me…damn.

The get-off wasn’t bad at all. I pick up the bike and notice immediately that I can’t stand up without my boots sliding two feet downhill. My feet are by the back wheel and the front wheel is higher than my head. I immediately deduced this hill was steeper than I anticipated. Getting her back on the trail and facing downhill generated buckets of sweat. Successfully, I flushed both eyes with a mixture of sweat & sunscreen AND managed to get the windshield under the front tire. My eyes only sustained minor radiation burns, but the windshield was another story. While it made a pretty good sled for getting the front of the bike pointed downhill, the poor thing was no longer something you could see through.

Coasted her back to the bottom of the hill where Don has been watching with a bemused expression. After washing out my eyes, I hauled my carcass back up the hill for windshield retrieval. Four zip-ties later, the windshield was back in place and she was good to go! Don politely declined the opportunity to take a shot at the hill and we headed into town for food. While riding to find the best piece of pie in Trinidad, I was grinning and thinking, “I’m glad I got that out of the way early.”

[dferg77]

Damn there I was reading along enjoying a good story and it stops.