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| Dirt Biking Harley
by trapperjohn at 5/1/2008 8:35:24 PM
Some of you read the Valentines blog I put on MySpace about the night Carole, yes, Carol with an "e", and I rode the Harley five minutes each way to the party on a cold night. I didn’t think that was fair to her as she liked to ride so I called on her for a Sunday afternoon ride a few weeks ago.
The weather was nice, warm and sunny and she was ready when I picked her up. She even has her own riding gear. Now this lady has ridden before and has even had her own ride. She is without at the moment but also enjoys the back seat.
It was right before Easter and she needed to take some goodies to her grandkids out east of town. No problem as that was the direction I was planning on going anyway. We dropped the stuff off and continued on our way. She asked if I had seen a new development out that way and I had not. She said take the next left and we can ride by it anyway. We never saw the development although we did get close and saw a construction access road leading into it.
A little farther down the road we came to an intersection and I had a thought and turned back toward the east. I had remembered some gravel pits out that way from years ago and wondered about their status. What I was really thinking was maybe I could take the dirt bike out there some weekend for a little dusty and dirty action. Sure enough just a few miles and there was one abandoned on the left side of the road and not even fenced off. Also one on the right side of the road but it was still active and fenced off. We continued on down the road and another one appeared on the left side. It was also abandoned and had a gate across the entrance road. The problem was there was no fence and you could see where vehicles had been going around the gate. I turned the Wide Glide off the road and motored around the gate. A piece of cake as the road was well packed and was no problem for the big Hog. A little ways in and the options increased as trails went off in three directions. I turned to the right and after about ten yards the Harley virtually bottomed out down to the frame. I felt this happening and knew I had to keep it moving or we would never be able to pull it out of this situation. Milking the throttle I was able to cross this quagmire and get to some solid ground about twenty yards down the trail. The bike had been down to the frame with the fringed leather bags and the footpegs dragging in the dirt. It was not mud, more like quicksand and I had left a rut frame deep and fairly straight. I looked on all directions and there was no other way out except back the way we had come in. All the other trails lead to even more bad terrain.
I turned the bike around and backed up as far as I could to get a little running start at the quicksand on the way out. Feathering the clutch and milking the throttle I get a running start and ran along side the rut we had made coming into this mess. Again the old dirt bike skills came into play and we made it back to solid ground at the point were we had turned off into this quicksand. Whew, I had brought us both out of a mess and would not have to make excuses about why the Harley was not a good dirt bike. Looking back where we had been there were two frame deep ruts about two feet apart that looked like they may have been made by a four wheeled vehicle. I bet the next person who came into this spot wondered what in the heck had made those ruts. We putted back out to the pavement and I gunned the ol’ Hog and tossed most of the sand from the tires and other places underneath in a short spurt of speed.
I will say Carol"e" was a champ about the whole thing. She had never been off road before but she sat back there and held on and did nothing strange that may have upset what I was doing to get us in and out of this strange situation. All in all it was a good ride. I found a place to maybe take the dirt bike for some exercise and Carole got her first off road experience and I got to showoff some of my dirt bike skills by not letting the Harley bury itself in the quicksand. Maybe the fact that she was back there gave the bike just the amount of extra weight on the back tire that let it pull us through this mess without getting stuck. I guess we’ll never know because she has requested "no more off road rides on the Harley". That’s not really a bad thing as there is a dirt bike in the shed for just such excursions and who knows, she may learn to love the dirt as much as I do.
Happy Trails,
Trapper John
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