by cRAsH August 23, 2001
I agreed...but...what was I thinking? Well, at that point I had the Pyg, and the prospect of bashing it some more was no biggie (as some of you know) but, since it was an invitation-only, pre-paid, no-refund affair, this would have to require some commitment. Yikes. I don't do that so good.
I rarely pre-register for any event, because my plans change too
much and to try to plan too far ahead for me is typically an excercise in
futility. I've learned not to fight it, and those who know me well put up with
it. This was different. In order to go to this thing, and not embarass ourselves
or wreck our bikes, we needed to actually plan. We needed knobbies for sure. JL
took the reigns on that, making calls and arranging for the tires as well as
lining up the hotel room for the first night. Once I wrecked the Pyg,
I got my new bike, Juan Motime, and began to think it might be possible. I had
to hustle to get the bike ready, but if we could swallow the thought of
In rapid succession I:
With the Frankenbike in the back, and the trailer hooked up, I headed to Ess Eff to pick up
JL and head east.
Met some nice fellas who gave us a mini rundown of the Big Dog. It went like
this:
Now, I had been dealing with that dreaded feeling that perhaps this event was
over-hyped, and that there was a bunch of effort and money expended on our part
that may have been for naught. None of this info helped me feel any better - but
dammit, we were there. We WOULD have fun, no matter what.
Still unsure what we had gotten ourselves into, we crashed hard with dreams of
impossible passes and burned out clutches.
|
It started at the 49er Rally: Jean Luc decided we needed to do the Big Dog ride
just to continue our Quixotic quest of proving the oilhead was a formidible
if not all that practical off-road bike.
the Dawg
was looking like a no-go. I didn't relish the thought of taking a brand-spanking-
new 1150 to the BD, it seemed so... foolish. But, we had committed to this
thing, and after all - I had the Pyg for spare parts.
We bombed out 80 to 70 to Glenwood Springs in just
over 20 hours - swapping driving duties as needed. As we arrived, the first of
several PITA obstacles presented itself. Although the start point was Glenwood
Springs, the finishing 2 days would be 130 miles away in Fairplay. WTF? There
was a trailer going to Fairplay to haul stuff, but what about the truck and
trailer? We were too tired to continue on to Fairplay, unload the bikes and gear
and ride back to Glenwood Springs. After much consternation and cussing about
the stupidity of it all, we decided to leave the truck on a sidestreet in GS,
and deal with coming back on Sunday. Luckily, Bob Cunningham had his truck in
Fairplay already, and offered to carry our stuff back to the truck on Sunday.
Cool. Nice guy. The tension in the parking lot was palpable. Guys were doing
their last minute preps. , and there was a lot of bike gawking going on. The 2
oilheads with full knobbies and stripped down to the skivvies were getting a lot
of notice. Yeah, we came to play. Hard. 
So, we had no idea where the "route" was going, and after discussing the options
decided at the last minute to head out with the hard-core group. The rest of the
groups seemed to be way too easy for us, and we wanted to see what the best of
the best would do. The instructions were pretty clear - we were to show up ready
to ride, full of gas. So, the first place the group heads to is a gas station.
Someone forgot to fill up. Then, we promptly got lost, and waited while the
leader asked a local where the road was. Great. The leader gets lost before we
even get a mile down the road.
About 15 bikes, only 2 oilheads. Yeah, good numbers.