woodsrat56
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Finally got to ride today...
...and it felt great to be back throwing dirt!! My trials buddy Steve has a new-to-him Sherco and wanted to go put some time on it. Old buddy Dave, who does my web site, wanted to ride his "new" KTM E-XC 300 that he's had for two years but been unable to ride due to multiple eye surgeries so the three of us went to the Mallory Conservation Club just west of Mooresville.
This place is simply incredible. They own just under 400 acres of woods adjacent to IU's Bradford Woods and the old Boy Scout camp. It's been a conservation club since 1926 and is owned by a handful of ex-Mallory employees and their children.
I first rode there about five years ago on my Gas-Gas and at that time there weren't many developed trails so we just rode cross-country, easy to do on trials bikes. Since then the caretaker of the property has developed a network of quad trails which as I've found are an absolute hoot on a pit bike.
This property consists of rolling terrain with a number of intermittent streams as well as a major full-time creek running in and around it.
The caretaker came along on his Honda 400 quad so we made quite a motley crew with an enduro, a trials bike, his quad and my hot-rod fiddy. We had a ball!! The woods there have a very dense canopy so they remained cool even in the hot afternoon heat. It was a bit dusty as well but certainly not as bad as it might have been had the sun been able to get through the leaves.
Mostly we just jammed around on the quad trails but we also did a bit of riding down in the creeks where my fiddy actually did a pretty fair job of imitating a trials bike. The only problem I encountered was that with my Martinsville/woods gearing I ran out of top end fast on the more wide-open sections and kept wishing for another gear in the tranny. Another problem with trail riding my fiddy was the patches of deep sand down in the creek beds which swallowed up my little wheels and any horsepower the 88 could muster. Still, everyone was amazed at how fast it would go and that I could even come close to keeping up in such fast company.
Unfortunately on the way back to the truck at the end of the day I biffed while trying to bunny-hop over two logs about four feet apart while pinned in third gear, throwing me down hard on my right side. Since I wasn't wearing armor (hey, I'm only trail riding, right?) as I write this I'm one sore puppy.
Regardless of the poor ending it was a helluva day in the woods and it sure felt good to be riding again!!!
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Growing old is mandatory--growing up is optional!!!
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6/17/2007, 8:33 pm
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HITMAN812
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Re: Finally got to ride today...
sounds like a good time we need to get a group of minis and go sometime. Did it cost?
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6/17/2007, 10:41 pm
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woodsrat56
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Re: Finally got to ride today...
Steve, a former employee of P. R. Mallory and Co., invites me down there to ride. It's a pretty limited thing since it's also open to other ex-employees and their children who go there to hike, camp, fish, shoot, etc.
Absolutely the best place to playride on minis is the Hatfield-McCoy Trails in West Virginia, just over the Kentucky border. They have hundreds of miles of well-marked and maintained quad and single track trails. These trails are an absolute blast on the minis!! I went for the first time last year with a guy I met on Thumpertalk and we covered over 85 miles in a twelve hour ride. It's well worth the drive--you'll get more riding done in one day than in several seasons of moto!! For more info on this go to:
http://www.trailsheaven.com
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Growing old is mandatory--growing up is optional!!!
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6/18/2007, 4:24 pm
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