Watagan’s Ride 14 March

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March 14, 2010 at 10:42 am #98180

katrina ratcliff
Member

Well I turned up at the commencement point at 8am for an 8.30am start and found I was the first to arrive. A quick thought crossed my mind that maybe the weather turned them away and I could head back home, jump back into bed and help Adrian get over his flu with a sweaty experience…… well 5min later that was a distant memory. The two cars I passed on the F3 doing 120km were Amby/Ben and the good looking couple Darren & Scotty. Merlot snuck in and Paul on his Yamaha 125 made a quiet entry.

Whilst the boy’s were getting ready I was worried that here I was organising a ride but had NO idea where we were going…. So I bought along my 6 topographical maps and had them layed out in the back to my Subaru for the boys to work out… Gave them the destination of Milfield (the famous work hamburger joint (thanks to Troy’s experience from last time))

Merlot did the honours in walking us through the corner man system and had the trusty jacket to go with it. Thanks Merlot for taking on that role. Ben (Amby other half) read the maps…. NOT…. And lead us on a 90km trek to Milfield….. I think he found a large portion of single trails to get us there. I lost count on the number of times I went down. Made sure I only did this either going up or down hills and also averaged the falls on my left and right side..… mmm come to think about it I think I decided I needed a mud bath on couple of occasions as well. Even winded my self on one occasion that meant a grunt was the only response I was capable of doing.

Amby was fantastic through the single trails and left me for dead…. I so need to pick up my pace. The boys were having fun watching us girls crap our pants hitting some of the slippery hills…. I still blame my tyres for my poor experience but as Adrian said tonight if I falling off I need to work on picking the right line…. its not my tyres.

We missed the turn off to Milfield by about 10km… should never discount the private road sign. We rode back. Once I saw that bridge we needed to cross the memory of my last ride with Wikbemer started to haunt me…. Oh no…. that dreaded hill that goes and goes and keeps going. I remember my distant experience where Boulder was screaming at me to stay left. I did. This time I made it 80% way up … better than last time. So once I dropped it and the boys got the bike up. I must have been in some zone because a few f%%k words came out and it wasn’t going to beat me. It didn’t. Yee ha.. Got to the top myself.

Guys should know never to ask a girl how far it is to go when they are worried about their fuel…. I think when I kept responding only a few more km to go … he decided not to me ask anymore. After a 30min break for Paul to fix his 125 – water got into his “ thingy” and the “carby” need something (need TB to translate) , it meant Amby and I could get our breath and have a girlie chat.

We got to Milfield but we didn’t do the special test as I was too stuffed to explain it. We lunched/fuelled up. Darren, Scotty and Paul enjoyed the works burger experience. I must admit they were more graceful in the way they ate it compared to Troy.

Amby and I tried hard to explain to the boys that we were stuffed and wanted to easy way home. That didn’t work. We headed off and got the boys to experience the Flat Top Rock lookout. That was the easy bit then next 30km was slogging it out in deep mud holes and hills etc. Ben took the sweep role and on many occasions had to help me pick up my bike after another wipe out. Merlot worked out that I was far game for a good “happy snap” so made sure he was in the right spot at the right time. Hope Merlot has trouble uploading photo’s or that his camera goes faulty. I got my own back when Merlot was dancing around trying to get the leeches off him whilst waiting for that photo opportunity.

We stopped at the Pines Camping spot and Paul, Merlot, Amby and myself could smell home and the bikes started to go that way. The others decided they needed to get dirtier. We got back and the heavens opened up for the first time today. What great timing. Merlot came to the rescue and he had two girlies under his truck canopy.

Amby helped me get the bike on my trailer…. Girl power. Merlot was ready again with the camera if we screwed up. Sorry Merlot to disappoint you. I felt sorry for Paul having to ride back to Rathmines after 120km of hard slog. The boys got back safely and the pack up process commenced.

Great day out and OBT proved again what a wonderful forum it is that it brings like minded people together to have fun. I look forward to riding together soon. I need 5 days at work to get myself ready for next time.

March 14, 2010 at 10:54 am #173272

Greg
Member

Kat that’s an awesome report. I just posted up an update for the bike clinic where we will cover the water in the “carby thingy” and how to change a flat tyre and blah blah. Now back to your report

Tyres are very important but even the best tyres struggle on the worst line, practice makes perfect, the most important thing is you all had a great time and it sounds like you all did

TB

March 14, 2010 at 11:56 am #173287

Dean
Member

Great report Kat Good to see you guys getting out their and having fun,conditions in the Wato’s are near enough close to perfect at the moment. BTW is Merlot still on the Gasgas 300?

Ollie

March 14, 2010 at 9:23 pm #173290

katrina ratcliff
Member

Hi Ollie,

You must be warped. Is “good conditions” where there are lots of mud holes and slippery hills!! Man I need to reset my dictionary.

Yes Merlot was on the Gasgas but us girls kept him in 2nd gear for most of the day

March 14, 2010 at 9:36 pm #173306

Mal
Member

Good report Katgirl.

Can’t wait for the photos.

March 14, 2010 at 10:27 pm #173273

Ben
Member

Hey Katgirl

Great report on a fantastic ride hope the singles wernt to hard it was my first time down there at least we knew where we were going on the way home.
You did a awsome job on the hills and a few of those mud baths were quite deep.

A big thanks to Merlot he was a great encouragement to Amby she loves the single tracks.

Ontherun did a fantastic job getting his DT through with the proplems with the “Carby thingy” and road side repairs well done.

Thanks for organising a great ride Kat

Cheers

Benjjy

March 14, 2010 at 11:23 pm #173310

Mick D
Member

Great report there Katgirl :laugh: “Practise makes perfect” is the old adage, although I have had a heap of practise and am far from perfect, when it comes to picking lines up hills.Normally the XR650 picks it’s own lines generally and I just hang on. The more you ride the easier it seems to become.
Congrats on organising a ride, that is what OBT is here for. The ride is only a small portion of the big picture though, the cameraderie that accompanies a group ride is the best bit by far, in my opinion.
Cheers
Mick

March 14, 2010 at 11:30 pm #173274

Amber
Member

Hey Katgirl,

Thanks heaps for organising the ride. It was awesome to meet you and you can seriously ride! Especially on the fire trails you fly along and kept up there with the boys all day and they were loving it.

When I heard we were doing a run from Martinsville to Millfield I wasn’t sure what to expect but what a superb ride with a great crew of people with everything imaginable.

The ‘Girls Ride’ turned into 121KM run (8 hour ride) ha ha ha ha ha ha with Merlot telling me at one stage ‘he wanted to find a nice hole to crawl into’. That was so funny as at this stage I felt like a freight train had run over me and this was at the Flat Top rock look out on the way home but it was so worth it as we all had a superb ride.

I had lots of fun mud slides with Merlot always there to lend a helping hand and always full of encouragement, we had some tricky down hills and I got some awesome pointers from both Darren and Merlot about seat positioning and how to tackle these runs and when to break which was almost like turning a light switch on in my head as it worked a treat.

The conditions varied all day from smooth dirt tracks to beautiful hills that climbed on and on back to tight tracks and then into sweet runs and just as I thought we were at the top of some of the climbs I noticed it kept going, its funny but on these hills once or twice Kat and I seemed to come off at the same spot, hee hee but we always managed to get back on and master our way up the hill, but my favourite part of the day was always the single tracks and some were really tight!

The way they meandered in and out of the trees,down the hill and up the hill,through the mud ditches then back on the gas to get through the swamp land back into weaving we all had such a great time.

There was one section on private road I have nicknamed ‘slippery log mud surprise’ as just as you came out of a corner there would be lovely logs of various shapes and sizes lying across a mud water hole that you would land in that would take you completely by surprise. Merlot and I had lots of laughs at this point as we were getting quite muddy (Melot from helping me out of the mud!)

Thanks heaps to Ben, Darren, Paul and Scotty as they were always there with encouragement in the tough spots, getting off their bikes and screaming for us to get on the gas to get up a hill or go flying into and through a deep deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep water mud pit

By the end of the day we were all covered with mud, grinning from ear to ear with lots of funny stories.

March 15, 2010 at 8:13 am #173275

russell culley
Member

tried to load all fotos at once will see how it goes

March 15, 2010 at 8:13 am #173276

Dwayne O
Member

WELL DONE KATGIRL,,,

Awsome report, and a big effort from you girls on the ride by the sounds of it
Sorry I couldn`t get out for that one, sounds like a ripper of a day.

Maybe we should chase up some OBT discounts from the Millfield Store for our meals :laugh: we frequent there quite a lot lately Great little stopover it is too

Look forward to the next one then

March 15, 2010 at 8:18 am #173277

russell culley
Member

had some issues with my gasser and no ride fitness so as soon as the motor was back together i looked for a shakedown ride and saw kats ride…turned up at the meet to find 3 quicks and 2 girls and paul and i somewhere in between…corner man system gave us all a good time despite the differece in skill levels…

March 15, 2010 at 8:25 am #173278

russell culley
Member

as i was the only one with a vest kat made me sweep….i had a great time …some of the early trails were uite challenging and the two girls did it in style….sure there were lots of spills due to very slippery trails but neither girl asked anyone else to ride her bike out…they always got back on and did it themselves..go girls

March 15, 2010 at 8:29 am #173279

russell culley
Member

another standout on the day was paul…he wrung the crap out of a dt175? and the only thing slowing him up was a useless back tyre…but when he dnf’d a hill he went back down and had another go…great stuff

paul

ben

kat

ben

kat

ambie

Puddle

Merlot

Dunno

ambie and group

pauls carb thingie

pauls thingie

lost?

paul looks for his thingie

Scott

you want me to go down there? yeah right

merlots bike in background has no sidestand sohd to be laid down everystop

katgirl gets close up and personal with the slippery dowhill

now where were we going again?

March 15, 2010 at 9:03 am #173280

Dean
Member

great Photies there Russ! Looks like perfect conditions for a Rekluse clutch

Ollie

March 15, 2010 at 9:40 am #173281

Paul Mewing
Member

Thanks for the day Kat I had an absolute ball.

Definitely some great motivation to lose a bit of weight and increase my fitness (being heavier then your ride is a little sad and hard work for the poor bike :laugh: )

The Water in “the thingy” started a tragic sequence of events but at least it let me have fun and not self destruct during the ride . With an ominous engine rattle just a few ks from home followed by the engine giving up the ghost leaving me a three km push back home in the poring rain. I was too stuffed to figure out what went wrong and parked it up. But just finished dissecting Danielle the DT tonight :angry: .

In short during one of the puddle runs about 30 kms into our ride…

.. From memory it was soooo deep I had to hold my breath on the way through to prevent drowning…..well that how I like to remember it anyway.

The carby sucked a gutful of water and mud through a poor fitting rubber boot (thanks yamaha!). This caused increased resistance on the slide that caused the slide to eventually stick open. This happened while poor old 300flip was ridding it, giving me a blast on the KTM 300 (a really cool ride). Hence the stop and quick carby clean. Unkown at the time, this resistance had caused a spastic plastic cam in the accelerator cable splitter to fall out of alignmnet. This cam effects the amount of cable pull on the carb slide and the oil injection unit.

Too much throttle meaning I had to do most of the ride with a bike that wouldn’t rev below 7000rpm (this kept it interesting especially on the fast slippery downhills)and at the same time was not actuating the oil injection. No oil results in no more DT. Funny how we were talking on the ride how reliable the old DT oil injection is.

Any how, I stripped and cleaned out the carb (its always more fun working on your bike naked… no I didn’t strip naked I stripped the carby), sorted the spastic plactic cam so it never moves again and ripped off the barrel. The rings had slowly desintergrated without causing any severe damage to the bore or other bits. Looks like she was running on just not enough oil rather than none at all.

I threw in a spare set of rings I bought when I bought the bike and she starts up and runs fine. Although there is enough compression there is still too much excess play resulting in a noisy top end so it will be a rebore and oversize piston and rings and she will be as good as new.

Sorry Flip and Merlot. Thats it for two bangers for me. Looks like I will be in the market for a thumper…. Should never have sold the XRR! if I knew Honda was going to stop making the best bike in the world I would have hung on to her.

There will be a 2006 DT175 with a fresh top end and only 4500kms on the clock up for sale for the next person wanting to start off easy and discover the great world of trails.

Thanks for all your support on the day guys. It was a great welcoming and supportive atmosphere that I want to be part of again. No one laughed (at least not to my face) about my road helmet and work boots and never made me feel out of place. 😆

Hope to ride with you guys again soon.

and Merlot…next time in the area don’t forget to give the VTR a spin.
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