Thursday, April 17, 2008

I'm a neophyte camper but here's a few tricks anyone can use.

I'm not much of a camper. In fact, I haven't camped at all since about 1982 or so. I'm just not into it, at least not as a lifestyle thing. My compulsion about hygiene and taking showers kinda keeps me in hotel rooms.

But with gas prices climbing to European levels, and the mileage in my old Dodge truck hovering just under the 10mpg mark, I can no longer afford to be so picky. If I'm going to make any vintage races this year I'm going to have to be able to camp at least one night because I just can't afford gas plus a hotel in my race budget. Over the winter I began collecting a little camping gear with the idea that I would camp all weekend at the 6th Annual Diamond Don's Riverport AHRMA National. What you see here is a picture of my campsite.

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Monday, April 14, 2008

Wearing the Leatt

As noted the other day, I spent last weekend at the Diamond Don's Riverport AHRMA national. What a mudfest! I'd like to say that I had a great race and finished in the top three in my class, but that was not to be. I was running well in the first moto of Sportsman 250 Novice when I stalled the bike in a corner. Getting restarted cost me several positions and I ended the moto in 6th. When I went to the line for the 2nd moto the bike died in staging, re-fired after 20-30 kicks, and died on me about 2/3 of the way into the first lap leaving me to push it home. So that didn't go all that well.

But even with that I still put in about 10 good laps wearing the Leatt brace for the first time. I mean it was the very first time, I had not even fitted it onto my neck prior to doing my first lap of practice at DD's.

So, how did it feel? It felt like nothing, really. I didn't even notice it was there. Previously I wore a rather bulky set of hockey-style shoulder pads. These pads offer great protection if you're a hockey player, and they offer good body protection. But the giant shoulder cups always interfered with my head movement, really limiting my ability for left-right rotation. It was always really annoying.

With the Leatt I had absolutely no interference with normal head movement. It was actually a great improvement over the hockey pads. In fact, the Leatt was less restrictive in head movement than even the CE-approved shoulder armor in my street riding jackets. My big complaint about those jackets is just that - I can't rotate my head enough to safely see over my shoulder when I need to.

Given that the Leatt was way less restrictive than any of my previous riding gear I guess it's small wonder that I didn't notice it at all. I felt more comfortable on the bike than I have in a long time. The downside, of course, is that I have less protection for the shoulders. I did wear a smaller, modern chest protector from EVS, and I have an RXR Protect flak jacket-style protector to try. But neither does much for the shoulder area.

Still, that's a trade-off I will make for better neck protection, less restriction, and raising my survivability ratio in the event of a major header.

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Diamond Don's Report

Just a brief update since I haven't posted here in a while. I just got back from a week-long trip to Texas where, with a good deal of help from Texan John Putkey, I race-prepped my CZ 250 - the Mean Lady - and competed in my first VMX since 2006. I had a great time. The bike has some teething problems and seems to need some ignition work, but when it ran, it ran great and the handling was excellent in the mud. More on this event to follow in the next few days.

The other thing that's happening is I'm switching the Muddy Waters site to a new web system - WordPress - so I've been holding off on adding new material til the new site is ready. The domain and everything will be the same, just the system behind the site will change. I think this will make it easier for users and will let me give comments a little more exposure. Please bear with the slow updates while I get the new site online.

Sunday, March 16, 2008

Fairytales and Myths About Modern Racing

I just saw a boisterous rebuttal of an earlier article – The Long-term Effects of Production-based Racing – over on the TMSuzuki Yahoo! group. I can't post it here because I don't have permission but I hope the author will stop by and do it himself. The author takes great exception to my assertion that a current race-tuned 4-stroke is more complex and costly to maintain than a comparable two-stroke, and my assertion that the complexity and ongoing cost of the modern 4-stroke is not appealing to a significant portion of 30+, 40+, and 50+ riders.

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Saturday, March 15, 2008

Know Your Enemy - PEER's Off Road Wreckreation

I've just come across a scary group of virulent, anti-off road activists whose salaries we pay, whose jobs depend on our taxes, whose sole purpose in life seems to be stopping normal, hard-working taxpayers from using public lands. Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) is a great example of why we need, more than ever, to become involved in the fight to keep our public lands open. The environmental wackos have infiltrated our government at all levels (mostly because they can't do anything productive) and have increasingly rigged the system in their favor.

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