Building Character…

Yesterday I went on the Northumberland Spring Trail Ride, and made it home unscathed, for the most part. It was 5 degrees when I left the apartment at 6am, and I had to stop to warm my hands on the way there since it got to the point I couldn’t move my fingers. Other than the cold and forgetting my sunglasses (riding the whole way into the rising sun) the trip out was easy.

There were way more bikes there than I had ever seen before before: almost all green-plate (dirt-only) though I did see some street-legal models as well. Lots of KTMs, and lots of 2-strokes! I arrived around 8:30am, and after meeting up with a few guys I had ridden with before we were on our way by about 10am.

The trails were for the most part well marked with green/orange/pink arrows, and I managed to follow Tony the whole day, and also Chris after lunch. Our entire “group” was around 7 people, but we seemed to have lost track of each other fairly early on in the event 🙂 . After +-60 KM everyone met up for lunch:

Lunch was excellent: subs, lots of water and juices to drink, and cookies for dessert! But here’s where I started to realize I may have a problem. I had never really tested the range of my bike to determine just how far I could ride it… so I did some quick calculations based on prior rides and determined I could run the entire route and still make it to the gas station. Because I wasn’t sure, Chris offered me his extra gas at lunch for an extra margin of safety.

With that taken care of Chris, Tony and I finished off the rest of the course together: including some “pink” (more difficult) sections that didn’t seem any harder than the rest of the course, but had some interesting hill climbs to spice things up: it was the best riding of the day! Then I repacked my things, put in my earplugs, said my goodbyes and started back home: tired but glad to be heading back to Toronto.

Then the “character building” began. Before leaving I took another look at my tank, and decided I had “lots of gas” to make it back to where the main road hit highway 115, where there were 3 gas stations nearby, including a Sunoco that sells the 94 octane gas I normally fill up with. So I confidently rode past the first and only gas station between the trail ride and the 115.

You can guess where this is going.

About 90% of my way to the 115 the bike sputtered and stalled. Well, now I knew how far I could get on the main tank, so I switched to reserve and pushed on: a bit less sure about may range calculations, but looking at the GPS I knew I was almost there.

A couple hundred feet from the onramp to highway 115 the bike stalled for the second and last time: I literally coasted up to the onramp of the highway, out of gas. Crap. What to do now? Well, the GPS showed about 1.5 roads/overpasses North of me was a Petro Canada. Salvation! And the GPS screen made it look so close: the dot for the gas station was so close to the dot for where I currently was!

I must have had the GPS zoomed out pretty damn far to get that idea. It took me just under 1.5 hours to walk to that station in my offroad boots (which aren’t exactly HushPuppies), buy a $8 jerrycan that only held $6.50 in gas, and walk back. Here you can see where I ended up: the onramp in the background, and my shiny new jerrycan in front:

After all that walking the growl when the bike started back up was the sweetest sound I’d ever heard! The rest of the ride home was tiring, but uneventful. I slept well that night.

In all I had a fantastic day riding: I’m learning to be more confident on the bike, which is making it less tiring to ride, and also more fun. Running out of gas was a stupid mistake, one that I’m highly motivated not to make again.

At least I better not: there’s another club ride next weekend!