I spent yesterday out at the Ganny again, at an event organized by my friend BJ. He had recently finished rebuilding his ATC (i.e. three-wheeler, aka “trike”) and organized a ride for other ATC owners (and whoever else wanted to come, bikes and quads too!).
I showed up around 10am, and many people were already there: machines of all shapes and sizes:
Just before we were ready to roll out, a dirtbike rider pulled up and asked if somebody could help pull one of his friends out of the forest. Apparently the bike couldn’t move under its own power. So we delayed the main start of the ride while one of the quads in our group went to find the broken bike… while the rest of us went to a local lookout and back. There were already a few other people at the lookout when we arrived, so parking became an issue. But we still wanted to get a picture of the ATC riders and their machines.
BJs ride wanted to roll down the hill, so arranging the machines became a question of: “How many ATC riders does it take to push a trike backwards up a hill?”…
…while others supervised (and laughed at the pushers 🙂 )…
…until finally we got 5 in a row. BJ (the organizer) is out front in his white jersey (and left foot strategically placed to keep his ATC from rolling)… though even after taking 4 pictures I couldn’t get everyone looking in the right direction 🙂
From there we looped back to the start point to wait for the rescue team on the quad to come back…
…and a few minutes later they rolled in, bike in tow:
From there we headed out again and looped through the trails to some dirt hillclimbs… on to the local “Sand Hill”…
…and finally on the “The Falls” (that I forgot to take pictures of this time: though you can see some of the parking issues we ran into)
And finally back to the parking lot for lunch. It seemed everyone brought some food for themselves… but it didn’t take long before Ross and Shannon’s BBQ became the local hotspot (for hot dogs!).
There was also time for some ad-hoc maintenance: such as when White Rat alternated between trying to fix his ride…
…and trying to burn it to the ground 🙂
We also some more horses come through. We had seen horses a few times that day: but all we had to do was pull to the side of the trails with engines off and let them pass. Ganaraska is a multi-use forest: so we always went out of our way to be “the good guys” and put a friendly face on the sport. And the horse riders were without exception welcoming, chatty, and appreciative that we gave their horses the respect they deserved.
Also, over lunch we eventually saw some members we lost along the way pull in. Although we had the “when you get to a corner, wait for the guy behind you” system in place… it sounds like we crossed paths (literally) with another group of riders at some point… and part of group ended up following them instead. I know I’ve accidentally done that before… when you’re riding with a new group of people it’s hard to recognize if others are in “your group” or not.
I had a blast, and in the end we didn’t have any major breakdowns or other problems. I did take some video with my camera and helmetcam… but I don’t know how to edit or post it yet… some may eventually make it to YouTube. Special thanks to BJ (aka “Xhumeka”) for organizing the event: here he is again on his new ride:
P.S: someone let him know that somebody welded a piece of scrap metal to the back of his ATC when he wasn’t looking 🙂
EDIT: !!! There’s many more pictures and video clips available in the main thread about this ride on 3wheelerworldforums.com !!!