Author Archives: Mike

Today my friend BJ organized a trip back out to Ganaraska for the dualsport guys on the ODSC and GTAM websites. The forecast mentioned a decent chance of rain, but we were hopeful things would stay dry while we were out and about. We were wrong 🙂

Not too many pictures today, just the normal ones of the crew at the parking lot:

…the Lookout…

…and the TrailTours guys we seem to see often.

A light rain started when we were unloading the bikes… but by the time we had made it through the first few sections of single track it was coming down harder. And not long after getting to Thorpe Hill it started to really get us wet.

The damp and miserable weather cut the day short, though it was starting to look better when BJ and I headed out. Not only did the rain cut down on the trails we rode, but it played havoc with visibility. The overcast skies made the trails dark, goggles were misty and covered with water blurring the trails, and those with glasses under their goggles had them fog up almost immediately after putting them on. I was “using the force” to ride half of the time… hoping I wouldn’t hit a stray stump, root, or tree and fall off. Some were not so lucky 🙂 :

It also fogged up the internals of my helmet cam… causing things to come out at a much lower quality than usual. Still, I did get some footage of the first couple trails and our runs at Thorpe Hill. I got skunked: after about 3 tries I never made it up, bah! I did make it up the sand hill later… but by that time I had abandoned my goggles and the camera to see where I was going (so no pics). My ego was only mildly bruised… since many others didn’t make all the hillclimbs either:

Here’s a few minutes of YouTube footage from the day: note I screwed up somewhere editing it… and sounds are 1-2 seconds behind when they actually occurred… oops… figure that one out later:

Thanks to BJ for the invite, organization and spot on his trailer. Met a few new people today and hope to ride with them again! (and lots of WRs in the group today, go Yamaha! 🙂 )

Today BJ found room for me on his trailer, and we drove up to Barrie to visit his old friend Curtis…and to meet a new friend from the ODSC site, named Ross. The idea was to roam the trails around Barrie then stop for a BBQ lunch at Curtis’s house. Ross lead most of the day and didn’t disappoint!

Here we are loading up…

And here’s the gang unloading: Ross is on the left with his Honda CRF 250X, BJ is on the right in the white top, and Curtis is in the black, with a very nice Suzuki DRZ400SM (with the stock street tires still on it)!

Better look at Curtis’s bike…

Better look at Ross’s bike…

Amazingly Curtis rode very well on his street tires, even through mud puddles and sand… with one minor get-off:

Our first rest stop was atop a cliff overlooking a river:

The next was after some tighter trails, when we decided what the plans were for lunch…

…and it just so happened when we stopped at the intersection we had people walking their dogs coming from 2 different directions… and soon we were overrun! Release the hounds!

After a few more trails Curtis took off to warm up the grill, and we stopped to get our bearings:

The last pictures I took were at a tiny oval track under some power lines, where BJ got bit by a soft sandy corner..

…and where we stopped to film Ross taking a “leisurely” ride down the trail:

Actually… lets take a better look at that one. Ye-haw! 🙂

And, finally, we get to the title of this post. After a day of staying upright, not falling over once… at the last intersection before Curtis’s house I ran into Ross, yikes! Totally my fault! As we were approaching the intersection we had to switch lanes to the left to go through, and just as we were coming up on it the light turned yellow. Seeing that BJ went through… I did a shoulder-check to my left to lane change, and when I looked forward again Ross had decided to stop for the light… I could see him hard on the brakes and the back locked up. I managed to grab a handful of brakes as well, and started to turn to the left of him… but was still moving too fast and not far enough over…. the right side of my bike hit his left rear and pushed him a few feet forward… then I fell over. I picked up my bike (and my pride), sat with Ross through the red light… made sure he was OK… and after the light turned green 30 seconds later we were back in Curtis’s driveway.

Here’s his plate and mount at the beginning of the ride…

…and here it is again after I plowed into him.

Looking back on it… I should have tried to stop for that yellow, instead of trying to switch lanes to keep up with everyone. BJ would have waited for us, and I would have kept my eyes forward… with plenty of time to see Ross slowing down… time to stop safely… and I wouldn’t be sitting here feeling like shit. Ross, if you’re reading this… I’m really sorry I hit you. I can’t apologize enough.

By the time we got back, Curtis had started his massive grill and had burgers and pop for everyone. Then it was time to load up and head home. Thanks Curtis for your tasty meat and hospitality! (um, that came out wrong).

Here’s a video of the ride:

First stab at YouTube videos: footage from the helmetcam… audio converted in MediaCoder… then chopped to bits in Sony Vegas video editor to make each clip fit under YouTubes 10-minute limit:

Part 1 – Trip to the Lookout and back, and some time at the Sand Hill

Part 2 – Trip to the Falls and back

My batteries ran out just after lunch… hopefully by the time I go out again my second battery will have arrived in the mail!

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 !!!

Between a skin rash and a bum knee… I hadn’t been out on either bike for a few weeks. Today I made the rounds of Ganaraska again, and the day started like any other…

Falling over on some slick trails (it had rained constantly the day before)… bit too much gas turning to go up a short hill had the back end come around and point me into the bush: tossing me off..

Stopped at the Forest Center to buy a new map. But there were lots of buildings… not sure which one was open (if any) on a Sunday… and didn’t feel like walking all over the place with motocross boots… so left empty handed…

Had lunch at the chip truck again. This is becoming a habit when I go alone: $5 for lunch is easier than carrying food with me, as my CamelBak is pretty much full with water, first aid kit, and extra gloves/batteries…

Then came the “interesting” part. After lunch I was starting to get tired, so I decided to only go out for another hour, on some trails I had never been down before. There’s residential land surrounding Ganaraska, but there are trails/roads that loop around the forbidden sections, and I wanted to poke around the edge of some of the closed off sections.

So off I went… nice trails that didn’t look used as much as those in the core of the park… with more small trees/logs crossing them, since they weren’t as well maintained. I came across one trail that was starting to grow in, and at one point it had a couple small 2″ logs across the trail that grass had start to grow around. When I came to them, I should have realized they were part of a barrier….but I was moving along at a good pace and I had gone over lots of small fallen logs…

…so I rolled right over them… and kept riding. No big deal.

About 10 seconds farther down the trail, it had really started to grow in, and 1-foot tall grass and weeds had grown over the tracks. Figuring I had wandered onto private property I turned around and drove back the way I came.

So, now I’m coming back to the pile of logs, and it dawns on me that it’s not just some fallen trees… somebody had put the logs there. But it was easy enough crossing them the first time… so I snuck up on them then gave it a bit of gas so I could roll up and over them…

…and as I crossed them I felt a sharp pull downwards on my boot, then before I can realize was was happening I was yanked down to the right, and thrown to the ground with the bike on top of me. What the hell?

Laying there my right leg pinned under the bike… I realized I was OK, I didn’t even twist my knee… and my foot didn’t hurt at all. But I couldn’t free myself. Since I was already on the ground anyways, I peeked under the bike, and could see what happened. On my way back over my right boot had looped through a section of barbed wire, and as I moved forward over it, it pulled my boot down into the peg, then continued to drag the rest of the bike over. So I still had a loop of barbed wire across the front of my ankle, keeping me from getting my foot out.

After some wiggling around, I got my foot most of the way out, and managed to push the bike back upright. Then I left it on the sidestand for a second to figure out what I did wrong.

The overgrown grass around the logs had hidden the flattened remains of an old barbed-wire fence. It looks like someone pushed the fence to the ground, then threw some log over it to keep it from popping back up again. The other parts of the fence were still hidden in the grass, but now that I had dragged a good chunk of it out into the open it was easy enough to see.

Two sections had also wrapped around my back tire… so if my foot hadn’t dragged me over I would have come to an abrupt stop shortly anyways…

In some ways I was lucky: that wire could have wrapped into my chain and sprockets, and the way that it was stuck between the knobs in the rear tire it also could have given me a flat. I was VERY luck to be wearing good boots: the barbed wire wrapped across my ankle hard enough to drag me and a moving 300lb dirtbike to the ground, but my foot was fine. It also protected my ankle from the weight of the bike as I had to wiggle around under it to free myself.

I bought some good boots: Gaerne SG-10’s, when I decided to ride off-road… and they’re worth every penny. They had already protected me from stumps, rocks, and other small crashes… but they really saved my ass today. Some people ride around with street shoes, even regular runners… can you imagine how much worse this could have been?

If you’re going to ride a dirtbike, buy good boots!