Freethebeast > Freethebeast's Blog Posts > Turkey Run - Noble Woods 10 August 2008

If its anything like the trails down here , you are going to get muddy. Picking up another set of TKCs today.

Went over to the turkey run this morning. It started off great. Although the parking lot seemed to be full of orange, I was not detered being the single BMW there - let alone a 650. At tech inspection the guy told me to avoid the hero section. In hind sight, I should have taken his advice. We headed off to the trails. There were 6 or 7 of us in our group. Must have been about 100 bikes in total. Not long into the ride, Mark took a spill in one of the many puddles. It swamped his KTM 250. The bike just refused to start after a lot of work trying to dry it out. After about a half hour of working on Mark's bike, we decided it was dead. He was going to push it out to the road and get it back to his van. Richard, Ilya, and I pushed on. The rest of the guys had already gone ahead. After a short time, we were given a choice...hero section or by-pass. Who are we to by-pass a challenge? So, we head into the hero section. It started out well enough...then got kind of soupy..and kind of rooty...and then some rocks and slopes. We were going alright for a while, until I bottomed out on a large rock that bent back my shift lever. I (very slowly) tried to right it, but it quickly snapped off. Of course, I had no spare lever with me. How many times in the last couple of weeks had I thought of getting a spare gear lever? Yeah...well, I was now stuck in 1st gear. We motored on for another few miles continuing this hero section. It was really a lot of fun. Up until the moment when I got the bike stuck in a very deep puddle. At this time, the chain decided to come off the rear sprocket. Ilya and I hauled the X Challenge out of the puddle so that we could better work on the the chain. Ilya held the chain on the bottom of the sprocket with a branch while I very slowly let out the clutch lever. It snapped back into place. I had drive again! Well, after this, Richard and I got to the next get-out point to head back to the parking area. I used vise grips to put the transmission in 3 or 4 gear (wasn't really sure) and got it back to our start point and the truck. It was a great day. Full of mud and challenges. Too bad it was shortened by mishaps. I'll be ordering a couple spare gear levers on Monday! Pictures: http://freethebeast.smugmug.com/gallery/5667207_6Wu5U#348908177_4CFtd

Oh, by the way, the 13 tooth sprocket worked out great! It provides a LOT more low speed control. It really helped out in the deep puddles and on the single track trails.

Ack!!! I ended up bailing on this ride due to reports from Saturday that had it pegged as a mudbog. Some guys were saying it took them hours just to make it a few miles. If I had known you were there, I'd have tried a little harder to make the run. Maybe we'll have to hook up for the Ammonoosuc Turkey Run?

Great job at the Turkey Run, Andrew...I was on my 300EXC, and can't imagine having done it on a 650...very impressive! Hope you make it to Tunisia...I don't know anyone with more drive, focus, and determination than you...oh yeah, you have some pretty good bike handling skills too! Jeff