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Due to my cool-guy family friendly decision to skip out on a track day, I had built up some good will capital. Yeah, I already spent that. My buddy called me Saturday night to see if I wanted to go out on the dirt bikes Sunday morning. I checked with my wife and she was already planning to go to the gym and take the kids with her. Life is good.

The plan was to get there at 9am and be back to the truck around noon. We rode up to a local restaurant in a town called Crown King. It’s a popular pilgrimage for us city dwellers to start at Lake Pleasant and climb up to (guess) around 5-6k feet. Some of the ride is a little boring as its on graded dirt roads and some is rather technical rock climbing as you near the top.

We had a newb with us who hadn’t been in the dirt ever, but was a street rider. We took a few breaks to keep the poor SOB alive. It took about two hours to get to the top, an hour and a half to get lunch, and an hour to get back down.

Lunch was ridiculous. They had one waitress covering the whole place and we were there for an extra hour than necessary. Unfortunately, I was trying to keep somewhat of a schedule, so the two of us that arrived together split from the other two and rode back without taking breaks to save time.

Going down the mountain is always much faster. All of the embedded rocks that you avoided on the way up became jumps. Speed is your friend on the way down because momentum carries right over the obstacles (within reason).

The handling felt a little strange / loose about midway down the mountain. I check my front tire while I was rolling and all was well. I thought it was simply fatigue because I was getting a little worn out. Even though I consider myself in decent shape, motorcycle muscles are very specific and I’ve not been riding so much through the AZ summer heat.

We got to the bottom, and finally back to the truck. I guess I checked the wrong tire because the rear had no air in it. I have to give a golf clap to the 97-ply SOB to mount Cheng Shin knobby – no rim dings, no major handling issues, and the tire was still firmly attached to the bead.

I was pretty damn late getting back, compare to the ETA I gave before I left. 75% of it was due to the extended lunch that was forced upon us. Since we had no cell coverage in the desert, my wife was freaking out a little after radio silence and tardiness. But, all was well eventually.

I sit here Tuesday as if someone punched me in the back a bunch of times. Even though I had a kidney belt on, my back is still pretty sore. I was a very bumpy ride in total, that and I’m getting to be a puss in my old age. 

Even though I missed the track day that I was supposed to attend, I still managed to get out on two wheels. It was a nice ride with a good group a fellas. I did well for my ability and didn’t crash or tip over. Give it time though, as the season is just getting started.