Moab I
5 days off so what do you do? Well, a few of us ADVriders, decided to take a trip to Moab. I headed out from Santa Fe on Wed. It was a late start, as I had spent zero time getting ready before that day. There are times when I’m just super at procrastinating. As a result of my last minute packing I left my air mattress, extra blankets, inflator and tennis shoes at the house. It could have been worse, I was still operating under the impression that I was going to be crashing in Carol’s trailer, but it wasn’t a 100 percent sure, but that’s what I’m going to blame it on.
The members of the group that headed out before me managed to score a whole cul-de-sac at Sand Flats for all of us. They have some great campsites, it is close to town, yet it has a number of trails that are all around it. I’m planning on going back there.
It was a great night sitting around the fire listening to the stories about the rides they had done for the past 2 days. I was told the plan for Thursday was to ride the White Rim Trail. That meant a really long day, I wasn’t sure about it as I have the stock gas tank on my lil husky that only like 2 gal of gas the trip as they wanted to ride it was over 150 miles. That meant it was a sure thing that I was going to run out of gas. I was assured that there were at least 3 bikes with oversized tanks that would supply me with fuel when that happened.
We head in to town the next day at 8am for breakfast at the Wake N Bake, (good food). KSU at 9am to start off on the White Rim Trail. (ksu= kick stands up, I had to have some tell me what that stood for too.) We added some extra miles to the trip by missing the turn off. But heck it was a pretty ride; I was okay with the extra 20 miles. Well, at that point I was.
The trail isn’t very technical, it however very long. I didn’t have really any major issues, aside from figuring out I didn’t have a rear brake. So at the next rest break, I looked it over and discovered that I needed to adjust the travel and to be safe we added some more fluid. It worked great after that; good thing too, just around the corner was a really steep and long downhill section. All 7 guys had been giving me a hard time about how I didn’t really need the rear brake and how they never use theirs, they all ate their words on that section. Ha.
I did have one other issue where I stalled the bike over this last big hump at the top of some long rocky uphill section. The 250 is far more sensitive than my KTM 450 was about keeping up the momentum. I hit the skid plate, it stalled and I was stuck, Dave and Larry helped me get it out. I secretly enjoyed watching Dave stall it 8 times before he was able to get it up the rest of the way…. He’s a really good dirt rider, so for him to struggle a bit with it made me feel a bit better about having to have help.
Now I did have one other issue, but it was more a blond moment than anything else. I was lucky that it didn’t have a really bad out come for me. I didn’t get the straps to one of the saddle bags hooked back up right so the strap ended up hanging down. Some how it got pulled into my rear brake caliper and the bag rubbed against the tire. So we had to cut the strap and I had to get the bag patched. It really could have been a bad thing.
As expected I ran out of gas around the ¾ mark of the ride. The bike went farther than we expected, as it turns out I’ve got about a 135 mile range. Good to know. I used the fuel bottle I had, Dave then gave me three more bottles from his oversized tank. I was then able to make it to just within a ½ mile of town before I ran out again, of course it start cutting out as I was going around a large bus towing a boat, but in all not bad for 180 mile loop.