From Walla Walla,
Wa. to
Reno, nv.
in 4 days....
What do a couple of guys who love to ride off-road motorcycles do with their spare time?
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What do a couple of guys who love to ride off-road motorcycles do with their spare time? |
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Looking for a little adventure? How about a dualsport ride from Walla Walla, Wa. To Reno, Nv? A few months ago, I (Craig Alberts) was surfing the web and came upon a story about the Oregon Backcountry Discovery Trail. I sent my brother (Brian Alberts) an E-mail link to the site and called him on the phone and said “Let’s go!” It was then agreed that we would begin making plans for what appeared to be a real adventure. The OBDR (Oregon Backcountry Discovery Route) and then some! This page was last updated on
11/12/02. PREPARATION: A little internet surfing and I was able to find a good initial website about this route. After a little reading, it became obvious that fuel planning was a top priority to a successful trip; as was the ability to carry everything needed for a trip of this length, and some sort of GPS map system. For fuel, we chose to get bigger fuel tanks for our bikes – I ride a 1996 KTM RXC620 and was able to buy a 20 liter (5 gallon) tank from Hinshaw's Cycle and then mounted another gallon tank internally in my rear luggage. My brother rides a 1996 Husaberg FE400 and was able to purchase a 1 gallon under-seat tank form Eric's Motorcycle and a 1.5 gallon side panel fuel tank from Husaberg. In addition to these tanks, he also mounted a 2 gallon tank on his rear rack. Since we were both now able to carry at least 6 gallons of fuel, we felt confident that we would be able to stretch our fuel range to the required level – at least 200 miles. We then looked at the route and the available fuel stations along the route and came to the conclusion that we would be better off if we had fuel available to us in places not near the available gas stations. We decided to drive down to Oregon and find landowners close to the route that would let us store fuel on their land so that we wouldn’t have to go too far out of the way to get it. We were able to find 3 different places to put fuel, and this, combined with the standard gas stations, provided us with fuel at locations no farther than 180 miles from each other for the entire route. Since we would need to carry everything we needed for all situations on the trip, it became obvious that we would need more storage capacity on our bikes. (or we could try wearing full backpacks – which from past experience, has not worked real well in most riding situations) Checking into what other adventure travel motorcyclists use, it became apparent that aluminum panniers were the most popular choice for storage. The price for a full set of panniers, the mounting rack, and hardware approaches $1000! We both thought that this was more than we wanted to commit to, so another solution had to be found. We ended up using Doskocil plastic XLT-18 Pistol/Accessory Cases and fabricated the frame to hold these, out of copper tubing with soldered connections. Total cost - $50 per bike including cases and hardware. I also purchased a piece of used soft luggage at a local Goodwill store, and mounted that to my rear rack for additional storage. The racks and panniers turned out great and appeared to be rugged enough to survive anything short of major crashes. The cases were mounted with bungie cords to allow for them to be easily removed, whether on purpose or in the event of a crash. SUPPLIES:
Our list of items we thought we would need: EACH: SHARED: FOOD: If this seems excessive, that is because... IT IS! I always seem to want to be prepared for anything. After gathering all the items together, it required a little trading back and forth between my brother and I before we were able to agree on what we would be carrying. My share of the load including the rack, panniers, soft luggage, extra fuel tank, and supplies = 75 pounds. This extra weight turned my already heavy bike into something that resembled my Goldwing! But after I adjusted the suspension to handle it, even with all the weight, it still handled OK. When we initially started looking into this trip, we were turned on to a website maintained by the State of Oregon that had all the required maps (in Adobe Acrobat format) available for download. In all, there were 98 maps needed for the trip. After downloading all these 2 – 3 megabyte maps, I decided to print them. A couple of the maps were damaged during the process and needed to be re-downloaded….It was at this point that I discovered that the map page now took me to a new website that said that the OBDR route was being suspended due to a lawsuit brought against the State of Oregon and the BLM by some of the green groups of Oregon. I called the phone number provided and was informed of the lawsuit and the fact that the signs along the route were in the process of being removed, but that the land was still open and we could still do the ride. (As of this writing, the maps are available again (10/24/01)) It was at this point, that we decided that a GPS would be a better route to go. We each purchased a Garmin Emap GPS. I then purchased Mapsource Topo software to use to plot the route points I intended to hit on this trip. The software works great, and I was able to plan the entire route and all the required turns and save it into our GPS’s memory. The Emap, like most GPS units, uses batteries at a good rate and usually rechargeables are the best route to go. We decided that we would stick to using alkaline batteries for the GPS rather than rechargeables or the alternative - wiring the GPS into our bikes. Initial testing of the entire bike, loaded with supplies, fuel, and GPS proved that we could successfully navigate anywhere we wanted to go. To mount the GPS to our bikes, we chose the RAM Mount and bought them from the good folks at Cycoactive. Since our route was to go from Walla Walla to Reno, we had to figure out what would be the best way to get to Walla Walla and then back from Reno – preferably without just jumping on pavement and riding. We decided to haul the bikes to Walla Walla with my pickup and park at a friend's house, and since my parents are gambling nuts, we talked them into hauling my brother’s trailer to Reno with them. We would meet them after one of their monthly gambling trips and they would haul our sore butts back to Walla Walla to get my truck. Since we would be alone on the trip, first aid would be administered by us, and any emergencies would be interesting to say the least. We carried cell phones and would use them as needed. We also carried Motorola Talkabout radios for communication if we lost each other. Maintenance on the bikes was nothing different than our standard pre-dualsport maintenance – tighten everything, fresh oil, clean air filters (with filter skins), and 18 PSI in the tires. We have used everything from all the latest pure dirt tires to Pirelli MT21's for dualsporting tires in the past, but this time, after talking to the WPS Rep, we decided to use the new King's Tires KT-965 being sold by Western Power Sports. They are a DOT approved tire with a Dunlop D903 tread pattern. Both front and rear wore well and provided consistent traction for the 10,000 curves we went around. A lot of the people we talked to about this trip, thought we would fail because of either: snow in the mountains, our pannier racks breaking, us running out of fuel, or us not being able to do the amount of daily miles to make it in the allotted amount of time. But after all this planning and preparation, both my brother and I agreed that we didn’t fail to plan or plan to fail. We were ready for June 20th – our first day on the bikes! We planned to do 300 miles a day and be in Reno sometime on Saturday the 23rd. The drive to Walla Walla was uneventful except for the surprising amount of bugs on the windshield. It became evident that a good amount of protein on our trip would come in the form of bugs in our teeth! We unloaded at my friends house and put up a makeshift camp in his front yard. We planned to wake up at 4 am and start our journey. Awaking at 4 am proved one thing….With the amount of light in the sky, we could wake up at 3 am, eat, break camp, and be riding by 4 am.
We ate a quick breakfast, cleaned up our
makeshift camp, and pushed the bikes down the street a ways so as not to wake
the neighbors.
And then it
began……
I should have known things were going too well.
We had to ride 3 miles into the center of Walla Walla to get to the start
of our route. As soon as we got
into town and made our first turn on our route, the fun began. I pulled in my clutch lever to upshift, and the lever snapped
back and made contact with the grip and didn’t return.
I thought WTF? I knew something had snapped somewhere in the clutch system.
I downshifted, turned into a parking lot, and turned off my key and
lurched to a halt with my brother coming alongside to see what I was doing.
The cable had snapped off the swaged end at the bottom of the cable.
With a bit of work, I was able to
McGuiver it back together and had a
working clutch; and it worked perfectly the entire way.
After this fun, we actually got underway and began following our route
through the foothills. Wildlife was
abundant and within just a few miles we had seen deer, antelope, a coyote
family, owls, and even a few bats. Following
the GPS route was easy as long as you had them on the correct scale to find your
next route point before you were upon it. We did manage to get
"lost" a couple of times, but we either used our judgment or looked
at one of the five maps forest that I bought from the Oregon
DNR. We are now planning our next trip....stay tuned. |
