More two-wheeled fun!

"I'm not gonna shower this morning, cuz I'll probably need to have one when we get home tonight anyway...." said me, to Chris, when we got up bright'n'early Saturday morning to go dirtbiking.... Yep, that's right.... Dirtbiking. I bought one of those crazy machines on Friday, and unbeknownst to me, that sentence would become the understatement of my year! The story I am about to tell you ranks up there as one of the most stupid Cheryle tricks in the history of Cheryle. I almost can't believe I am sharing it publicly, but hey, it was a good learning experience, and part of my blogging goal is to share my experiences in the hopes that others find the info useful, or at least entertaining. So here it is. D'oh!

I've been humming and hawing about getting a dirtbike ever since Chris bought his a few months back. I thought perhaps I'd look around, take my time, and see what I could find on Kijiji or something. Well I'm fairly particular, and somewhat impatient, so when the invitation to head out West for a Saturday ride was sent out earlier in the week, I figured, meh, how about if I stop in at Turple Brothers and have a quick look-see. Chris had Friday off so he eagerly drove me there, and within about 90 minutes I was on the phone to my insurance agent - I was the proud owner of a brand spankin' new CRF230. Of course I needed all of the associated riding gear, so by mid-afternoon Friday I was completely decked out for some two-wheeled fun!

We headed out past Prairie Creek with a group of riders and side-by-siders, and I proceeded to have a fabulous first day on a dirtbike. The company was awesome, the scenery was beautiful, and I only had about half a dozen relatively minor 'tip-overs' (as Dave calls them!). I was loving it!

Fun on wheels!

Beauty views!

And then.... It happened. We had been riding through mud puddles all day - some small ones, and some that were as wide as the trail in places. Being a bit of a newbie slowpoke, I dropped quite far behind the two bikes ahead of me, so when I came upon one of these 'larger' puddles, I assumed that they would have ridden through it. It never dawned on me that they might have found a dry path around it, so I geared down, cranked on the throttle, and plowed right through the center of the water. Or at least that is what I anticipated doing. In actual fact, what ended up happening was I made it about eight feet into the puddle before the front end of my BRAND NEW dirtbike sunk into what turned out to be a 5-foot deep mud hole. Before my brain could really register what was going on, I was up to my neck in slop water. I let go of my precious BRAND NEW Honda's handlebars and flailed to the edge of the puddle, and as I was hauling myself out, poor Chris was running towards me in disbelief. He saw the whole event, and the only visible parts of my BRAND NEW bike at this point were the clutch lever and handgrip and the tip of the rear fender - the rig was completely submerged. Gaahhhh!

I was so unbelievably mad. I stood at the edge of the mud, looking like a vaguely pink swamp monster, cursing, ready to leave the stupid bike in the stupid puddle and stomp/slosh back to the stupid truck. Luckily, Chris is slightly more level-headed than me: He reminded me that the stupid truck was a stupid 10km away, and he calmly insisted that we were going to drag the bike out, take it home, and fix it.

So that is what we did. Surprisingly, and I'm guessing adrenalin had a bit to do with it, we had the bike out of the puddle within 20 minutes. I then pushed it for another 20 minutes (uphill!) before the two other riders came back to see what was taking us so long. Fortunately one of them had a tow rope, so Chris pulled me up to the crest of the hill, and from there I coasted down to the main road where, 2-1/2 hours after the fateful plunge, I waited to be picked up.

I didn't get any photos of the 'incident' as the camera was in my backpack which got soaked. But here are a few pics of the aftermath:

A serious pressure washing session ensued - the bike and all my clothing were hosed down big time - the mud was everywhere and it was black and it dried like cement! We drained the oil and fuel from the bike, cleaned out the airbox and filter, cleaned the carburetor, changed the spark plug, cleaned out the exhaust piping, replaced the fluids, greased up the chain, charged up the battery, and guess what.... she fired up first try!

*PHEW*

So I definitely had an epic first day out on the dirtbike. I definitely needed a shower when I got home. And although I wasn't able to at the time, I can laugh about it now. Oy, Cheryle! Tsk.

Moral of the story - things aren't always as they appear! And don't ride through a puddle unless you see somebody else do it first! LOL!

Be careful out there my friends!

Cheers!