A week or so before Thanksgiving 2013 I got a call from my son’s father in law, and my riding buddy, Marvin. He said, “Hey Mike. I have a spare KTM 200 in my garage and wanted to know if you wanted to ride at Thanksgiving.” I gave him an enthusiastic yes. After I hung up I began to wonder if he was just doing that because he wanted me to have a great Thanksgiving. Marvin has set up probably a half dozen motorcycle rides over the years for me. He knows that it brings me great joy. Then later I called back to assure that he wasn’t just being nice. He had some surgery about a month earlier and I was not sure that he would be up to it. Shoot, he had already been riding twice since then!
The morning of the ride we tried to pack in a lot of things including some target practice at the family’s land. That went great and we got a little carried away on time. When I checked my watch, I was late to meet Marvin. I felt really bad for making him late. So I called him. He was super gracious and gave me directions to meet him on the road by the riding area. He never said a word about being late. He had already been riding with his friend Mark. I got there and he had the KTM 200 in the back of the truck prepped and ready to ride. I love that about Marvin. He has set me up numerous times with a prepped and ready to ride machine. I feel like a factory sponsored rider. I just show up and the bike is ready. So I unpacked my riding gear out of the soft sided luggage where I store it between rides. I put it on and went to start the bike. It started right up on the first kick! Wonderful! That bike has a reputation as being hard to start. That was a good omen. I had not been riding in about a year. I took off down the trail, snapped the throttle, slid and wheelied down a one lane dirt road. Just like riding a bike. You don’t forget.
The KTM was a 2003 and it was very peaky, like a 125 motocross bike. It was easy to wheelie and slide with judicious throttle application.
Marvin led the pack and his friend Mark brought up the rear. I was in the middle of them. It was tight first gear woods riding. The KTM only wanted to go fast. I got stuck going up a hill that had an off camber slippery tree root. The KTM just spun. I got off and drug it over that part. I have done that before!
Then we stopped for a minute on the trail before going on.
We came to a place in the trail that was a good climb but it was partially rinsed out. We just went for it. At the top of the hill I went too far and was headed directly for a big rinsed out rut. I could not back up. Going forward was a bit more than I was expecting. I balanced standing up for about 5 seconds. I assessed what to do, decided that I did not want to fall and embarrass myself in from of Marvin and Mark, then decided to accelerate hard and make an attempt to ride out of the rut. It felt like a scene from a trials section. I cleaned it.
As we were riding along, I saw the perfect opportunity to jump a pile of dirt. Mark was behind me. When I jumped it I gave the bike just a tad too much throttle and I landed with the front wheel uncomfortably high, but not out of control. The problem occurred when I somehow gave the bike a little bit of throttle when I landed. The front wheel was straight up in the air and I was hanging on tightly. I still had my feet on the pegs. I was right at the balance point where I could flip over. Either I was going to do that, jump off, or something else. I went off the trail and went through a bunch of brush. Hitting that thick brush caused the front wheel to come back down. It was an exciting moment. I like to say, “Flirted with death and won again!” I wondered if Mark had seen me. I hate to waste a good near death experience. Just up the trail Marvin had pulled over. I pulled over too. Then Mark pulled alongside. I could tell by the sparkle in his eye that he had witnessed my out of control full pucker experience. He could not wait to talk about it. So we talked and laughed for a couple of minutes about fear and near death experiences. He lamented the fact that he did not have a helmet camera. He swore that he was going to get one so that he would not miss another great Youtube moment. I had that wonderful euphoric feeling that comes right after a high adventure adrenalin-soaked experience.