Oh yeah! This weekend was the first good riding weekend of the year and I don't mean it just for me, it was the best day. Why? Just because of the weather. Here, 8 degrees below the equatorian line, we don't have clearly defined seasons. There is the season where it rains every day, all the time and the season where it does not rain at all. The no rain season is from late august, early september until late march, early april. This is when the dust rules the trails, when the clay get harder than concrete and the sand makes a thin coat over the *hard* packed clay, making for a very slippery ride, not much traction. Well, saturday was april 2. And the week before it rained every night. It's a good sign when it starts raining at night. It rained and rained... And I said, screw the oil drain plug, I am going to squeeze one more trail from the oil I have.
Invited four buddies. Lucio got his bike stollen thursday night. He parked in front of a friend's house and when he was going home, he noticed his bike was gone... :-( Ricardo alleged spousal problems (read: he was not allowed to ride). Robson is a monster we created, he is in his second XR200 (having wearing out the first one to the point it was a parts bike when he was done with it) and is riding faster and faster every day. Eduardo, and his 84 XL250R - with a brand new rear 17" aggressive pattern Rinaldi tire - is another trail freak.
Friday night I drank quite a few beers with my girlfriend, discussing about what she is learning in college: How to say how long a impact was made from the aspect of the bruise. Yup, future lawyer...
Saturday morning Eduardo and Robson showed up. After a few twist of the wrenches (I had no gas at all, Robson was in a need of a certain sized allen wrench and Eduardo insulated a wire that made his bike give him electricak shocks), we left to the trail. Cloudy weather and the terrain was all wet from the early morning rain. It rained real hard from 4am to 7am...
After a quick stop for a fill up on my bike, we went to the trail. In the trail entrance, Eduardo got a call on his cell phone. It was his wife. Do you believe he left home to trail ride and left his wife locked at home? "well, we have two keys. Mine and hers. Mine is with me, but last night I was with hers and I think I left it on the car. The car key? Uhhhh, right here on my fanny pack..." His wife wasn't pleased upon his return later that day... :-)
Robson had his first crash, in a single track uphill climb where you have to aim your front wheel in the right way or crash... Nothing major, let's ride.
We took the old Dutch Road and the Jar Trail, as usual. Eduardo, in his second trail after the engine rebuild was strangely slow "I don't need to spend another $700 (~USD250) on this engine" and I took the lead, my 3 year old japanese dancer sweet baby (XR250 Tornado) is well broke in. We arrived the jar under a big rain shower, where a big cashew tree gives us shadow and a nice place to rest. On the opposite side, a 90 degrees dirt wall about a little less than 2 meter high. I climbed it once... There is a pic on my webpage somewhere (it's one of the recent additions) where I am climbing it... I tried once and made it. Tried another time and crashed! Hard! I got an orange sized bruise on my left thigh... The rain stopped...
Off we went, to Itapuama beach and the ruins of the old hotel. We had to stop to get fresh mangoes from a tree. First of the season. Lots of flowers, lots of green mangoes, a few ripe ones... Yummy!!!!
Itapuama beach, nothing new... And the old trail where we ride on a wash - a path where the water, coming down from a hill, destroys everything and makes a very tight single track, canyon like, because the walls of the track is quite high, and we have to ride inside the track, because the trees are too near each other. On the hill more ahead, I crashed... Again. Hmmm, maybe the bruise is from that crash instead of the first??? Dunno....
We took some wide trails, erosions made it more interesting, but they are wide... Well, from there, we got into the Zombie Woods. First obstacle, a fallen tree (did I mention the hard rain every night last week?), got over that and a few metes later, another one, with the leaves still green. While deciding over going up or down (we are in a sidehill here, not steep like Idaho sidehills though), we hear a four stroke single cylinder noise. Is that a 250? Nope, more like a 350. Definatelly more than 250 and less then 600cc. Turns out it was Sadi (XLX250) and his friend who I forgot his name on a XR350. We took the way up, having to clear two trees so close each other that the handlebars did not fit. We climbed the Zombie hill, beside the Zombie lake, took the nasty singletrack sidehill that makes so many riders to crash and arrive in a little rural property, a few houses and a large dirt road.
Some minutes later, we were again in a very long single track, arriving in the river side, where we had some crab soup (sorta.... Would be too hard to explain...) and we waited a few minutes where it rained real hard again and stopped.
We took a nasty climb, where Sadi's friend gave up riding. He wasn't being able to start his bike and the trail was too hard for him. Sorry bud! We climbed that and got back to Zombie Woods, another trail there. After this trail, Sadi quit the ride, he said his bike was trying to kill him by giving him nasty electrical shocks! Was it the electric bikes day?
We took another trail on the zombie woods and found another very tight trail, going up a hill, in the mid of the woods. We voted and I was first. Uh... Hard trail, soft sand under the rotten leaves, root steps everywhere... I needed a lot of help to ride 100 yards... When I cleared the obstacle, my friends (exhausted...) decided to return and go straight to Sarico's bar, to lunch. I went on alone.
I passed in front of the spring water company, through Suape and Paradise beach and reached a place where I don't know the name, near a village which I also forgot the name. There was like dozens of dune buggies, with lots of girls and guys on it. Weird, very weird, this is not a dune buggy place, here we have clay, hills and mud (and a few beaches), not sand... Oh well. I made may way through the buggies (damn bastards seem to have pleasure in closing all possible places that I could to through among them) and rode over that village and through the mangoes trail - the mango season is started! As I was alone, I did not got any, but the smell, oh the mango flower smell... It's a great feeling. One of the mineral water fountains was dry... :-( Hope it get water again more rain comes...
I arrived at Sarico, waited a few minutes and my friends arrived. Sarico was listening to Bob Marley... Life is great! We had a big fish, got ourselves a few beers and returned home, going down the big Gaibu rock and Pedra Preta beach (a volcanic rock garden).
We arrived home about 6pm... I am sore... But happy...
The habanero (sp?) pepper plant I brought the seeds from California is sprouting its first little pepper... :-)