Frank Raines, part 1

In the immortal words of my coworker: "Why is there so much dirt on your bike?"

The short answer:

Andy, Don, and Doug from the Chain Gang met up with Peter and I at Emil Villa's in Livermore on Sunday for some great dualsport riding.

First, we had much yummy goodness.

(Yes, I ate more than bacon -- though who would want to? -- my waffle just arrived a few minutes late.)

Andy, Doug, and I had our F650GSs; Peter rode his NEW DR-Z400S (!! more on that in a bit); Don brought his Yamaha TW200.

We took Mines Road from breakfast down to Frank Raines Off-Road Park.

The original plan was to get a trail map and play around on the easy jeep roads but, unfortunately, that plan was right out the window when the ranger said they were out of trail maps. No problem, we said, "what could possibly go wrong?"

Well, what went wrong was that we pretty much instantaneously got lost.

I believe that I was the first to bite the dust as I was leading...I tried to stop on what I THOUGHT was a flat section, but it wound up being sloped and my foot couldn't touch ground. Rather than pulling a muscle trying to save it, I just let the bike tip over. Plop. That'd be the photo up above there.

Doug came up behind me, looked at me and my sleepy bike, and decided to join in the fun.

Peter hides behind a bush and pretends he doesn't know us:

So, hey, how about that DR-Z400S, huh? I found it on Craigslist last week and we bought it on Saturday night.

Here's another pic of it:

Peter seems really happy with it (which, of course, makes me thrilled -- more riding with my sweetie!). He was certainly kicking all of our asses at the park.

Which brings us to the fateful hill. Or, as I like to call it, The Hill.

But I must now leave the internets to go vote -- and you should, too! -- and thus I must return to this blog entry at a later time. I promise there are many more entertaining photos of carnage.

Comments

[Linda R. Moore]

This post made me laugh out loud. :)

The bike looks nice. What's the seat height? I recently rode a bike that I couldn't flat-foot for the first time. ;)

[Stephanie]

Oooh, nice bike! You are a very good wife to buy him such a cool present- but exactly how are you going to top it at Christmas? ;)
We live in Cheapside where they were too lame even to have an election today, so I didn't vote.