Adaptive Curmudgeon

I don’t meet many people when I’m out in nature. I go there to avoid people. However, the few people I meet are outlandish and memorable. Last year, I met the beer faeries.:

The UTV rolled up with three laughing women jammed side by side in the bench seat. They were joyously joking and smiling like a combination women’s book club and bar crawl had first gone mobile and then went ridiculously remote. They sure were having fun! If anyone might roll up in the middle of the forest to give Paul Bunyan himself a wedgie it was these three. They stopped next to me and said the most beautiful words in the English language.

“Want a beer?”

(Link: Motorcycle Exploration 2021: Part 5: The Beer Faeries Rescue Me. Whole story in parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5.1, 6, 7)

I thought I’d never encounter anyone more interesting than them. Then I met Odin and his side chick.

I was in the darkest shadiest parts of the forest. Under the tall pines it was beautiful and cool. I desperately wanted to stop for water and rest. Unfortunately, the mosquitoes were ridiculous. Great clouds of them.

Up ahead on the trail he came my way. A man on an ATV. The regular old fashioned kind of ATV. The idealized old fashioned kind of man.

The dude was old. Much older than me. But he was built like a brick shithouse. Some men are buff, some men are tough, some men are handsome… I happened to meet a Norse god.

He had no helmet. He had no shirt. His skin was tanned like bronze. His head was shaved.

He was just exactly as muscly and strong as a shirtless old guy can possibly get. Young men fresh out of boot camp don’t look that buff. He was of an age to draw social security and yet he looked more manly than a football team and more handsome than Sean Connery on his best day. I’ve no doubt he could bench press an ox, take on a biker bar in a fight, and make women blush with a raised eyebrow. Probably all three at once.

No shit?!? Here?

I was dressed head to toe in protective gear and getting eaten alive by the bugs. Captain shirtless up there was simply daring the mosquitoes to mess with him. Presumably his rock hard muscles couldn’t be pierced by mere mosquitos… or probably by spearpoints.

You know those dudes from the movie 300? One of them retired from his career of holding back Xerxes and the Persian invasion, retired to America, and was riding around on an ATV.

I’m no wimp but it’s a bit humbling to see testosterone in human form. All I could think was “I need to hit the gym”.

As he got closer I realized he had a passenger. Carrying a passenger on an ATV is a pain in the ass; most of our consumer based society has adopted side by side UTVs with two bucket seats. Not Odin though.

Dude was rolling along with a woman behind holding him tight.

And what a woman! She was the appropriate age for Odin but still quite striking. Wearing a flowing peasant dress with long hippie hair and hands wrapped tightly around Odin’s chest. Her body language was clear: “this man is mine!”

She looked happy. Not just happy but almost in ecstasy.

I pulled off the trail into a cloud of mosquitoes and he swished by. I was taken by the woman’s eyes. They were beaming! Beaming!

She was holding on to the hottest most macho man in that age class… and honestly more macho and hot than most men half his age. She was holding on like Odin was going to to get laid tonight. Honestly, a guy that buff probably gets laid every night. Why? Because he’s the living embodiment of manhood dammit!

He nodded just the smallest acknowledgement as they passed. Then they were gone.

I spent the next hour wondering if I’d really seen what I’d seen. I didn’t know geezers could be that buff… or hot. Both of them. I’m a mere mortal.

I know nothing more than what I saw. I didn’t register the kind of ATV he was driving or for that matter I don’t even know if he was wearing pants. I just didn’t think to look.

So there you have it. A chunky bearded dude on a squat little motorcycle met Odin in the forest. Odin had taken a shortcut between Asgard and Olympus to pick up his side chick. They were going for a romp in the forest.

And my GoPro wasn’t running!

When I took the stupid direction at the sketchy fork off the trail that felt like it went through Namibia… things got weird. The grasses and reeds in the sketchy landbound estuary morass I’d ridden through were tall but once I’d gained some elevation they had dry soil for their roots and they got aggressive.

I was riding more or less straight, which is good because I couldn’t see where the front tire was making contact with the ground. Then I couldn’t see the front tire. No worries for the little motorcycle, just roll slowly and hope you don’t hit a badger hole… or a boa constrictor that somehow teleported to the wrong latitude. I’m starting to appreciate winter! The place I went would be a killing zone if winter didn’t eliminate most living things.

I had hope it would all turn out well because someone had driven that way before me. Something with very high clearance that squished the grass but didn’t kill it. A tractor?

I was very happy to see the tracks. I wasn’t ridiculously far out but from a practical standpoint I might as well be on Mars. This was exactly the point where “this is fun” turns into “I shouldn’t be here”.

But the tracks were true and eventually I found a hay field out there. Someone had baled it. Human existence. A good sign.

The bad sign was that the tractor had baled the field and drove back out the way it came. I kept rolling along and now the grass was unblemished. Yikes.

I caught the tiniest hint that maybe an ATV had been there once. Meh, that’s enough to keep going.

By my reckoning I was following a survey line that had the ubiquitous “access trail” on the boundary and the access trail was more theoretical than actual. One side was Federal, the other side was the farmer’s land that wasn’t good enough to be a hay field, on every side the ticks brushed from the grass and crawled on my jacket.

I expected to find a turn in the boundary. A 90 degree deviation. Make the turn and you’re heading back toward pavement. Miss the turn and you’ve become an idiot bushwacking though a swamp following the idea of a compass bearing as envisioned by a surveyor in an office in the 1900’s.

Damn. I must have missed it. I stopped. I tried to put the kickstand down and it was so tangled in grass that it didn’t fully extend. I almost dropped the bike! I had to stay on the bike because I didn’t feel like messing with the ground enough to make a clear spot for the kickstand. But still, I didn’t think I was actually “lost”. I’d been watching, if there was a boundary line it must have been the faintest of traces.

Honey Badger said “relax, we got this”. I rolled ahead. I promised myself I’d turn around if I went another 200 yards without finding the turn. Not 20 yards later I found it. It was so obvious that an airplane could see it… but not me. Down there in the mess it was completely invisible until I was right on top of it.

I took the turn and things mellowed out quickly. Within a few hundred yards there were tracks again. Then someone had done a crude half assed job with a brush hog. I stopped to brush off ticks. Heaven! A quarter mile later I passed a remote off grid cabin. More tracks. A couple miles later I was on pavement.

A lesson in life. I’d been so mired in grass that the kickstand wouldn’t go down but I was simultaneously very close to the route out. It had been a perfect little detour.

Also, a great test of my equipment. Everything but my GoPro had worked flawlessly and who needs photos? Spoken too soon!

When I met Odin and his side chick a few miles later I didn’t get a photo!

(To be continued.)

It wasn’t me that took the trail, it was Honey Badger. The silly little motorcycle simply loves doing stupid shit! I’m an innocent in all this I swear!

So there I was, trundling down a road that had become a sketchy road that devolved into a trail that was fast becoming a path. Then I saw what I call “a clue”.

There’s a whole ecosystem of legal designations about what you can legally drive where. (This is utterly unrelated to the vehicle’s ability.) There are “national forest roads” and “minimum maintenance roads” and OHV roads and ATV/OHM trails and multi-mode whatever they call those. It’s the natural result of bureaucracy trying to draw lines around the continuous spectrum of “try not to fuck up the soil” and “this thing can traverse this terrain”. I’m sure many meetings were held.

I gave up trying to remember all the errata but there’s one sign that gets my attention like a gunshot. A very few times I’ve seen a sign that says “limited to 1000 pounds GVW”.

I don’t know where they come from. I don’t know what makes them different. For all I know it’s a BLM thing? All I know is that every time I’ve seen that type of sign I’ve wound up on a very old dike or related earthwork that’s super fun and would eat a jeep and chew on a fat UTV. They always go through absolute impassible hell and they’re always fun.

Perfect!

In case you’re wondering, Honey Badger is legal just about anywhere wheels are allowed. It has plates for pavement and any OHM/OHV sticker that could apply in this area. I’m sure I was ok. Also Honey Badger weighs 300 pounds at most. I’m pretty light by modern UTV standards.

Then again there wasn’t a living soul to bitch at me anyway. I suppose I could have brought a bulldozer. Regardless, when I see “limited to 1,000 pounds GVW” that just warms my heart.

I already mentioned that my GoPro battery was toasted. No photos. But it was super fun.

It feels like I rode a levy or dike that probably was put in around the time narrow gauge railroads were a thing. It was pretty but also very odd terrain. You might think North America is mostly forest or prairie. If you’re into such things you might know the difference between tallgrass and shortgrass prairie. But there’s a lot more diverse shit than most people know.

By my observation I rode out of a forest biome and into Nkasa Rupara National Park in Namibia. It was a wetland, estuary, marshy, reedy, muskeg, bog, um… thing. I’m looking around like “this looks more like the place to find a hippo than an elk” and the motorcycle is talking back to me “relax, we got this!”

Now you know why I carry lots of equipment.

By the odometer it was only a few miles. By experience it was a safari.

The grasses got taller, the path got narrower, the water closed in on both sides. No worries though; I had a nice solid patch of gravel about 6″ wide. That’s all I needed.

I paid close attention. If I were to go off the path on either side I’d be catapulted into a quagmire. It wouldn’t be dangerous but it would be yucky.

I was happy that there aren’t a lot of poisonous snakes here (and any self respecting timber rattler would bail out of this fetid trailer park of nature asap) but the ticks had been waiting their whole life (literally!) just for me.

I was covered head to toe in motorcycle gear/armor. Armored mesh pants (my stillsuit!) zipped tightly over motorcycle boots. Jacket tightly zipped up, long sleeves velcroed over motorcycle gloves. Full face helmet. I might as well be wearing a space suit… but still the bastards were everywhere. They were crawling around my crotch! They couldn’t get through the mesh armor but I couldn’t take my hand off the handlebars to brush them away. Try to concentrate when there’s a tick trying to get to your nuts. It’s hard!

I wanted to stop and enjoy the view. Despite my description (and the lack of hippos) it was truly breathtaking. But every tick for miles was crawling around my face shield and forearms. Fuck that!

I kept on and eventually I gained just a little bit of elevation. It got a lot less um… savannah-ish and became something like North America again. The path widened and soon was two tracks again. It looked less like a place that might harbor a hippo and one that might hold a lion. Infinitely bettter!

I stopped at the first suitable place (right in the middle of the track… not like anyone was coming) and did a tick eradication sweep. Yikes! Nothing more gross than a tick.

I drank a ton of water and gave Honey Badger a salute. She’s slow but nothing stops her. I’ll have a heart attack before the bike loses traction.

Behind me, buried in the grass, was a sign for people approaching from this side; “limited to 2000 pounds GVW”. One thousand from one direction and two thousand from the other? How can that possibly make sense? Also, if you drive a ton of anything in there… you’re going to wind up regretting it.

Stretching my legs, I hiked a quarter mile further (picking up 18,236,437,723 ticks as I did so). There was a fork in the trail; an intelligent direction and a sketchy one. You know exactly which one I chose.

(To be continued.)

You don’t need to climb the highest mountain to have a “natural experience”. The earth is always right there under your feet.

I abandoned pre-conceived plans and was simply riding. My little motorcycle Honey Badger seemed to know where to go and I was happy to see where it would lead. I thought I’d “explored” this area thoroughly but within minutes I was in terrain I hadn’t before seen. Perfect!

The little trail I’d taken ambled into a logging operation. Some machinery was parked off in the distance; that was probably the nearest landing. Since the wood was fresh cut (it smelled wonderful) and the machinery still present, it was an active worksite. If I’d arrived on a working day the place would’ve been impassible. Logging is serious shit done by serious men trying to make brutal payments on absolutely daft machinery. They’ve no time for an idiot on a motorcycle and don’t need the extra concern of wondering if the bump they just felt was from driving over a stump or a human. I’d have fled in the opposite direction lest I wind up squashed by a skidder or have a tree dropped on my head.

Any logging landing will accommodate a log hauling truck. I’d arrived on a trail that would manage a UTV at best and it had vanished under the disturbed vegetation. So I bounced and jostled among the skid trails until I got to the landing.

Is that common verbiage? Broadly speaking, a “landing” is where off road capable ground based log skidding equipment gathers freshly harvested tree trunks. (There are exceptions so let’s refrain from getting pedantic about aerial logging shall we?) At the “landing” logs (or sometimes chips) are transferred to on road capable equipment (invariably a semi tractor with trailer).

The point is not to examine industrial practices (which I find fascinating but will bore a normal human); the point is that any time a semi can get to a log deck (a “deck” is a pile of logs) you can get out on the same path. It’s not rocket science and after a few hundred yards of faffing about on skid trails I was at the deck. From there it was obvious and I zoomed down a two track “road” that led to the forest road system.

Here’s where a lot of folks who know little about life and less about trees get all weepy about the messy nature of logging. They’ve got a pre-programmed Pavlovian response to bitch about the harvest of trees. I don’t. A logging operation is ugly like a butcher shop while in progress but you don’t get bacon by raising pigs to old age and you don’t get forest rejuvenation unless something stirs the pot. (Generally if it’s not humans that remove the biomass it’ll be fire.)

I was delighted at what I’d found. The harvest will soon bring forth a bunch of little trees. Such regeneration never had a chance in the shady understory but now it’s got the necessary resource of sunlight and water. (Boomers and Gen X and Millennials need to have related discussion of workforce demographics.) Game animals don’t eat full grown trees, they eat branches and shit (browse). (That’s painting with a broad brush and there are nuances. Elk and buffalo like grass and moose will wander about in aquatic vegetation until it freezes.) This fall critters would be gnawing on branches left after the harvest. In a few years they’ve be munching on waist high regeneration.

By my reckoning I was on Federal land which is open to hunting. This place might be prime hunting ground. Hunters aren’t fools and they’ll all be watching the spot but they’ll likely come in the front door. The little trail I found might be the back door to slip into the far reaches of the harvest. Who knows what the future holds but it’s nice to have a dream.

The path of the log trucks led to a forest road I’d seen on a map but never ridden. This hit a T with a slightly larger dirt road. Obviously, the log trucks were heading left, so I turned right. I was now in ranch/agricultural land. I was still on public roads but I’d ridden off the public lands. A couple miles later I turned left, for no particular reason. Then I started trying to veer back into the public forest area.

My first attempt failed. The road turned east, which was a good sign, and then it turned north leaving only an anemic little two track headed straight (the direction I wanted to go). I followed it a while and it went from bad, to worse, to ugly, and then finally I got to a clogged culvert which had turned the road into a shallow weedy mess. I could go further but clearly there was no point. Retreat and try again.

Back at the three way intersection I consulted my map. I heard the sound of motors and waited. Sure enough a convoy of 2 UTVs rolled by. They were in a “ditch trail” adjacent to the main-ish road heading north. I couldn’t see the ditch trail from my vantage on the road itself. Neither of the UTVs saw me and I gladly let them by without bringing notice to myself.

That was the first humans I’d seen all day. They never saw me at all.

A couple miles later I found a better road heading the way I wanted and took it. A few miles down that road there was another T intersection. By now I was deeply in forest.

I was supposedly heading toward a gravel pit. UTV/ATV folks love gravel pits! I should point out that doesn’t mean an active operation. A gravel pit for this purpose is the ridge or hole which was dug up to make all these nearby dirt roads, along with some piles of dirt stored for future use.

I find it amusing that public land managers 20 years ago were constantly bitching at people to keep out of gravel pits. Trying to keep ATVs out of an empty unused gravel pit is like trying to keep minnows out of a bay. What are you going to do? Fence and patrol the perimeter of every dirt hole in creation? With time, they’ve shown the hint of wisdom. They just mark them on the map and put up anti-litigation signs; “Caution, if you drive your ATV off a cliff it’ll hurt. Try not to do that.” See? After only 20 years (or maybe 50) one portion of one Agency adapted to reality.

ATVs and UTVs (and what few motorcycles exist) show up, drive around like extras in a Mad Max movie, and then leave. It’s a good system. It lets them blow off steam in a place where erosion and such are already managed. The dirt piles don’t seem to notice all the ATV/UTV attention.

I don’t really like gravel pits but they’re handy. They’re a good spot for a warming fire in high fire danger (not a problem this trip). If I knew anyone, which I don’t, they’d be good gathering and rendezvous points. Also they are sometimes a place to get out of vegetation. Bugs were getting thick and I’d like a place to rest. An open area with less vegetation and more dirt would be ideal. I was getting hot and needed water.

Unfortunately, Honey Badger saw another trail and I was off exploring again. It wasn’t me, it was the motorcycle. No way I’d be that dumb.

(To be continued.)

I rolled out of base camp literally days behind schedule. I’d planned some serious exploration but had opted instead to sit on my ass brewing coffee and reading books. No regrets on that choice!

But now it was adventure time! I was on Honey Badger, my 2020 Yamaha TW200 that I’ve mildly equipped to my own specifications. It’s basically bone stock but bristling with “survival shit”.

Out on the trail you’ll see bikes (rarely) and ATVs (and the much more common UTVs) traveling in packs. Individually, they’re lightly equipped. Collectively they’re still lightly equipped but usually someone remembered to bring whatever one person forgot. Also the safety of a pack is that they can always send one of their number to fetch help or a specific thing should it be needed. Anything from jumper cables to a ride in an F-150 at the nearest road can be arranged without much drama.

I always travel alone. I cannot send someone for help and nobody will come to rescue me. Even if I use the SpotX to send up a digital flare, the response time would be many hours. In the less dire situation of a dead bike and walking out, I’d be facing a hike measured in days not hours.

In the wise words of FortNine: “On a bike that never falters, it’s easy to get caught way out there.”

Thus, I was loaded up like my little mule and I might be out there a week. I had a spare gallon of gas, a gallon of water, an assortment of tools, zip ties, duct tape, spare glasses, navigation aids & maps, my SpotX, a GPS, my jump starter battery (which is also a flashlight and charges the SpotX), my GoPro, matches, a Lifestraw, a Thermacell, shit tickets (TP), an MRE, a couple bottles of Gatorade (it was hot out), clothes I’d need should I wind up out there overnight, and the luxury of a paperback. (That’s not a complete list.) From one point of view Honey Badger is just a cheap bike and I’m just a bearded dude who is too old for dirtbikes. From another point of view, we’re serious, equipped, capable, and loaded for bear.

I had a plan. There’s a forest road that goes from X to Y through the absolute middle of nowhere. I didn’t expect it to be a challenge but there’s a special quantity of nowhere that produces its own quality. It was a long ride, far for a little dirtbike and me for sure. But the line on the map calls to me. I wanted to traverse the area, because it’s (barely) possible. I also wondered if there was a fly fishing option in a certain spot where I was sure virtually nobody ever goes. (You can only learn so much from topo maps and satellite images.) There were also a few hunting spots I wanted to scope out. Some might be unreachable given the wet year… only one way to find out.

It was going to be a long day.

When I built my sailboat I stumbled across some words pertaining to the mysteries of such craft. A passagemaker is a vessel designed for long voyages. This is very different from the white fiberglass beauties you see at most marinas. Most sailboats rarely leave for longer than an afternoon spin. A passagemaker hunts the horizon.

I built my boat and by choice it was tiny. Small boat = big adventure. Also, I have no payments. No slip fees, no maintenance budget. It doesn’t even have a motor, it has oars. I built simple, small, cheap, and strong. I’m happy with my craft but it’s far too small for long trips unless I get a lot tougher. (Some brave maniacs have gone on long trips in little craft like mine, but those guys are pirate/adventure sailors of the mini-boat world. I’m still learning and can’t do half the shit they’ve done.)

I discovered another word; gunkholing. Gunkholing is the gentle art of meandering aimlessly in the shallows where bigger deep draft boats cannot go. The goal here is to find and enjoy isolated little inaccessible spots known only to you and God. The cost of such an adventure is bravely slipping about in soughs, inlets, creeks, marshes, coves, and other versions of watery nowhere. My boat is ideally suited to shallow water and by personality I’ve taken to gunkholing. I instinctively gravitate toward the habitats of herons and turtles and find myself struggling to master sails and my retractable daggerboard in the complex mess of a backwater rather than harnessing the open wind in search of speed.

I have sailed where a heron walked.

What does this have to do with motorcycles in the forest? Nothing and everything. I had an entire route carefully mapped out in my head. I had plans, a schedule, destinations and target times to get there, all in hopes that I could complete a certain circuit and return only slightly after dark. I was to be a two wheeled passagemaker.

Six miles out of camp I spied a trail I hadn’t seen before. It was small and going the wrong direction. I liked the vibe. Something about it seemed attractive.

Without hesitation I took the turn. Passagemaker became gunkholer. How? I don’t know. It just… happened.

An hour later little Honey Badger and I were deep in a swamp, lost, off the map, thoroughly coated in mud, the GoPro had conked out, and I was covered with bugs.

I couldn’t have been happier.

(To be continued.)