Wilsons Sandbox

so yesterday we went for our first big ride together on my klr and her xt225. took mostly back roads and about 15 miles of freeway up to hopland, Old Toll Road (recently regraded dirt, very slippery and roly-poly, good warmup), then up to lakeport and into Cow Mountain ohv area the back way. i checked out some trails on saturday on my mountain bike, so i was sort of prepared to find a fun but not too intimidating way through to the other side. we turned off onto one of the "easy" trails. there were a couple of pretty rutted and fairly steep hills, at least for beginners, but stacia handled them with no real problems, tho she admitted to being a little nervous at first. we were on a rutted downhill when i heard the revving of tipped-over bike. apparently i was going to slowly in front of her, so she grabbed too much front brake and slid a little, then toppled. no big deal. i pulled down around the corner to where i could park my bike, and jogged back up to give her a hand. she already had the bike upright, and while i was looking everything over, she picked up this suspiciously clean and lubed piece of metal out of the dirt. "what's this?" she asked. "dunno" i said, "probably not from your bike", tho the cleanliness of the part made it clear that it had only very recently exited it's previous home in someone's motorcycle. i took a look under her bike, saw a part-shaped empty space there, and discovered she was holding the linkage pivot pin!!. Doh! the nut on one side had apparently come unthreaded and gone to live an independent life somewhere else. the pin took the first opportunity to make its own escape. we scratched our heads for a bit while we thought about our options. most of them involved stuff like riding out on my bike, going home to get the truck and coming back (argh, at least 4 hrs of annoyance), or riding my bike into town with the pin to try to find a nut that would fit (on easter sunday in Ukiah, good luck). both those ideas sucked, so instead i went back to my bike, took of the left sidepanel and used 4-5 of the 8-inch strips of duct tape i'd stuck to the inside to wrap around the entire linkage pivot to hold the pin in place (my wife made fun of me for sticking duct tape inside my bike when i was working in the shed last week). then we turned around and took the fast way back to the main dirt road. as it turned out, we probably could have finished our ride with no worries. we stopped frequently to check my handiwork, but it held fine for 10 more miles of dirt and 65 miles of twisty pavement to get home. she loved it! after years of searching, and killing her with epic mountain bike rides, all day xc ski adventures, etc..., i may have finally stumbled on something we can do together in the outdoors that we both really enjoy. the bikes seem like a good match, because the weight and size of my bike keeps me from taking her on anything too crazy. hers is so easy to ride that even when i'm sweating and grunting and fearing for my life, she shoots right up stuff. i was hoping to steal it for a 15 minute moto session, but after we stuck it back together with tape, we were understandable nervous about having too much fun on it. now i can start building my spare fasteners collection. i think i'll pick up similar nuts for my klr pivots, tho they look pretty beefy and well-fastened. i think i might also go over both bikes with a wrench and tighten more stuff up. -mark weaver