ride report for the trip to the mojave nklr

[Balam Acab]

Hi guys, I m a few weeks away from entering the infamous Trasamazonian Highway in Brazil. My CDI works fine but would like to take a spare one to this area... a good friend in Rio will give me one if they are compatible... I m leaving Rio soon because it s too expensive!!!!!!!!! Great girls though... Please any insight will be appreciated... Balam (Known to the list as Juan Carlos Ibarra a few years back)

[Chris]

If you know Primm, basically we headed off straight out the back of Whiskey Pete's casino parking lot and over that range of mountains you can see there. I forgot the names of the sites along the way, but we stopped and gawked at several mines and a small communal 'town' that is still going on up in the hills. We headed out towards the Mojave Preserve over the back side of the first range of mountains. It was founded by miners, who have since stopped since the Fed took over the land as a preserve. The DRZ really impressed me, but I don't have any 'real' experience to make judgements with. The front-end alone was a massive change from the KLR, I'll be missing that for sure. The power delivery was fantastic and a lot snappier than the KLR, at least it seemed. I could make some really poor gear selection entries into washes and still blast out of them. We did a short pavement stretch too and the DRZ has plenty of power to blast up to the 60 or so we were doing. Other than the highway, the rest of the day was spent in 2nd and 3rd for the most part. The ranges worked out well. I was surprised at how comfortable I was on the DRZ sitting as I have a 37" inseam. The offroad peg setup folds up my legs just right it turned out. Standing was torture, first because I wasn't used to trusting the bike in such loose conditions, then it became the very low bars of the DRZ by the time 6'5" of me was standing over it. I couldn't get a straight up posture without supporting myself with my lower back. I'm really pondering some tall risers for the KLR as standing is so much more comfortable if I could just get more vertical over the bike. I probably would have had 1/3 more endurance had I just been able to stand up and relax. The amount of energy I wasted because of bad posture and general technique was a laugh. It really wiped me out. The one other mod the DRZ's all had were the IMS pegs. They feel like floorboards when standing, almost so supportive it felt odd at times...like I wasn't standing on the right thing. I can see the value of those now too. http://www.kingsqueak.org/archives/index.php?loc=admo_vegas

On 5/16/05, Arden Kysely wrote: > Sounds like the trail ride day of my Jimmy Lewis class. Primm isn't > much to look at, but there's some cool country to ride through in that > area. And the DR-Z is a good little scoot, no? > > __Arden