The weather broke so I loaded up some day supplies and headed out. Just wandered out past Estacada and decided to poke around up all the little spurs I have never wandered up in the 4x4. Was, interesting at points..... There is a hydroelectric power station in the "town" of Three Lynx (like 6 houses and a school that is closed down out in the middle of national forest land, people still live there though.) A huge water pipeline runs through the forest above it. Found some old sections of it abandoned, probably after repairs were done at some point. I think there used to also be a mine above the town. Lots of old buildings and such scattered around the forest in the area. All accessed by muddy little two tracks. Found a well supported tree....... Found snow! Was trying to make it to a spot called High Rocks. Good view of Mt. Hood from there. I was still a couple miles away though when the snow got to nasty. All cementy and ice slush. On the way back down. Lunch break. This road was mossy like this for a couple miles. Stopped by more snow. I rode through enough of it at this point and once I can't see the end of it, I just bag it. Gas stop. The frogs were just going off here. And late in the day it finally happened . Dropped the CRF. Low speed off, nothing damaged nothing bruised. Was turning around and clipped that rock just right. Thought I'd miss it but no. Next thing I knew it was leaned over too far to keep holding up. Was a good ride. Kind of zigzaged all around the forest poking up as far as I could up dead end spurs and as far as the snow would allow.
Okay I did the images wrong...... Tried to edit but it wont let me change them so they show here. Sorry, gonna have to click on them.
I'm here for you. Inserted the images as links; they should show up for folks now. I like several of them, and plan to add them to our websites splash screen rotation.
Nice! Thanks! Yeah I realized what I did. I just pasted the direct links from photobucket into the post instead of clicking the add image button first and pasting it in there. I know better. Just had a brain fart I guess...... When I tried to edit afterwards I couldn't get them to show right.
Lunch break?! Damn I wish my work was in the mountains. How did it feel having the gas tank back there?
Well. Lunch break from all the riding around. I actually don't notice the gas too much. Only time is when I need to slide back on the seat since I was wearing a backpack.
That one was a 2 gallon. I've carried a 1 gallon before and it was even less noticeable. A gallon of gas weighs just over 6 pounds. So it's not that huge of a weight back there. Big thing is making sure you get it strapped down good. Otherwise it will shift around on ya going over rough terrain. And I took some Gorilla Tape (Like duct tape only better) and covered the bottom of the can with it. figure it protects against abrasion on the rack, and is a slightly more grippy surface than the hard plastic to help prevent sliding.
Thanks for the tip! I'll have to try that. I'm gonna be getting that same top rack in a couple weeks. Is it a pretty lightweight rack?
Yeah it's not very heavy. Feels like it's pretty stout though. And it has a rough powdercoat on it. I was pretty impressed with it. Does make getting the seat on and off a challenge, as it slightly pinches the plastics tighter, but you get used to it for as much as a seat removal is needed. Now. The "CRFs only" one that is sorta the same but different has an optional attachment for a Rotopax. Rotopax are kinda spendy but having it just kinda lock on there would be nice, and then you could bungee stuff on top of the Rotopax. So you would still have some use of having a rack even when carrying extra gas. To a point. This is the one. http://www.crfsonly.com/catalog/product_info.php/cPath/290_296/products_id/5264 But I think the one I got just looks better on the bike. I don't really like the front mounting points that abruptly bend down. I like the more angled ones of the rack I got. I'm sure as far as doing rack stuff, they are both equal though.
If I did get one of those racks I'd definitely want to set it up to use rotopax since aside from having nice looking gas cans they also have cases for putting stuff in that are low profile and waterproof.
