Floribama Riders

Several years ago, I read an account of the annual Colorado 500 off road event ( http://colorado500.org/ ), and I have wanted to ride it ever since. The CO 500 is a multi-day off road charity event organized by Wally Dallenbach, a former Indy racer. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wally_Dallenbach,_Sr. ) You ride your dual sport dirt bike from town to town for 5 days, and they haul your luggage. You stay in nice hotels, eat well, and have a great, relaxing vacation. They raise money to be distributed in small communities in the area. They spread the money around to volunteer fire departments, schools, libraries and other similar groups, making the 500 a welcome event in the area. 

To be invited to ride the Colorado 500, you have to be invited by a 'veteran', someone who has ridden the event before. Veterans are invited back each year, and if they don't fill up with returning veterans, then they take 'rookies' nominated by the veterans that are riding. My friend Sam nominated me for 2007. I had to withdraw after I broke my wrist on, well, really, near a 4-wheeler, but I probably wouldn't have gotten in anyway. They pretty well filled out their roster with returning veterans. They do one nice thing, if you are nominated as a rookie one year, and don't get in, and are nominated again the next year, they move you up on the waiting list.

Sam again nominated me for 2008. I was already committed to spending a week in Colorado with friends in July. I figured there was no way I would get selected for 2008, so I sent in my entry to improve my chances of being accepted for 2009. I was shocked when I was notified I was accepted for 2008. Oh, well, I would just have to go to Colorado twice in one summer.

I worked out a travel arrangement with Calhoun for his TransAmerica Trail Ride. We rode together to Arkansas where they unloaded to start the TAT. I drove his truck to Colorado where they would meet me after the ride, so we could ride back together.

The Colorado 500 officially starts on Monday morning, but they require you to register on Sunday, and to attend a mandatory riders meeting on Sunday afternoon. I arrived at Wally's ranch Saturday evening, where Sam is helping to get the event organized. They have a number of charity fund raising events during the week. Saturday evening dinner is a barbeque by a group of Texas riders for a charity donation. It smelled great, but I was feeling a bit queasy from a headache, so I passed on dinner.

Back at the ranch the next morning, I got teched and sound checked, then joined the line for registration. If this is your first time, they call attention to your rookie status by announcing loudly  that there is a rookie in the line, then all the ladies in the registration line sing a little rookie ditty to you while you try not to act embarrassed.

After registration, I didn't have much to do, so I joined Sam working in the tech line. When you sign up for the 500, you fill out a medical info form. They put that in a small pouch with a sticky back, and that gets affixed to the underside of your helmet visor. My job was to place that pouch, and to place a rider number on your bike and helmet. My rider number, by the way, had a big "R" after it, again calling attention to my lowly Rookie status.

Several companies provide sponsorshop and assistance for the Colorado 500. Kawasaki sends a truck and people every year. They provide chain lube, tools, supplies, air filter cleaning and oils stations, and assistance with daily maintenance if you need it. If you use their services, they have a collection jar for donations, which are given to the Colorado 500 charity at the end of the week.  Dunlop sends a truck full of tires they sell at a great price, and they donate the money. Revloc sends a truck to help people with their clutches. All of these trucks and vendors are parked at Wally's ranch, helping people prepare for the 500. The Kawasaki and Revloc trucks go to each daily stop. The Dunlop truck leaves after selling out a 18 wheeler load of tires.

We spent Sunday night at a really nice hotel in Snowmass. The ride leaves from Wally's ranch outside of Basalt, Co. and starts with a parade through the small town of Basalt. The first day's destination is Crested Butte. Each rider is responsible for picking their own route from Basalt to Crested Butte, depending on what you are looking for in number of miles, and degree of difficulty. They do give suggestions, with posted maps, and some advice for areas to stay away from, or that might be closed. And they have clean up trucks that follow the most common routes in case you break down or have problems.

The way they manage to get 325 riders from town to town is to assume a veteran knows what to do, and to make veterans responsible for their rookie. If you abandon your rookie, or he gets into some kind of trouble that the veteran should have kept him out of, the veteran gets fined (a donation to charity).

We line up at Wally's ranch for the parade start to the event on Monday morning. Out group consists of Sam and I, and two guys from Atlanta that Sam knows. One of the guys is a veteran, the other is a rookie. The veteran realizes he has left something in his truck at Snowmass, and since the route goes near Snowmass, he leaves early to run to his truck. He plans to rejoin us on the road as we pass by.

One problem with this plan is that out of the 325 entries in the 500, about 250 riders are on KTM. When we get to Snowmass, there is a guy sitting on the side of the road on a KTM, who joins the group as we go by. Unfortunately, it is not our guy, and we can't tell that. After passing Snowmass, the group comes into Aspen. There are 2 commonly used routes from here, one turns right just outside of Aspen, and the other goes into Aspen and out a back way. About 150 riders take each route. Sam and I take the right, and go with the crowd until we finally turn off the pavement. We stop to re-group, and can't find either of the two guys riding with us. Finally we decide to go on up to Taylor Pass and look for them there.

After a fun ride up to the pass, we arrive to find about 50 guys looking at the scenery, BS-ing about their ride so far, and just generally having a good time. Our guys are not there.

There is a crew with a video camera shooting footage for the "Colorado 500" video they sell at the end of the week. The interviewer lets this guy take the mike and interview other riders for a while:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Roeseler  Yes, I will occasionally be name dropping in these reports. I will try to hold it to a minimum.

After a while, our veteran rides up. No rookie. Turns out he has missed us when we passed by Snowmass, and he assumed his rookie was with us. We assumed that one of those 40 orange bikes behind us was his rookie, and that he would follow us when we turned off, but he didn't. I'm not sure how he lost us, I was on one of the few Yamahas in the event, Sam was on one of the few Hondas, and neither one of us is a small target. We waited for about 45 minutes, and still no rookie. Losing your rookie in the first 20 miles is not a good thing.

Finally we went to one of the support trucks sitting at the pass for help. He radioed down, and heard about some bike that had quit running in downtown Aspen. All they knew was the rider number, and our veteran didn't know his rookie's number. Fortunately the support truck guy had a list, and sure enough, it was our rookie. They planned to haul him to the lunch stop at Taylor Park by truck, and we could meet up with them there.

When we finally got back on the trail, we kept catching and passing a groups of riders, then finding a guy sitting on the trail waiting on them. We would go by, in a few minutes the guy would come flying by us, only to stop again to wait on his group. After a particularly long section, we came up on the guy again. He had been waiting on his group long enough that he took his helmet off. I didn't recognize him at first, but our second veteran did. It was Pierre Karsmakers, the 500cc National Motocross Champion in 1973 ( photo at http://www.flickr.com/photos/tom-margie/2040488915/ ). Our veteran has sort of a man-crush on Karsmakers, and jumped ship to ride with Pierre's group.

Sam and I cruise on down the trail, having a great time, occasionally encountering other groups of CO 500 riders. We ate lunch at Taylor Park and gassed up for second half of the day. We found out that our rookie had found a chafed wire, taped it up and got his bike running, and left with another group.

We headed out and rode some trails we had ridden back in July including a fun portion of the Colorado Trail. We wisely bypassed the one-way, downhill only trail called Deadman's Gulch, and rode into Crested Butte at about 5:30, after covering 85 miles, 60 or so if it on dirt. Behind the hotel was a row of bikes looking like Main Street in Daytona during Speed Week, except that they were mostly orange, some clean and some dirty, and they were quieter than the average Main Street bike. The clean ones had taken advantage of the pressure washers provided at the end of each day. We washed our bikes, hit the Kawasaki truck for chain lube, and parked them for the day.

As we walked into our hotel, we noticed flyers on the doors talking about a special showing of "On Any Sunday" when we came back to Crest Butte on Thursday. Hosted by none other than Malcolm Smith. Woo hoo!

(to be continued)