WOW. No real words to describe it. This was a trip of many firsts for me and I had an AWESOME time. As guy that has ridden nothing but the Eastcoast his entire life until this ride, I was really shocked and even intimidated at the dunes. The sheer size and vastness of it is just jaw dropping. The "twisting" riding style was something entirely new to me. I found it difficult to understand and adjust to not just pointing myself in one direction and stabbing the throttle. You really have to pick your lines and weave, the entire time. Its similar to riding in the creek bottoms and wash outs here on the east coast, but hugely exaggerated. Crossing over the edges of the razor backs on a trike is great feeling. The front tire gets up on the lip, slips over, and than the rear end sort of just slides on up over it. I can tell you, in those type of riding conditions crossing over the razor backs the ability a trike has to pivot on its front wheel is a HUGE advantage. Coming off those off-camber on a quad would be very awkward compared to a trike.
We had a large array of machines there for the weekend, including a TIGER that is owned by
HondaHarry! We put some pretty good hours riding, my last count was about 6 tanks of gas through Jason Hall's ATC250R that I piloted the 4 days I rode.
Racing great
Brett Driscoll even stopped by for a bit (Left) and hung out with the crew. Lots of great stories from back in the day were told by him and his dad. Very cool to meet him in person and even go for a ride in his Polaris Razor! Brett says he hasn't been on a Tri-Z in years, but I think with a little poking and prodding we might see him on one next year!
Saturday evening, we all stopped by the Duner's Diner for a quick refreshment, and that was following by a trip to the Mexico-US border fence! Great photo op, for sure. This isn't a picture of the full crew but we had probably 20 people on this little excursion. Was really cool for an east-coaster like myself to reach through and pick up some Mexico sand
Jason Hall's awesomely built custom ATC450R made the long haul out from MICHIGAN to play in the dunes. I got a chance to throw a leg over this machine and it is just incredible. I am a DIE HARD 3rd generation 250R guy, but I could actually see where this machine would have a chance of pulling me astray.
Our Saturday afternoon group ride line up. The big bowl that is just out of the right side of the picture, we did a big loop around it, all of us in a line for probably 15 or 20 minutes all just PINNED. It was a really good feeling. There should be some video of that coming in the near future?
Speaking of awesome machines, here is another one. This custom built ATC250R by Richard (
MR. KASEY on the forums) has to be one of the trickest ones I've ever seen. Richard spent a lot of time and effort to build the machine as light weight as possible. It features a custom built sub-frame, custom front hub and wheel, and a lot of other tricks to get it down to a super slim weight.
We weren't all just hanging around and talking though, we definitely put the machines through their paces. This shameless plug of myself is a picture taken by Doug (
on the forum). That's launching Jason Hall's highly modified 250R off the face of a dune in about the top of 4th gear. This jump was really the turning point for me and when I started feeling comfortable out there.
If your interested in more pictures from the Gordon's Well ride, you can checkout
This thread on the forum with a bunch of people's pictures and I also have an album, where I uploaded about 200 pictures that I took personally (You'll see a bunch more like those pictured here in the article)
2010 Imperial Invasion Album. Our brothers from the westcoast @ 3wheeler.org also have a picture thread going on.
Check it out here
Super big thanks goes out to Cory Sprock and crew for helping make this ride happen, would not have been possible without them!
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