A Steam-Shovel And A Piece of Earth
A steam-shovel and a piece of earth
LEANINGS
Peter Egan
ONE OF OUR ENDURING EGAN FAMILY anecdotes alleges that when I was 3 years old I sat on the lap of a department-store Santa in St. Paul, Minnesota, and told him I wanted “a steam-shovel and a piece of earth” for Christmas.
He laughed (presumably like a bowl full of jelly) and asked “Why a piece of earth?”
“Because the ground is frozen,” I explained, “and I need something to dig,”
Nothing ever changes.
We had a blizzard here in Wisconsin last weekend. The ground is frozen and I still need something to dig.
Why? Because I acquired a marvelous new piece of earth-moving equipment recently, in the form of a dual-sport bike.
Yes, after a shameful dozen years without a dirtbike of any kind, I have finally purchased another motorcycle that doesn’t automatically fall down and stick its legs in the air at the sight of gravel.
When we lived back in California, I regularly rode the desert on either CW testbikes or my own well-worn Honda XL500. But when Barb and I moved from California to rural Wisconsin in 1990,1 sold the old red desert sled, thinking to get something newer and lighter.
Alas, it didn’t happen. Eve occasionally ridden borrowed enduro bikes on friends’ farms, but haven’t bought another dirtbike myself. Seems the better off-road trails are a distant tow—or street ride-from our home, so my dirt longings have been confined to the usual tire-kicking and brochure gazing, until this past December.
Okay, the premonatory rumblings are older than that. They started two years ago, when I took a Harley sidecar rig down to Baja for a CW feature story. The Harley and side-hack were fun in their own way, of course, but hardly as liberating as a dirtbike in Baja. Of which there were many, passing through the villages where we stopped, ridden mostly by small groups of friends off-roading it through this lovely and wild 1000-mile peninsula, which is one of my favorite places on Earth.
This trip naturally gave me a renewed dose of Baja Fever, for which there is no cure but to ride there. I’ve been looking at my old maps and guidebooks ever since. So has my Ducati-riding buddy Pat Donnelly, who Jeeped the full length of the old Baja 1000 route with me 15 years ago. We’re cooking up a similar bike trip now, for this coming autumn.
Call this Dirtbike Incentive Number One. Number Two came in the person of one Paul Roberts, the drummer in our garage band, which we call The Detrimental Blues Band, or just The Detriments for short. Some call us tone-deaf.
Anyway, Paul’s family owns a weekend cottage and 300 acres of wooded land in northern Wisconsin, and they have a dirtbike/snowmobile trail running through it. The place is also near a big recreational loop through a national forest. Paul has invited Donnelly and me to go riding there this summer.
He also says the cottage has a refrigerator capable of cooling beer, or making ice cubes for margaritas, both of which are food for thought. Or what passes for thought among the Detriments.
Dirtbike Incentive Number Three, you might say, is anecdotal. In the past year I’ve had at least four acquaintances tell me their dual-sport bikes, originally purchased for trail riding, have gradually become their favorite streetbikes, by virtue of their light weight, simplicity and nimbleness.
So, fully spring-loaded to acquire a dual-sport bike, I walked into our local Suzuki/Honda/Yamaha shop just before Christmas (always a good, selfless place to look for gifts for the whole family) and what to my wondering eyes should appear but a leftover blue 2001 Suzuki DR650, marked down $700 in an end-ofseason blowout sale. One of a handful of finalists I’d been considering.
Alas, the dealership also had a leftover DR-Z400S-another of my favorites-on sale at almost exactly the same price. So here was a real quandary.
On one hand, the DR-Z would be a much lighter (by 33 pounds) and nimbler dirtbike, but the DR650, with its big torquey motor, slightly wider seat-and lower seat height-might make a better blaster for the wide-open sections of Baja and the backroads of Wisconsin.
In the end, I came down on the side of the slightly better roadability of the 650. So, with Mrs. Claus’ approval, I handed a bank check to my salesman friend Tym Williams just before closing time on Christmas Eve and trailered the bike home smack dab in the middle of the first real snowstorm of the season.
But a week later the snow melted, and our strange, on-again/off-again
winter of 2002 continued. Since then, I’ve sneaked in three weekend rides on the DR. No dirt time yet (the turf is still frozen solid, and I want to get some DOT knobbies on the bike), but lots of miles on narrow, winding pavement strewn with loose sand and gravel. Lots of dead-end farm roads full of potholes and dirt. Places I would never explore on most streetbikes.
The DR works beautifully on these rough old rural roads, but what’s more enlightening is how much I’m enjoying it on clean, normal pavement. Smooth, torquey and fast, it cruises easily between 70 and 80 mph and flicks through corners effortlessly. Amazing what light weight, narrowness and wide handlebars will do for you.
Meanwhile, only time and some exposure to real dirt will tell if I should have bought a lighter, smaller dirtbike like the DR-Z. But for right now, I’m having so much fun on the street with the DR, it almost doesn’t matter.
In any case, I’ll soon have a chance to sample a DR-Z 400S and do a little homebrewed comparison test. My buddy Donnelly found one last week, slightly used, at a local dealership. And he actually rode it home, suffering only minor frostbite.
Meanwhile, the Baja maps are out and the guidebooks are open. Our own little vigil light flickering here in the dark church of winter.
We have our steam-shovels, at long last, and we’re looking for a nice piece of earth.
