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CURT GERRITSEN
Age: 37
Weight: 200 lbs
Bike Ride: Yamaha YZ 450F
Age: 37
Weight: 200 lbs
Bike Ride: Yamaha YZ 450F
| I put the seat back on and the bike died again. I had to push it up a hill against race traffic twice to bump start it. During the next 60 miles the bike stalled multiple times coming in to slow turns. After about 100 miles into the course I had discovered the red-hot start button and used it in combination with the electric start. After that, things went better but the bike continued to die left and right. At the First pit, I asked anyone if knew how to turn up the idle and when nobody spoke up I took off. The silt and the dust were fairly mild because of the rains the night before. The pits seem to be so far apart, but it was just because they were about two hours apart based on an approx. average speed of 35 MPH. When we Pre-ran the course before we thought we had the pit locations right on, but we were off. Also, when we pre-ran previously we ran into Rick Johnson in a truck out on the course and he said there was only about 20-30 mile left until we got to the pavement, so we thought we had the course figured out. As it turned out, when I got down by the highway, I was told by Baja Pits I still had another 60 miles to go to get to the pavement. I was a little bummed. That was about 4:30 and I knew I only had about 30 more minutes of daylight left. This concerned me a bit because I knew I didn’t have the HID lights on. I ended up riding the next 40-50 miles with what I would consider to be not much better than a flashlight light. Unbeknownst to me, I was later told that the light was an HID “Baja Designs” light and the reason it was so dim was from all the Mud puddle crossings Kent and I had gone through. The Pits weren’t cleaning the light like they usually did because they couldn’t get to the lens because of the rock guard mesh. (Live and learn!!) This “dim” section took me about a half an hour longer than it should have taken me because of my light problem. As usual the locals would set up jumps or booby traps along the way and any time I saw groups gathering along the course I would slow up. One section in my last 30 miles or so, the locals had a few too many cerveza’s and campfires and accidentally set the whole hill on fire (which is where we had to ride through). The last 10 miles were pretty fast and flat. When I got to my last pit before the highway, Baja pits gave me a bologna sandwich and some much needed water. After that, it was smooth sailing on the highway and I paced behind a couple of other bikes that were following their “pace car”. My section was definitely a challenge with as high geared as the bike was and the carburetor problems didn’t make it any easier. My section was pretty slow going as a whole. I had a great time and am looking forward to doing either the 250 or 500 next year. |
| Kent handed the bike off to me in what looked to be in good shape. I was glad to see that Kent was in good shape as well. At my first pit I discovered the handlebars were really loose and needed to be tightened up. While doing so the bike died and I was having trouble restarting it. We jumped the battery and got it going and off I went. A couple of miles down the road the seat fell off because it wasn’t put on right back at the last pit. |