Thursday, Dorothy, James, Eddie and I loaded up and headed out to Gordons Well for a long weekend of sandy mayhem.

We arrived sometime around 9pm and managed to find a parking spot without getting James' motorhome stuck.

Never ones to sit around camp, we unloaded and almost immediately took off towards Test Hill for a night ride. My new Ricky Stator headlights turned out to be amazingly bright, which is always nice when you're zooming around the sand dunes at 50mph or so. After a few runs up the hill in the dark (always an iffy proposition given the average level of drunkenness), we got tired and headed back to camp to bed down.

Friday morning started fairly early, and eventually I ended up on Sand Highway on my TRX250R trying to run James down in his turbo VW powered dune buggy. Flat out in 6th gear, with the motor would up about as tight as I've ever had it, the quad suddenly lost power. No dramatic bangs, no fireballs, I just coasted gently to a stop.

After a fairly embarrassing tow back to camp, I pulled the spark plug out. Hey nifty, it's now aluminized! Subsequent teardown of the motor revealed a badly burnt piston. Here I was, 10am on the Friday of a 4-day weekend, with my quad down for the count.

Never one to give up easily, I formed a cunning plan. You see, during a previous trip to Ocotillo Wells, there had been a certain amount of shit talking about whether my wife's Banshee was faster than my lowly 250R. Said shit talking had resulted in a challenge being laid down. First to the top of Test hill reigns supreme. Being a glass-half-full kind of guy, I convinced myself that nothing would guarantee victory like a freshly rebuilt top end. So, after tearing the motor down, I threw everything in the truck and took off for Yuma.

More specifically, KD Cycles in Yuma, which is an amazingly well stocked shop that just so happened to have a piston in stock, and the ability to bore/hone the cylinder. The proprietor was extremely apologetic that he wouldn't be able to have it ready before 4:30PM. 4:30PM?!? I measure my trips in days, man. A few hours is nothing. I left the parts there and headed back to camp for 4 hours or so of beer drinking and sunbathing. It's a hard life.

Around 4 or so, I figured I'd done enough waiting, and headed back to Yuma. Everything was done, and amazingly, the cylinder had been on the stock bore before I got my accursed hands on it (remember, this is a 21 year old 2-stroke!). Total bill, including a new shift lever? $215. Damn. If only the Corvette was that cheap.

Reassembly went pretty quickly, and by 6pm the quad was back together and ready to begin the arduous breakin procedure. 12 heatcycles, followed by a full tank of part throttle riding. I was up until 3am heat cycling the damned thing--camp neighbors be damned, there's racing to be done! By 8am it was ready for the part throttle riding. It takes an amazingly long time to run a tank of gas through this thing when you're not beating on it--the tank didn't run dry until almost 3pm, but finally, it was done!

After riding back to camp on reserve and topping off, I tore off for Test hill. I had a race with destiny, err, Dorothy!

Now, see, in addition to my cheater rebuild, I had a master plan. On a previous trip, Dorothy had hurt her right knee, and wasn't really in any shape to banzai through the whoops at the bottom of the hill. I figured that as long as I could get her by a couple bike lengths through the launch/whoops, I'd be able to stay ahead at the top.

Well guess what, I was right! I managed to get her by about a bike length at the top of the hill, and even did a kickin' rad victory wheelie over the crest. We raced again and the result was about the same.

Victory is mine!

We won't mention that she was running me down, or that with another rider on her quad the results were, uh, a little less favorable. I'll bask in my glory, no matter how petty.

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