. Sequoia Scenic Challenge ............................

. 6/10/00


Terry was set up when we arrived. That's his bike in the foreground and his Jeep behind it. More importantly, there is Zina the dog with the classic snoozy-dog look on her face. Frandy's campground in Kernville is a big dirt lot located along the river. You could set up wherever you wanted. Unlike the Kelleys, Terry appeared to be an experienced camper as he was wise enough to bring a big piece of astroturf to mark off his "living room."
Not having been in the proximity with anybody sharing my name, it was extremely strange to hear it being shouted. I couldn't even call the dog by her name because it sounded too weird speaking it. Furry Zina is in the teeth-losing phase so she had a strong desire to chew on my hand. At one point when I drew my hand back, it had a light coating of blood. Turns out it was a by-product of her teething and not bits of my knuckle hanging off.
Singletrack Here's a stretch of singletrack along the difficult section. This in particular wasn't difficult, but imagine single track with crap on the trail, a wall to your left, and a precipice to your right. When Chris and I got lost later in the day, we were forced to ride such a trail. I happened to be in the lead so I decided that if it was my time to die, it was my time to die. Chris never knew such raw fear in his life, but he figured if the chick in front of him didn't screw it up he could handle it.
Big, lopsided, dead trees; just some of the fascinating sites in the Sequoia National Forest. Bring your own camouflage gear and chainsaw so you can dodge the rangers and take home all the firewood your heart desires. If you're highly motivated and you have a friend with a Caterpillar, you can probably sneak out enough to build your own log cabin.
I don't know what the lettuce-looking plant in the foreground is, but it rimmed a lot of the meadows. All the plants were so perfectly green and healthy they looked almost plastic. This attractive plant is probably a vicious weed inadvertently introduced to our country by a rat that escaped from a European ship. It's a weed that will overrun the forest, thus reducing the earth's overall carbon dioxide uptake, thus accelerating the greenhouse effect. Now you understand why we dirtbikers need to be let loose to run over some of this evil foliage.
This was the first break area during the trip. The grocery store that I think most everybody went to is in the background. We dropped into a small lodge next door that had a tiny restaurant in it. I didn't have any coffee that morning and was in need of my morning fix. The restaurant had a Saturday morning buffet going but that would've been a bit of a gut-loading so we asked if we could pilfer a couple of biscuits. The woman was really nice and told us to pilfer another one if we wanted. I had to stop Chris at two before he cleaned them out.
This is the expanse of land we're negotiating with the forest service to have our summer home built. They haven't returned any of our calls so we don't know what the status is on our request. We find the trees in the background a bit repetitive so we're going to let a timber company clearcut most of it. Once we get a developer in who enjoys building subdivisions with four blueprints repeated over 200 identically-colored houses, we'll have a view really to die for.
Our second stop was at the Ponderosa. They were prepared for the crowd with some outdoor burger grilling action. It was also the second gas stop, which we took advantage of. It looked like most of the guys were in small groups or pairs. A few were riding solo, and as such had to eat their burgers alone while sitting in the flowerbox.
A young bear was hanging around behind the restaurant and I simply had to have my picture taken with it. I suppose this need to get close to wild or poisonous animals makes me a candidate for a Darwin award. I'm really beginning to understand why people do stupid things: Until you've been killed, it's hard to imagine being dead. I'm simply not computing that this teddy bear behind me could knock my block off.
Here's Cuddles the Bear up in the tree. The locals speculate that the bear had lost its mother, as bears this young are not normally separated from their mothers. I think they had called the animal control people to deal with the bear. In the meantime, I thought I would try to check the bear's underside for trendy piercings or tattoos. None were found.
Chris and I had been lost for about an hour when we came across Dan, who was also taken off course by the roll chart. Dan had a detailed map of the area so he helped us find our way out. I am profoundly thankful he showed up because Chris wanted us to go down a goat trail in a totally different direction. Had we done that, we might very well still be in the Sequoias eating pine cones and bitching at each other. Dan, if you ever stumble across this page, I'd like you to know that you are The Man.
After Dan led us to the expert trail, he took off since we were no longer officially lost. After making it through a stretch of trail that scared the living crap out of us, we decided that it was better to be lost than to go through any more of that. Some of these other guys had also lost the easy trail and wanted no more hard-man action. Chris and a couple of other guys were trying to figure out where we were. Notice the guy on the far right: he's looking at sign that has been knocked to the ground so we couldn't tell which marker had been pointing which way.
There is not enough metal on this planet to roll a can that would be big enough to hold all the whoop-ass that was opened up on us during our adventure. Would we do it again? Sure. But only after packing five times as much aspirin. Day's final destruction: broken brake lever, bent footpeg, disintegrated mirror, broken rear indicator, bent front indicators, misaligned handlebars, eight body slams for the girl, one ass-sitting for the boy.

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