Dry Dam Adventure

I mentioned a while ago how excited the girls were at the prospects of getting to ride their dirt bikes up around Jim Thorpe.

Finally the weather warmed up enough to make it happen.

The plan was to pack them up and head up to ride last Saturday. It was supposed to be in the mid 40’s and cloudy. That’s just warm enough to ride.

We’d park near the solar plant, ride to the dry dam, have a fire, roast hot dogs, then ride back.

Simple enough plan.

Little did I know at the time how lucky I was when Craig offered to come along with us.

Saturday morning while the girls were at Jiu Jitsu, I got everything packed up.

I sent this picture at the time to a few friends. One of the responses was something along the lines of, “wow that looks like you’ve got a lot of work ahead of you today.” I had no idea what they were talking about. I figured we were just going dirt biking. How hard could that be?

We got up there in pretty good time and unloaded the bikes and gear.

My first inclination that things weren’t going to go as planned was when everybody got cold and needed every layer I brought (including the backup layers) to be warm.

The route is a pretty straight shot. It starts on a slightly rocky hill, levels out on a long (very level) gravel road, becomes a somewhat rocky double track, gets more narrow, then turns onto another gravel road that goes up to the dam. Pretty simple stuff. The hardest part in my mind was going to be avoiding the lunatics going 65mph+ on the flat gravel road, but all the while we were getting ready we heard very little if any activity.

We decided that Lauren wasn’t going to wear her roost guard, because between the roost guard, neck brace and helmet she should hardly move her head. Turns out it didn’t help all that much.

She can still hardly move her head, and I have suspicions that the helmet is just too big. Maybe we’ll head up to Blackmans and see if we can’t find something that works better for her.

The trip out to the dam turned out pretty good. Both girls did really awesome and surprised me so many times in how they handled the various terrain obstacles we came across. Lauren started out somewhat sketchy, but it appeared 1st gear was just too slow to help her balance. I dropped her into 2nd and things did smooth out for her. At the end she rode right up to the turn that goes under the dam and failed to stop or turn, therefor sending her over the bars toward the creek. She was a little shook up, but recovered quickly unharmed.

If you can’t tell, the dam is cool and pretty creepy at the same time. It’s over a hundred years old and has been out of operation for almost 20 years. The idea was to go through the dam into what was the reservoir area to have a fire and let the girls ride around, but it was far too windy on the other side. They did get to walk through it and see what it looked like on the inside – both the reservoir and inside the wall (it’s hollow), but they didn’t do any riding at this point.

A sunnier day would surely be nicer.

Oh well. We were getting hungry so time to set up our fire. Craig found some birch bark and wanted to try a trick he’d heard about with lighting the bark.

Basically you scrape shavings/powder from the underside of the bark and they’ll light with a flint & steel. Sure enough it worked, but the majority of the wood we had around to burn was too wet for the shavings to ignite. We would have needed a lot of shavings or a lot of really tiny kindling to get it started. Instead we opted for a Vaseline soaked cotton ball and flint & steel.

I should of had the girls wearing their hats that I brought along. I had a 35L backpack full of gear to cook, keep them warm and fix a bike if I had to. You can see most of it strewn about below.

We had hot chocolate too. And coffee. And hot dogs. In the background you can see a blue water tower. About half way up on the ladder climbing the side was a ravens nest. It was huge (the bird and the nest), and not very happy that we were hanging out.

Of course being my girls, riding out here and having to ride back wasn’t enough adventure. Abigail insisted that we climb the hill next to the western side of the dam. She’s always climbing random hills.

It was actually pretty cool. We went up then wandered back toward the dam. Each “section” has it’s own access to inspect/etc the hollow portion between the front and the back. Some sections had plumbing/valves/gears while others were empty. It was tempting to enter and explore more, but ultimately too damn (pun intended) dangerous.

Time to head back.

This is when it dawned on me the first part of this gravel road was down hill. Neither kid uses the brakes very well if at all. I decided Abigail would just have to figure it out. She’s been doing well on the hill in our yard. She’d be fine. Lauren I dropped back to first gear and hoped for the best. Lauren was on the Honda, which is a 4 stroke. If she just backed off the gas, the engine breaking could be enough to keep her under control. It wasn’t like it was a big hill, but gravity would definitely be working against us.

Craig headed off first, because he wanted to get a picture of the three of us riding down together. Great idea, but there was one serious problem. My bike wouldn’t start. It wouldn’t start at all. Finally the girls got impatient and headed off. They both were completely out of sight. My bike still wouldn’t start. I tried everything – the electric start, kick start, bump start. Nothing worked. I was getting frantic.

Then Lauren comes riding back up the hill toward me. I asked her where she was going. She didn’t know. I told her to turn back and head back to Craig. She tried, but struggled. She probably dropped the bike too. I was still very frustrated with my bike. I got her turned around. Finally I figured out the trick to start my bike. It’s the same thing I do to start the kids bikes every time – kick start while holding the throttle wide open. We were all good and riding downhill toward the turn off point.

Lauren crashed. She caught a wet rut and it completely routed her sideways until she crashed. There was nothing she could do. It’s what Craig and I call a plain old dirt bike crash. They just happen. There’s not much you can do about it. She was upset. She was cyring (but desperately trying not to). I had to shut down my bike. We calmed her down pretty easily and explained to her that it wasn’t her fault. Sure she could have tried to avoid the rut, but sometimes it just happens. We showed her the characteristics of the trail, what she got into, what it did to her, and she understood and I think learned something. We got everyone together and Craig took a picture before we headed off again.

The turn off was within sight. We’d been done with this hill shortly. I pointed to the pile of gravel at the turn, and told Lauren that’s where she should turn. She said ok and headed off. She went right past it. Never slowed down. Never made any indication that she wanted to turn. She headed straight down the road to places I’d never been. I panicked. I yelled. I tried to start my bike. I ran instead.

Ever run with dirt bike gear and a 20lb pack on your back after a kid going downhill on a 50cc dirt bike on a road you’ve never been down? You’re never going to catch them. It’s impossible. Instead I ran back to Craig and told him to go get her. He took off, then I headed back in her direction. He caught her and got her turned around. I caught up and asked where she was going. Her answer was “I don’t know.” We often remind ourselves around here – “Lauren are you five?”

While all this was happening, I got a couple of glimpses of the trail we were turning onto. Sure it was the trail we came from earlier, but what I didn’t realize was that it was slightly up hill going this way and covered with rocks and roots. Holy crap she was going to crash again.

Nope. No crash. She rode it like a champ.

Everyone did.

Now was the giant puddle that nearly crossed the entire width of the trail. Only an off-camber root was exposed on the one side to ride over to get around it. I thought for sure one of them would crash in the puddle. Lay the bike completely over and sit there up to their waste in muddy water.

Nope. They both got around it like mini enduro queens.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was completely fried by this point. Between my bike not starting, Lauren crashing twice, then heading off on her own adventure across the Pennsylvania coal landscape I was done.

Every little rock, puddle, root, or stick that they came across freaked me out. I thought for sure one was going to crash into a pile of life long terror and disaster.

Never happened. They hit a lot of things they could have avoided, but they handled it each time. They dabbed where any beginner would dab. They kept motoring on. It was amazing, but it was exhausting me.

We made it back to the flat fast dirt road where the technical challenges no longer existed. Now all we had to worry about were the lunatics. We had decided earlier that we’d ride past our cars to another reservoir and potentially check it out for a little more ride time. Craig and Abigail made it first and stopped.

Lauren kept going. All by herself she just kept riding down the road.

Just as perplexing, I had stopped my bike (couldn’t get it started) and started running again.

In the distance I could hear some quads hauling ass our way.

I got scared. I ran faster.

I think we all got scared. I ran faster.

I actually caught her.

“Lauren, where are you going? Why didn’t you stop?”

“I don’t know.”

I made her get off and walk back. She was upset. She was very upset.

I finally told her, “Lauren you are totally kicking ass as far as riding this dirt bike goes. You’re doing amazing things on it. You’ve got people taking your picture as you ride by, but you’re not following directions. You absolutely have to follow directions if you want to be safe.”

We all recovered and decided we’d save the other reservoir for another time. The quads ripped by, then we started our bikes and headed back to the cars.

For me it was an exhausting day. It was far more stressful than anything I’d ever tried with the girls (an icy Whiteface had nothing on this). What’s worse is that I never even imagined that it would be this way. Others did, but I was clueless. I am totally grateful that Craig came along. I can’t believe I was foolish enough to think I could have done this by myself. I mean, I could have, but I would have gone to a totally different level of exhaustion and quite likely less success.

In the end it was awesome. I would totally do it again and don’t regret at all that we did. The girls did amazingly well on their bikes. Sure we’ve got some practice ahead of us (brake drills), but it’s only going to make the next experience better.

It’s far better to try, learn, improve than to have not tried at all.

– b

ps. Lauren when you read this when you’re older, though you see a lot of Lauren this and Lauren that, it had everything to do with the fact that you’re five – freaking five! I only wish I had spent a little more time preparing you and myself for this. It’s nothing but brake drills for a week!

Our route.