After spending the bulk of a Wednesday evening in Will’s garage building up the Dream. It became apparent that i would need to put it through some trials. Sure i could have taken’ it out to one of the local parks, and wound it around some simple trails, or i could put it on the roof, and head to my in-laws for Easter. Then i would take it out and ride it to my dads, and get a good balanced feel for her, some road and some dirt.
I figured i would couple this ride, with meeting a couple of my gentleman friends at my fathers, for some traditional target shooting and bbq. Perfect, I’m motivated to get out of bed, I’m motivated to ride, and i’m motivated to get there, ah the trifecta.
I got out of bed to see that the rain from the evening before had subsided and it was midly overcast, and cool. After managing several hugs from my daughter, and watching my son crawl in earnest for the first time, i set out.
Descending the hill, the thought of my sanity was questioned. this wasn’t cool, it was down right cold, the bike really hadn’t been tested, and yet i was heading south where cellular coverage ebbed away, and would leave me at the mercy of Susquehanna County’s finest. Not a comforting thought, given they typical person drives an F350 superduty, with a 3 inch lift. However I had faith in the builder, figured it was only about 20+ miles, and that at a minimum i could limp it to my fathers, in the event of a system failure.
The first thing i noticed was how well the bike descended, even as my teeth chattered, the dream felt like a thoroughbred begging to be run out.
The roads turned out to what i expected them to be as i entered PA. Horrible! It was here that i found my first mistake of the morning, other than even getting on the bike, and that was that i forgot to inflate the tires to the max PSI. That made the climbing far harder than expected.
The first major climb was a 2 mile ascent, that when i told my father the way in which i had come, he looked at me as though crazy, and said. “hell even the fire company’s new 400 hp truck hates that hill” Yeah, and now so do i.
However like after any good ascent there is generally a good decent, this bike dropped of the top of the hill faster than Jessica Simpson dropped out of an advanced placement class.
Without pushing the bike hit a paltry 46 mph, and was as smooth doing it as my Masi Grand Criterium. I was then thinking just how solid a bike we had built. I climbed the rest of the way into Friendsville, where i had planned to enter stage 2 Dirt…
I came up to the dirt road, which on one end was fairly unadventurous, smooth, servicing several homes, but i new from hunting that the road turned into more of a traditional fire road rutted, muddy, rocky, and full of surprise.
I took a swig from the old canteen and headed in. The road was a gradual decent that allowed the speed to push 40 mph, about when i realized that it turned from a groomed road, into a trail. I thought to myself, should i slow, or … yeah it was or. I kept the hammer down, and pounded it through to the bottom of the trail. Yeah get some i thought, nothing like a high speed decent over baby head sized rocks, rutts and mud and slime. Yeah it was awesome.
Of course then i had to climb and do this twice more, but the bike handled it with ease. The only issue came on the second decent where it was even more rough. I had my hand on the hoods, and after a severe rough patch, it felt that that bars had broke, and come away from the bike. ( they only rotated down) that being said, I abondadende the hoods for the top of the bars, and the PAUL brake levers. Yeah those kick ass too!
I rolled in to my dad’s at the prescribed time, with a smile of satisfaction, that there is yet one more quality ride hanging in my garage.
FM
