 with Nick Sipes of the Limestone Lizards Redbird
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  The weather was very dry for 2 months now
with only small spurts of rain. The ground was so dry that it would have
taken an auger to drill a hole in the earth to put a tent stake in it. Rain
was something that the corn and soybean fields in southern Indiana dreamed
of. Low and behold, Monday before the run weekend 4" of rain fell in some
local areas and more was in the forecast. Now, for some time there was fog
and misty conditions almost to the day of the run with 60's being the
average temperature. The night run might be a slippery one after all.
Anything would have beaten having to wear a painters respirator to combat
the dust that would have been stirred up. 4:00 Saturday came and the
Limestone Lizards finally fired the engines and took off for the night run
at Redbird. It had started raining again at about 8:30 that morning and
never really slacked off. That put us there right at 5:00 and an hour before
bean dinner time. Plenty of time to chat and get everything unloaded and
ready for last chance preparations. |
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 The parking lot is quite large and is all
graveled with a very nice gate house. Bathrooms are now Port-a-potties,
since the bath house was burnt down by some locals. They also have a number
of concrete ramps for the easy loading and unloading of ATVs and bikes. To
date they have 4 marked four-by trails and several ATV/bike trails. As
expected, there was quite a showing, due to the rain, a 2hr trail becomes a
6hr trail and we were about to find out. Soon after we got there and
unloaded, we were told a drivers meeting was to be held. While at the
meeting they had the raffle, 50/50 drawing and let us in on the poker run
rules. |
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 After dinner we all packed up and hit the
trail. WOW! was it slippery and nasty. Ed led in his Cherokee, then Kevin
followed in his Cherokee, and Mark in the wrangler rounded up by myself and
my son in Phoenix. Trail one was told to be the easiest trail and after
all the rain we chose to go that route. All was fine until we found the sign
for the hard trail. Thats the way we turned and everything changed. There
was lots of ups and downs with some mud strewn between.
 There were two
places that wreaked havoc on us and thats what I will focus on. The first
was where the trail went over an embankment, through a long mud hole, and
then up a steep incline with a 3' vertical on the right side. Kevin clawed
his way to the top only to find it drops back down the other side. Mark was
next and after fighting it, and almost sliding sideways back down numerous
times, his front drive shaft pulled apart. While all of that was happening,
Kevin called back on the CB that he was hung up just past the next obstacle.
As Mark did repairs, the rest of us wandered up to help Kevin. His Cherokee
was sideways on a off camber hill wedged between two trees and with a
caved-in drivers side door. It took a chain hoist and some good placements
on Kevins part to get him out. When we did get him out, he continued on
through that section then stopped to get back to Mark. As Mark was finishing
his repairs I pulled my Sammy up to the same hill that took the Wrangler.
 First I tried to crawl it, that didnt work. We backed up and hit it in
third gear and this carried me right to the top then back down the other
side. Mark followed next then Ed. On the last obstacle it was a slick fest.
Everyone had problems with the off camber steep climb. But after some
extracting, all made it out. Once out of the trail we finished up our Poker
hands, played on a few side obstacles, then went back to the parking area to
call it a night. Sunday we stayed for a daylight run. Mostly we just doodled
around playing a bit on trails one, two, and 14. We did do some extracting
too. I buried my Samurai and needed a tug by Kevin, and Mark rolled his on
its side. Both incidents were on trail 2. Most of our time was spent
watching the full tube buggies, including the Snipe from the Badlands,
playing on the obstacles we only held nightmares about. But it was all good.
Good company, food and wheeling made the weekend a success. On our way out,
I spoke with the gate managers about the event and found out they WILL
probably do it again. |
08/11/10 15:31:31
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