So it’s Sunday. Don & I are staying in the Holiday Inn in Trinidad waiting for Jim & Craig. The hotel is charging a rate comparable to Waikiki, there’s no fridge, the elevator sounds like someone is dragging a brick down the street with a chain, the air conditioner is out, and the breakfast nazi won’t let us sit in the breakfast area because it doesn’t “open” for another three minutes. Having seen some trails about five minutes from the hotel, we decide to take the bikes out for a little test run. We were just going to be gone for a few minutes……
We jump off in the dirt and cruise around on some trails for few minutes before coming to this steep single-track disappearing up a hill. Don is ahead of me and stops to consider the wisdom of blasting up this blind, gnarly looking hill. Well, I’d spent way too much time & money getting the KTM ready for this trip and not having the riding chops to use all of her potential was beside the point! Being the “When in doubt, MORE THROTTLE!” kinda guy, I blast around him and start up the hill. After about 50 feet, my spidey senses started letting me know something was wrong. The ground is a mixture of scree & talcum powder that hasn’t seen water for millennia. RPM’s climbing, losing speed, crap! Feathering the clutch & surfing toward the right edge of the trail gives me just enough traction. Yes! I’m going to make it! What the devil?!?! My windshield flies off, hits me in the face and skitters out in front of me in the trail. I’m surging forward into what turns out to be a right turn switchback with me high on the inside and still trying to figure out why my windshield attacked me…damn.
The get-off wasn’t bad at all. I pick up the bike and notice immediately that I can’t stand up without my boots sliding two feet downhill. My feet are by the back wheel and the front wheel is higher than my head. I immediately deduced this hill was steeper than I anticipated. Getting her back on the trail and facing downhill generated buckets of sweat. Successfully, I flushed both eyes with a mixture of sweat & sunscreen AND managed to get the windshield under the front tire. My eyes only sustained minor radiation burns, but the windshield was another story. While it made a pretty good sled for getting the front of the bike pointed downhill, the poor thing was no longer something you could see through.
Coasted her back to the bottom of the hill where Don has been watching with a bemused expression. After washing out my eyes, I hauled my carcass back up the hill for windshield retrieval. Four zip-ties later, the windshield was back in place and she was good to go! Don politely declined the opportunity to take a shot at the hill and we headed into town for food. While riding to find the best piece of pie in Trinidad, I was grinning and thinking, “I’m glad I got that out of the way early.”
