Rally Bola De Goma

[random1781]

I FINALLY found a rally that's both happening at a time and place around us AND doesn't cost $2000. Instead it's $2700 pesos, or $157 USD. Rally Bola De Goma is a series of single day rides around central/southern Mexico, and I'm doing the one in Oaxaca. I entered in the DP Libre Rally class, so I'll be taking a stab at an interesting 280-300km route.

 

Trying to understand or translate route difficulty is....difficult. One person's easy is another's worst nightmare. I'm not really sure what to expect, but since the rally is on March 23, I have the next few weeks to find practice spots, ditch 50 kg of crap, and practice riding unladen. There are supposed to be sandy stretches, rocky terrain, and water crossings. We've just spent the last couple weeks on the coast, so I'm good with sand. I'll be focusing mainly on getting my setup dialed in to the bike's new weight and practicing the basics along with working on the water and the rocky stretches.

 

Fortunately we stumbled upon a great place to start just recently...

 

 

Tips/tricks/suggestions welcome!

[Hibobb]

Super Duper.... Keep the reports coming.

Best of luck to you!!

[mpatch]

That’s the beauty of riding a heavy bike all the time once you get rid of the pup and all your gear it’ll be like a riding a mountain bike. 
Piece of cake. 

[random1781]

6 minutes ago, mpatch said:

That’s the beauty of riding a heavy bike all the time once you get rid of the pup and all your gear it’ll be like a riding a mountain bike. 
Piece of cake. 

You'd think, but when I ditched everything to practice in NV, it took a bit to just get used to the different feel. It was nice being able to readily pick the bike up though.

[random1781]

I finally got my first real day of practice in, dropping the bags (that matter) and, sadly the carrier. The front bags are just rain/cold weather gear, so they're staying on. They weigh nothing and are good protection/cushion.

 

 

The day's ride was just through some backroads in Oaxaca. I started at the beach and immediately turned to the mountains in hopes of finding some interesting trails and some cooler weather. I found the latter, but the smaller trails that I had wanted to ride were closed off, so most of the 270 km I rode were pretty run of the mill...

 

 

The dead-ends also forced me to cut off half the route that I intended on, but that turned out to be for the better. It is indeed extremely strange to ride this thing unladen after 40k km of being loaded up. The only other time I did this recently was in Moab, but honestly the terrain I was riding was so different than what I normally see that I didn't feel odd. Riding like this on trails that I do every day really accentuates the differences.

 

I'm used to the bike being planted and rolling over most terrain. There is no rolling over stuff like this, you either go slow enough to crawl over things or you fly over them. Yes there technically is an in-between, but that threshold seems really small.

 

So I spent most of the day crawling over things and getting accustomed to the bike being loose instead of planted. Normally for me this is a feeling that's only reserved for sand, but fortunately I enjoy sand. I'm also getting accustomed to how little input it takes to do things, whether it's throttle or weighting the pegs.

 

All in all a fun day, but I do miss the snoot behind me. We just moved to a cabin up in the mountains near a ton of trails, so more to come. Really 90% of what I need to do is just focus on the basics like body position and get accustomed to the way the bike moves now.

[Hollybrook]

@random1781 did Surak look at you with concern when you removed his perch?  My dog would have given me "the look"!

 

It sure sounds like you are having a lot of fun!

[random1781]

28 minutes ago, Hollybrook said:

@random1781 did Surak look at you with concern when you removed his perch?  My dog would have given me "the look"!

 

It sure sounds like you are having a lot of fun!

He's absolutely beside himself when either of us leaves and will try to chase after us or get as close as he possibly can. Here he is nose to the door after Odessa did something crazy, like go to the store without him.

 

 

But yeah specifically riding off without him is his worst nightmare. Actually the hardest part of this whole thing for me is to leave him behind the whole time too, so I kinda get it!

[random1781]

Yesterday while riding I discovered a MX track ten minutes away from where we're staying...

 

Google Maps

---

★★★★★ · Off-road race track

 

This is exactly what I've been looking for, so I reached out to the whatsapp number. The guy who owns the place was understandably hesitant to let a Tenere onto his track, but he invited us over to his house/restaurant to chat.

 

Quick tangent/rant: there's this stereotype that if you have an adventure bike, then your happy place is a BDR. This has easily become my pet peeve over the last couple of years, because it's either that or you get some version of "oh so you think you're Pol Tarres?" which is the lowest effort, least funny quip you could possibly make.

 

Anyway, this to say that I knew that I'd have to do some convincing, especially because this is his track and not just some random recommendations he was throwing out. Fortunately I had some pictures queued up that gave him some confidence. However, the track itself is an ~8 km loop without any bailout points, so his concern (and mine!) is getting stuck out there. There is also apparently a small practice area with obstacles and whatnot, which would still be great to spend some time on if nothing else.

 

So he agreed to both take me around the general area tomorrow and show me a few routes that are literally off the road and more along the lines of what I've been looking for as well as and the the track itself. At least I think that's what we're doing tomorrow. Still working on my Spanish.

[Hibobb]

2 hours ago, random1781 said:

Still working on my Spanish

 cerveza & baño, all a guy needs.

[random1781]

Went out for an hour ride around some lesser used roads here before looping around to the track, which we wound up doing part of, and which was an absolute blast. Fun single track, ridiculous climbs and descents, and the practice area.

 

Turns out a 200 kilo bike absolutely crushes small tires

 

But not these!

 

 

I couldn't make it up the expert climb at the end

 

I was [unsurprisingly] assured that the rally will be absolutely nothing like this. I'm still excited about it, but I'm still on the search for some type of event that fits somewhere in between straight hard enduro and dirt roads. Since I don't think this is really a thing, I'm now actively seeking out other MX tracks and areas to practice and play around in. This was just as fun as riding around Moab was, but with the added benefit of this terrain being much more forgiving.

[random1781]

Well bike maintenance is mostly done, just need to get it washed and top off with some coolant.

 

Tomorrow is the bike and equipment inspection. I apparently need to find 3 pairs of latex gloves, since those are on the required equipment list. The route just got sent out and it looks pretty fun, basically the same type of stuff that I've been riding the past month, I think...

 

 

There is a section that weaves across a river for a while that looks spicy. 60 of the 290 km are pavement to get to the tracks. Can't wait for Saturday.

[Hollybrook]

Have a great time and be safe! 

[Camel ADV]

Get after it Scott! The race sounds like a blast.

Do you know the spring rates that George set you up with?

[random1781]

4 hours ago, Camel ADV said:

Get after it Scott! The race sounds like a blast.

Do you know the spring rates that George set you up with?

Thanks! Forks are 0.7 kg/mm and I got a 95 N/mm for the Rally Raid extended travel rear. It's for a fully loaded bike, but the forks in particular still perform really well with the bike naked. I've had a few problems with the components though, so I need to round up the tools to work on them.

 

There's no getting around the rear spring being stiff. Really wish I had a hydraulic preload adjuster for it too.

[random1781]

Super fun time at the rally. Here's the quick synopsis, because I haven't had much to eat since breakfast yesterday, which was this...

 

 

 

 

[AZJW]

Nice! Looks like you've acquired some new hardware.

[random1781]

I proudly finished third place in my category....out of six entries!

 

Unfortunately I can't take this with me, so we've settled on a compromise...

 

 

The rest of the cup will inconspicuously remain on the shelf of our airbnb.

 

So this rally was interesting, mostly due to language differences, even though Odessa has picked up a good amount of Spanish in the time we've been here. There was some confusion on when start was, so while I myself was there in time, Odessa had the gopro and didn't make it in time to pass it along to me, so I sadly have no footage from the event. I'm actually happy about this though, because it meant I had no external things to worry about and I could just ride, which is rare.

 

I registered in the Doble Proposito Libre Rally class, which is the non-competitive class doing the rally route, as opposed to the DP route. The DP route is basically dirt roads connecting different pueblas, so suitable for any type of motorcycle.

 

The rally and DP routes in this case were actually 90% the same. The other 10% was technical offshoots suitable for smaller bikes. The first few offshoots were wooded/unmaintained single tracks/goat trails. There was one longer wash, but since it's up in the mountains, it was just rocky instead of sandy, and this was more of an intermittent creek that was clearly used as a trail. It was one of those fun tracks that's rough enough to be interesting but that you can still blast through and try to bottom out, even though I didn't.

 

Not long after that was the hard part, as per the riders' meeting. It's about 2 km of riding along and crisscrossing through a river. This is the route with my pre-rally markings:

 

 

Here's a view of my actual route...

 

 

Right at the 90 degree bend, I came across a stranded rider on a small bike. He said the water was waist-high and he had submerged his bike, so he was pushing it back to get to help. At that point I figured I'd probably have to turn around, but I had to at least see what was ahead. And it was confusing. See all those zig-zags there? It's because I couldn't see where the route was supposed to go for a while, and apparently others couldn't either. Some folks tried crossing here (in red) and going around the north side...

 

 

There was indeed waist-deep water there, and some succeeded, but it wasn't the intended route.

 

I found the way and pushed on. There was some a bit of mud, a shallow crossing, a bit of sand, and then just lots of river rocks. I got a little bit further past another crossing and briefly getting stuck getting up the bank, right here...

 

 

...when one of the staff guys caught up with me. From what I understood, he was telling me that I was on the wrong route. I briefly tried to clarify, but it was pretty clear that he was telling me to turn around, so I did. Turning around here meant that the rest of the route until the end was the DP route, so I was bummed. A large portion of the remainder was pavement, but near the end we were routed through some private land, which was absolutely amazing. It was windy, unused pine forest, climbing up through the clouds before descending back down to the finish at whatever speed you wanted to go.

 

After getting back to the hotel/staging area and talking to folks, it turned out that there was a small part along the river that was pretty gnarly: deep water with giant rocks that folks with small bikes were walking their bikes through. They made the call to nix this route for the Libre riders, so from that point we were on the DP route. I had to backtrack a bit, but it was fun riding.

 

So after getting back, I had to pass my saved track along to the people that were doing the route analysis to make sure you did the actual route and obeyed the speed limit when there was one. The first thing they asked me is if my dog could eat anything. I said sure, and that's how I wound up feeding traditional Oaxacan food to Surak while I waited until I got back to our place to eat some leftovers...

 

[Ede-DE]

Thanks for that interesting report. Sounds like a challenging weekend. 

Any damages on the bike?

[random1781]

On 3/25/2024 at 1:21 AM, Ede-DE said:

Thanks for that interesting report. Sounds like a challenging weekend. 

Any damages on the bike?

Fortunately not much!

• I broke three out of four plastic buckles on a set of empty bags I didn't bother to take off!
• Lost two trim bolts
• One bolt for my tower loosened, but that was immediately noticeable as the whole tower shook pretty violently. One of the brackets for my tablet I made has significantly fatigued and will be cracking soon. Fortunately I addressed both of these things in the next run that's being made now!
• I ingested a decent amount of sand in my exhaust. Guess I should take it off and shake it out?
• Holy cow that rear tire wears out fast. This is the most costly part about the whole deal!