[BLD]

To anyone familiar with Prarie City OHV in Northern CA, it’s not the best place to ride trails, but I managed to find my own fun on Sunday! I’ve been teaching my daughter to ride (she rides a 50 and I ride my wife’s pit bike with her) so I haven’t had a chance to ride my 300 much lately.

Usually Prarie City is rocky and nasty and since I don’t ride MX tracks, I look for new obstacles I’m not sure how to navigate out on the trails. Everything is muddy from the recent storms so after pulling a rookie move and crashing in some muddy ruts my first trail, I said screw it and started attacking every muddy obstacle I could find. The jetting on my bike is perfect in this cold weather and I can’t believe how my 300 can lug like a tractor, and at the slightest blip, jump up a steep and muddy hill like a goat!

Everything was going well and I’m learning a lot about how my bike handles in the mud (still on same Maxxis mountain rear, and Dunlop MX front the bike came with when I found it). I was learning to spot the difference between standing water on a rocky trail and deep ruts that would swallow half the bike, while enjoying powering through them all! In a sick and twisted way I think I enjoyed the deep nasty puddles better...

Still, some leasons are learned the hard way and I went down in a second mud puddle later in the day. This one was much bigger, and much deeper. I laughed at how I must have looked trying to lift my bike up out of the muck! At this point I would like to say thank goodness for the magic button. The time and money spent fixing mine was worth every penny at that moment when the bike and I were covered head to toe in mud! Even though I was covered in mud, I kept riding after a quick trip back to the truck. I had to clean my goggles off and I changed my gloves in hopes to get a little better grip...

To be fair the gasser is not a total superhero and does sound weird when you fill the airbox halfway with muddy water, it just doesn’t know it! I made this sound several times as I found deeper holes than I was looking for, and every time a blip of the throttle kept me moving and above sea level. At this point I’m really happy I cleaned the airbox out a couple weeks ago, and blew the gunk out the one way drain valve at the bottom. Later when I cleaned the bike and changed the air filter, everthing past the airbox was squeaky clean, the filter side did require a good cleaning tho! All in all it was a great day and I found some great spots to go mudding between the normal trails.

The biggest lessons I learned was that mudding is fun on on 2 wheels, and my boots aren’t even close to waterproof! I also learned to push myself and trust my bike more. I love how I can lug this motor around the tight stuff, and with a blip send it up a steep, wet, rocky hill. I actually hope I can get a few more foul weather days this season because this is really fun. My only regret is that I didn’t take any more pics of the bike or myself as swamp monsters. The only pic I got was after my first romp, which was nothing after I gave it a proper mud bath later. In fact, my wife had me use the pressure washer on my riding gear too before putting it in the washer. All in all I had a blast and can?t wait to do it again.