• Hi everyone,

    As you all know, Coffee (Dean) passed away a couple of years ago. I am Dean's ex-wife's husband and happen to have spent my career in tech. Over the years, I occasionally helped Dean with various tech issues.

    When he passed, I worked with his kids to gather the necessary credentials to keep this site running. Since then (and for however long they worked with Coffee), Woodschick and Dirtdame have been maintaining the site and covering the costs. Without their hard work and financial support, CafeHusky would have been lost.

    Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working to migrate the site to a free cloud compute instance so that Woodschick and Dirtdame no longer have to fund it. At the same time, I’ve updated the site to a current version of XenForo (the discussion software it runs on). The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.

    Unfortunately, the new software version doesn’t support importing the old site’s styles, so for now, you’ll see the XenForo default style. This may change over time.

    Coffee didn’t document the work he did on the site, so I’ve been digging through the old setup to understand how everything was running. There may still be things I’ve missed. One known issue is that email functionality is not yet working on the new site, but I hope to resolve this over time.

    Thanks for your patience and support!

2 Weeks In The High Sierra: Granite, Water And Dirt

WoodsChick said:
Those are very small Giant Sequoias, Sequioadendron Giganteum, largest trees in the world by volume. The largest known living organism on earth is a Giant Sequoia found in the same forest just northwest of where we were camped. California happens to have the tallest trees in the world as well, the Coast Redwood, Sequoia Sempervirens, at 379 feet tall. The oldest living trees on earth are also found here in the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest. The oldest one there is about 4,000 years old. Another fun fact: Caliornia has the lowest elevation in the continental US, 282' below sea level, and the highest, Mt. Whitney at 14,494'. They are less than 100 miles apart as the crow flies :)

I love this photo I took of Dirtdame last year down in the Sequia NF. The trees are impressive, but pretty small compared to the mature ones...
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lol i thought they might be sequoias but wasnt too sure. very cool to be around things that big that are living organisms, i want to get out there one of theese days.
 
the morning pics are very cool also. makes me imagine of gettin up and grabbin the recurve bow to go out stalkin elk or something lol :thumbsup:
 
WHITEROCKET5.9 said:
lol i thought they might be sequoias but wasnt too sure. very cool to be around things that big that are living organisms, i want to get out there one of theese days.
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I highly recommend it :thumbsup: California has a pretty bad reputation in a lot of select circles for various and assorted reasons, but it's a beautiful state with a lot to offer.

WHITEROCKET5.9 said:
the morning pics are very cool also. makes me imagine of gettin up and grabbin the recurve bow to go out stalkin elk or something lol :thumbsup:
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Yeah, I could see that :) The meadow had a really neat look to it, with steam rising from the river. There was a pretty big wildfire going on northwest of the meadow in the Golden Trout Wilderness and we saw the smoke heading our way the night before. It kind of botched up the air quality in the valley there and a few other places but it made for a really spectacular sunset later that night...which I didn't get a picture of, believe it or not :banghead:
 
Our last dirt ride of the trip...kind of a sad occasion for us, knowing we probably wouldn't make it back down here til next year. Little did we know how sad it would be :(
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Speakin' of sad, how do ya like that focus?
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We were getting buzzed by kamikaze hummingbirds while watching the deer...
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Eric's up in that saddle there...
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What's he doing up there, you ask? Dealing with Mechanical Gremlin #7, that's what. He was trying to figure out where all the squeaking and squealing was coming from. The night before we heard a little noise while he was wheeling the bike around, sounded like squeaky brakes, but it was faint and not thought to be a big deal. No squeaks at all in the morning, no squeaks for the first 5 miles, then all screechy hell broke loose....
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Turns out Eric's fairly new WR250 with 755 miles on it was losing the rear wheel bearings. He was not happy. We decided to tip-toe back to camp. He rode ahead while I goofed off and took photos...
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Can you spot Eric way down there waiting for me? This a very steep section of Beach Trail that drops down into the Rattlesnake Creek drainage. There's only one switchback...
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Heading for that one switchback...
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Well, he couldn't have been too upset about his bearings, as he was still taking photos :excuseme:
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We rode through the creek along the bottom of the drainage and then started the long climb back towards camp...
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We'd left pretty early, and had only ridden about 12 miles or so, but we spent a lot of time futzing with Eric's WR and I was starting to feel the heat...
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We returned from the ride, loaded up all the bikes and broke camp. We headed out towards the east and down to HWY 395. We'd been up at high elevation for almost 2 weeks straight, but down on 395 summer was in full swing. It was Friday afternoon and we didn't have to be back til Sunday.



Now, y'all didn't think this ride report was going to end without a few glimpses of my favorite thing, didja?


That's what I thought :D


Just a little bit more to come...


WoodsChick
 
7point62 said:
Am enjoying this mightily - there's a bunch of really high quality photographs to soak up too. :)

BTW I had a vaguely similar breakdown to Eric out in the wilds on my old XR600. Part of the choke butterfly made a jump for freedom and went through the motor. Fortunately the only damage it did was to bash the spark plug gap shut... I hope the KTM was just as lucky.
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I was thinking of you and this post today! We got the KTM motor back 2 days ago, and our motor guy didn't really find anything wrong. He lapped a valve seat that had slight nick in it but found no trace of the broken piece of slide and no damage anywhere. Eric put the motor in last night but it wouldn't start for love nor money. It was late so he locked up the garage, only to stew about it all night and all day. He tried to fire it up today but got the same thing. He checked the spark plug gap and voila'! It's purring like an angry lion now :thumbsup: He checked it before and thought it was good but he probably couldn't see it. He's known for awhile that he needs new glasses but this was the final straw...he's making an eye appointment tomorrow :busted:

Thanks, 7point62!
 
Nice story, good pics.
Lots of issues for you guys this trip!

We just got back from a 4-day in KM with the ADV group. Was a good time, saw a lot of the same trails. Definitely a great year up there for trailing.
 
Hey WoodsChick - I'm glad that the Big Pumpkin is fighting fit again - if it's any consolation to Eric I have to reach for the glasses occasionally these days too (and spark plugs are a bit smaller than they used to be...)
 
WoodsChick said:
Hey! Long time no see! How's your TXC running? Yeah, we had planned on riding the dirtbikes anyway, but it was kind of a drag not having the KTM. We would have done more bike camping rides (more than the one we did later in the week while 2-up on the 610:D) but it all worked out OK like it usually does. We had a great time without it :)
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Yeah looks like alls well that ends well, quite the adventure ride two up! :thumbsup:
The TC is still running, got the carb dialed in a bit better and will be replacing the coil soon (have a spare just need to install it). Although I'm kinda drooling over that new TE449...:eek:
 
CJBROWN said:
Nice story, good pics.
Lots of issues for you guys this trip!

We just got back from a 4-day in KM with the ADV group. Was a good time, saw a lot of the same trails. Definitely a great year up there for trailing.
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Yep, I've been following that thread; Looks like a good time was had by all, but criminy there were a lot of riders there! :eek:Don't know if I could handle that many folks on one ride :)

Stroker Ace said:
HEAVENS TO BETSY....... Never a dull moment.....
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Nope...just the way we like it! Well, minus the pushing the behemoth uphill part...

7point62 said:
Hey WoodsChick - I'm glad that the Big Pumpkin is fighting fit again - if it's any consolation to Eric I have to reach for the glasses occasionally these days too (and spark plugs are a bit smaller than they used to be...)
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Yeah, getting old ain't easy, is it? :busted:

Srad600 said:
Yeah looks like alls well that ends well, quite the adventure ride two up! :thumbsup:
The TC is still running, got the carb dialed in a bit better and will be replacing the coil soon (have a spare just need to install it). Although I'm kinda drooling over that new TE449...:eek:
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You and me, both, pal :D Yeah, the two-up ride was fun; makes me want to get a big bike for the two of us so I can take in the scenery and snap photos while Eric does all the hard work :D
I'm holding out for the Nuda XC model :thumbsup: You still in the neighborhood? Drop on by sometime, drop that new coil in!
 
Alright, time to wrap this up :p

We headed down to 395, one of the most scenic highways in CA. The eastern Sierra is pretty special, and I always like loooking up and seeing Mt Whitney staring back down at me. Wish I'd gotten a decent photo of it.

We goofed off on 395, taking our time and enjoying the last days of one of the most enjoyable trips we've ever taken. This river was running fast and furious...
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There's a lot of opportunity to get off the beaten path in the eastern Sierra...
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The Darth Pose Lives On...
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What trip could possibly be complete without warm water??
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It was hot out, 97 degrees, and the thought of a hot springs might seem kinda silly, but this water was about 95 degrees...perfect!
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We watched the sun go down while soaking and reliving all the fun things we'd done and all the neat-o things we'd seen...
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This, folks, is what a happy man looks like...:)
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The sky was beautiful and it kept changing every few minutes...
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We were pretty much blown away by our experience here, and by the goodness of the whole trip in general. Yeah, we had a few mechanical issues...well, ok, more than a few...but from start to finish we just had a fantastic time riding our bikes, hanging out together and experiencing some of the best this great state of California has to offer :thumbsup:


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Thanks for coming along, everyone!
 
Like everyone else, I really enjoyed your trip.
And it is nice to be reminded that there are so many nice places in California.
 
Did Eric happen to pick up a new fender sticker at MotoXotica when picking up the TE 610? Please say yes! That one on the front fender gets to me for some reason. :eek:
 
Xcuvator said:
Like everyone else, I really enjoyed your trip.
And it is nice to be reminded that there are so many nice places in California.
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Thanks! Come on down sometime and ride some of those nice places with us :)

Rob578 said:
Awesome report
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Thanks, Rob578! It was fun putting it together.

XLEnduroMan said:
Did Eric happen to pick up a new fender sticker at MotoXotica when picking up the TE 610? Please say yes! That one on the front fender gets to me for some reason. :eek:
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:lol: That sticker has pretty much been fubar'd since the bike was new...we're surprised it's still on there at all! We're kinda curious to see how long it takes for it to fall off completely. It's a waiting game, now :D If you want I can post weekly updates on the condition of the sticker :lol: Husqvarna should supply us with a new one. We saw a really pretty gold one at Dan's last week and Eric's kinda thinking about that, though, so there is hope :thumbsup:
 
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