One cursed Husky!

This is a little story about what I believe to be the most cursed husky on earth. A local guy here in town bought this 2009 TE 450 brand new. Let's call him Mark. Mark bought this husky with insurance money he received after a very bad car accident. Within a few months he had crashed the bike, tearing his ACL in the process. While Mark was laid up he loaned the bike to another guy here in town. We'll call him Rick. One day the bike tosses Rick into a pile of rocks breaking both his arms in the process. Now Mark and Rick are both laid up from the same bike. At this point a third guy decides to take care of the bike. One day he takes the bike to the mountains for a ride and makes it about a mile or so from camp when the bike spits him off into a tree and breaks his femur. So now there are 3 guys that have been badly injured from the same motorcycle. At this point the bike is just over a year old, has less than 1000 miles on it and is absolutely beat to hell.

By now the owner, Mark has recovered from his knee surgery and is ready to ride again. Mark isn't someone I would consider very talented on a bike. In fact, his only real talent seems to be going to jail. His is in and out of jail quite a bit for various things. Mostly stupidity. Anyway, Mark decides he is gonna race a local hare scrambles here one weekend. About a lap or so into the race the bike spits Mark off again re tearing the same ACL he tore the last time. Knee surgery #2.

Now I mentioned Mark likes to visit jail frequently. A friend of mine, Stan is related to Mark and bails him out of jail every time he goes in. By this time Mark has blown through all the money he received from the car accident. The only thing he seems to have a surplus of are bad ideas. Mark has yet to pay Stan back for bailing him out of jail so many times and Stan decides to confiscate the cursed husky as payment. Stan is unable to get the keys for the bike and decides to re wire a new key switch himself. He got something wrong and the bike won't start. Frustrated, he leaves the bike in his garage, overnight, with the key still on apparently. The next morning he opens the garage to the smell of burning wires. He tells me that something had shorted under the gas tank and been burning all night. Possibly almost burning down the whole garage. Off to the mechanic the bike goes.

For the next couple of years the bike mostly sits in various garages. Sometimes it runs, sometimes something is broken, but it mostly sits.

A couple of days ago Stan decides to go meet his brother up in the mountains and takes the husky for a ride. When Stan gets to his brothers camp he discovers the back tire is flat. So he decides to stash the bike in a dark stand of trees and come back for it later in the day. Stan takes his truck up the canyon later that day to retrieve the bike only to find that a flash flood has made the numerous creek crossings impossible to cross.

This is where I come into the story. Stan calls me on friday afternoon to ask if we can take my truck to retrieve the bike on Saturday morning. His truck has 2 flat tires from the failed rescue mission to get the cursed husky. I agree and we head off Saturday morning to get the bike.

Now, this may be the final chapter in the cursed life of this 2009 TE 450. We get to the place where Stan stashed the bike with no drama. Everywhere we look there are signs of the flash flood from the day before. We are simply amazed at the power of water. We walk over to the stand of trees where the bike was hidden only to find no bike! We immediately start thinking who could have stolen the bike. And how? It was well hidden and there are no tracks leading out of the canyon. I start looking around and realize that the bike was hidden in a low area that has been flooded. It is not quite a wash or creek bed, but definitely a low area where water occasionally runs. I start walking down the wash area and about 40 yards or so from the stand of trees I see a tiny sliver of tire poking out from beneath a mountain of rubble washed down the mountain. We walk over to it and barely visible from under three and a half feet of rock and gravel are a rear tire and the tip of the left handlebar. The flash flood had washed the bike down the mountain about 40 yards and buried it with gravel and rocks from the size of peanuts to the size of beach balls. It took the 2 of us almost two hours to dig the bike out. The flood had wedged the bike between 2 trees. One tree wedged in the area between the rear tire and the airbox. Every crack and cranny on the bike is absolutely packed with mud and grit. The front fender is gone, the rear end is twisted and mangled so badly I don't even bother to check and see what is still usable. The levers are twisted, one grip is missing and the shifter is bent way out of shape. The seat is broken in 2 pieces and the headlight housing is missing. Only the actual headlight itself remains dangling from its wire, but inside the lens is packed completely full of mud. The bike won't go into neutral so we have to take off the chain to push it. The front brakes don't work. Probably because the hose has been ripped from the caliper. This doesn't matter anyway, because both front and rear discs are bent. The fork tubes are beat to $hit as well as the stanction tubes. A complete rebuild is in order for the forks but luckily Stan can save on shipping because the shock is also blown and smashed to hell and the back end bounces like a pogo stick. The airbox is packed full of gravel and the filter is collapsed. The throttle is almost impossible to twist. Not sure if it's due to gravel in the twist grip of gravel packed inside the throttle body, or both. Probably both. The coolant overflow tank is ripped loose and every bit of plastic is either missing or destroyed. The front tire isn't flat, but the rim is bent and there are a couple of spokes broken in half. The only bright side I can see, and this is a shameless plug, is that the bike had our 7602 radiator braces and guards on it. The radiators are fine after being buried under at least 1 ton of rock. Water runs out the exhaust when we flip the bike over. Water runs out of the airbox. Water runs out of a new crack in the frame. Well, water runs out of almost everywhere when we stand the bike up. To add insult to injury his new camelback and helmet are gone. We later found the helmet about 1/4 mile away.... packed full of mud.

I wish I had had a good camera with me to get some better pics. All we had was Stan's crappy camera phone so we only got a couple of pictures of the carnage.

This is how we found the bike. With only the grip poking out of the gravel as well as a bit of rear tire showing.




After almost 2 hours of moving rocks and gravel.




Sooo... In the end.

2009 Husqvarna TE 450 for sale.
Low mileage, new tires. Slight water damage, needs some tlc. Make offer.


THE FINAL CHAPTER!!

Well today the final chapter in this story was written. Last November I moved the 7602 shop out of the building we started in and into a new building we built. Stan's family owned the building we moved out of. It was an old movie theater converted to a shop. Since I was no longer renting the shop space Stan moved a bunch of his belongings in. One of which was the cursed Husky. Still plugged with mud and grit and waiting.... Well this morning sometime around 9:30 the waiting was over. A fire broke out somewhere in the building. The howling spring wind quickly fanned the flames into an inferno. By noon the fire had consumed the entire structure and the one next to it as well. Two complete building structures gone. Multiple apartments, several businesses gone. The whole thing is now just a pile of smoking rubble. Everyone was able to get out ok, so there was no loss of life or injury, but everything in the 2 buildings is a complete loss. What was once a movie theater and the birthplace of 7602 Racing is no longer. Several classic cars, an old Harley, an old Yamaha, boxes and boxes of tools, and one cursed 2009 TE450 now lie at the bottom of a smoldering pit.

I wasn't able to get any pics due to my camera phone taking several swimming lessons in my pocket but here is a link with a couple pics.

http://www.alamosanews.com/v2_news_articles.php?heading=0&page=72&story_id=37941

http://www.alamosanews.com/v2_main_page.php

WOW. Leave it uncleaned and unfixed as a display / conversation starter. Got pictures of it after you got it back home? Crazy man.

I felt the same. In the end all there was to do was laugh. simply amazing how buried it was.

Not sure, I haven't seen it since it's been cleaned up. He's still not sure what he is going to do with the bike.

I haven't been over to his place since we unloaded it. I think Stan went into an alcohol induced coma shortly after I dropped him off. haha.