• 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 The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.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!

Complacency and riding...

Rockchucker22

Rockchucker22

Husqvarna
A Class
My 07 610 is soo reliable I've become complacent. I haven't had a major accident or injuries from riding. Now I ride with less tools, survival gear, and parts. I also primarily ride solo, is this a recipe for disaster or continue enjoying the ride and let it take me where it may? I'm getting older and value my family more and more and very much value any input into this question.
 
So your saying accident waiting to happen? I hike, hunt, fish alone. Most of my spare time is alone, far away from anyone. I do know my limits yet I'm very comfortable spending a night without anything. I roam many places that people haven't seen since mining days. I just feel at ease now but don't want to be ....... complacent. I don't race and have nothing to prove but you know a accident can happen any time.
 
I think what makes an adventure an "adventure" is knowing how far away you are from others and from safety and convenience. Me personally I have enjoyed many situations where I was in a dangerous situation and all alone. Thats kinda what makes it exciting. I guess thats the sh1tty part of growing up haha. Responsibility...
 
Just have a routine, don't keep watering down the features that represent "security"
Wear the stuff
Carry the rest.
Leave an itinerary.

I found myself saying occasionally that it was OK to ride in shorts and tennis shoes on town rides. Or maybe left the iiPhone out of my pocket.
 
I went along for many years riding by myself without a serious accident or a mechanical failure out on the trail, so I became complacent. I carried a little tool bag, and didn't concern myself about anything bad happening to me, because I had many years of saddle time and always had my bikes properly prepped and in tip top condition. I knew my limits too, so I didn't worry about "riding over my head" in any given situation.

But one day in the winter of 2004/2005, I got into a situation that tested all my stamina and logical thinking skills when I got mired in quicksand-like mud in the bottom of a familiar ravine, where such an occurrence had never happened before. I was alone, and the day was warm, but I was 11 miles from my truck, it was afternoon and I was soaked in mud almost up to the neck. After the sun set, the temperature would drop to below freezing. A hike seemed out of the question. My cell phone didn't work in that spot. I could not remove my bike from the mire by myself, and only managed to make it fall over and become stuck worse. I ended up dismantling it as far as I could, and carrying the pieces to a high and dry area. The major portion of the bike that was left in one piece now became manageable to drag to dry ground for reassembly. I had the most marginal little tools with me. I reached my truck just after dark. After that incident, I carried more tools, more snacks, more water. I bought a sat phone to carry to those out of the way places. I joined a club, so that I could find people to ride with more often.

Still, even after all that, I had a freak low speed accident that really damaged my ribcage in August. I was glad that somebody was there to pick up the machine for me, because I could have never lifted it, myself. I'm still not ready to get back in the dirt saddle just yet, but that last crash made me think....because I can't really afford to take another impact like that. And my riding partner didn't have my back nearly as well as they should have.
 
Oh I'm definitely not the type to ride without proper safety gear, water, food, basic tools. I guess I mean more of a mental attitude, like I always believe it will work out. Even if something happens I tend to believe I can manage one way or another. I recently did a 300 mile dirt ride solo and found myself pondering the what ifs and this led me to worry about my complacent attitude towards riding. I'm by no means a great rider, average at best. But as mentioned I'm ok with this and ride accordingly.

I did find myself in a similar situation a few years ago in a snowy canyon that beat the crap out of me to get only a few miles. Like you dirt dame I made my way out, a bit wiser!
 
You have to make a compromise. Riding alone, even being prepared, has risks. If your primary concern is your family then find a too fast, too slow riding partner and work around it. I have one guy that is a serious enduro racer and I have no chance of keeping up. He just takes a breather now and then and waits for me to catch up. I even find routes around a few steep and long climbs that he makes and I just can not. He waits at the area I will show up and If I get there and he is not I know I have to look down the hill and see what's up.
 
Rockchucker22 said:
My 07 610 is soo reliable I've become complacent. I haven't had a major accident or injuries from riding. Now I ride with less tools, survival gear, and parts. I also primarily ride solo, is this a recipe for disaster or continue enjoying the ride and let it take me where it may? I'm getting older and value my family more and more and very much value any input into this question.
Click to expand...

Stay alert and stay alive when on a bike ... If you are not alert and paying attention to your surrounding when riding, you might should stay off a bike ... My physical capabilities are eroding for sure with age (55) but I'm still 100% focused when on a bike ...

You might wanna just cut back the riding time and not stop completely ... That might make it more of a 'event' when it happens ... Or maybe have a set out route to explore on some rides ...
 
With family at home I think the SPOT thing could be a big help. Get the tracking feature and show your wife how to follow along on the computer.
I, too, ride an `07 610 with about 23k miles on it and it's been rock solid. We still carry tons of tools and spare cables, etc. just in case. My stock clutch cable went out at 16k miles in the middle of nowhere in Utah on a multi-day ride/camp trip. Would have been a long haul out had I not had a spare cable in my saddle bag. I've been injured far too many times to be complacent about it and so it's always in the back of my mind. It's a priority of mine to make it back to base camp in one piece. Complacency is a scary thing, especially since it can come on so quietly without notice.
 
I've spent quite a bit of time looking at both the spot and in reach PLBs. Also sat phones, this discussion has convinced me it's time, I need to choose one and get it!

Thanks Woodschick!
 
Rockchucker22 said:
I've spent quite a bit of time looking at both the spot and in reach PLBs. Also sat phones, this discussion has convinced me it's time, I need to choose one and get it!

Thanks Woodschick!
Click to expand...

SPOT has a satellite phone thingy now that looks pretty good. I haven't done any in-depth research into it but on the surface it looks good.
 
Rockchucker22 said:
I've spent quite a bit of time looking at both the spot and in reach PLBs. Also sat phones, this discussion has convinced me it's time, I need to choose one and get it!

Thanks Woodschick!
Click to expand...
Look at the InREach SE also. I have one and offers 2 way text messaging and works on the Irridium sattelite network. If you want to communicate with your wife and kids you can easily. Since my cell is always out of range, I preserve it's battery in airline mode and may send a text using the InReach SE when starting out and at the end of my trip. Your recipients can respond to your texts but they cannot initiate them. Your messages also provide a link with your location on the Delorme map site. A little more than the Spot but not much and if your riding a few times a month where you may use the device the "safety" plan for $10 is reasonable and allows 10 messages a month. The nice thing is if you have simply broken down in a remote location you could massage your wife or a local bike shop you've spoken with for this reason, to rescue you or get you some assistance. Having SOS is great when you absolutely need it but just shy of that a message might be more useful and 2 way messaging would give you piece of mind that message was received and acted upon.
http://www.inreachdelorme.com/
 
WoodsChick said:
SPOT has a satellite phone thingy now that looks pretty good. I haven't done any in-depth research into it but on the surface it looks good.
Click to expand...
The spot phone is a rebadged global star phone, I really would prefer an iridium phone. The reception is world wide and less spotty than global star. Although global star launched a new satellite this year, or multiple satellites. The down side to the spot is a yearly subscription, which becomes cheap if it saves you once.
 
Ye
Johnrg said:
Look at the InREach SE also. I have one and offers 2 way text messaging and works on the Irridium sattelite network. If you want to communicate with your wife and kids you can easily. Since my cell is always out of range, I preserve it's battery in airline mode and may send a text using the InReach SE when starting out and at the end of my trip. Your recipients can respond to your texts but they cannot initiate them. Your messages also provide a link with your location on the Delorme map site. A little more than the Spot but not much and if your riding a few times a month where you may use the device the "safety" plan for $10 is reasonable and allows 10 messages a month. The nice thing is if you have simply broken down in a remote location you could massage your wife or a local bike shop you've spoken with for this reason, to rescue you or get you some assistance. Having SOS is great when you absolutely need it but just shy of that a message might be more useful and 2 way messaging would give you piece of mind that message was received and acted upon.
http://www.inreachdelorme.com/
Click to expand...
s I've been looking into this also, I didn't realize it is on the Iridium network.
 
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