Many, many thanks to Andy for inviting me along and being such a generous host! As Andy said, we were blessed with sunshine and warm temps and an awesome course. Everybody was so nice and accommodating, we felt like we made a bunch of new friends! Andy brought two bikes for me, one of his ultra trick 300's and a pretty stock '90 510. I switched off during the weekend and spent time on both. For those that are curious, the 300 ran really sweet! The extra cc's beef up the bottom end where the 250 is fairly vacant, yet it still revs well and pulls hard on top. Andy had the bike jetted perfectly, and encouraged me to abuse the clutch, as he does some mods there also, and it was certainly up to the task. If you were wondering, no it doesn't run like a modern, say KTM 300. It still has no powervalve, so it is handicapped by technology, but, if you are looking to beef up your 250, and aren't looking for an open bike......I think you'd be pretty happy with Andy's mods.
Overall as an event, the club was well organized and laid out a challenging event. Heck, it would have been great on a modern bike. The competition level in the expert class was top notch also, with most of the front runners on very highly modified bikes and lot's of ISDE and SSDT experience. This was not an old mans class. The course was about 12 miles long, experts did six laps. A lot of grassy field stuff, with plenty of buried rocks, narrow bush trails, boggy sections, and a few miles of the nastiest, wettest, ruttiest, root infested forest section you can imagine. There were places where the forest was so thick, there wasn't even sunshine. Really glad it was sunny, can't imagine how difficult that would have been in the rain.
There was also tons of cool bikes on hand. Being from the US, there were a number you just don't see in our neck of the woods, one guy even let me take a spin on his SWM. Anyway, it has been a great trip. My wife and I have been touring Scotland and are now in Holland before having to head back to reality on Mon.
Andy, thanks again!
