July 4th marked the day of the 3rd annual Peckerhead Poker Run which consists of riding in the Arkansas river bed from Garden City Kansas, to Dodge City Kansas (its about 70 miles). Well friends have told me its rough, long, and no fun.....Hints the name of the poker run. Sure enough I sign up, and talk my brother (the guy riding the bike) and my girlfriends brother (big dude riding the ds650) to ride it with me. Smokinwrench has been pumped about this event for a while so I decided it had to be fun. Well before I could ride my bike needed to be tended to. July 3 my parts come in from denniskirk at 5 o clock, my bikes torn down to a frame and a bottom end. I get her together and ride it in the dark, seems to be running ok. Next morning we shoe horn everything in my lil trailer and head for garden city. The time we pull up and start unloading, it seems to me that I am the only triker thereAs soon as all 3 tires touch the ground I had people gathered around checking it out and coon fingerin it. So we fill up with gas drop the rest of our cans off with a guy so we can get gas at every checkpoint. We hop on our bikes and head for the riders meeting. I finally find Smokinwrench, we BS some then its time to ride. There were about 100+ riders attending this event, and they were letting the racers go first then everyone else go. We finally get our chance to go, and man was the dust thick, harder than heck to see anything. I am flying by the group that went ahead of us. Getting weird looks from the boys riding there fresh 450's. Finally catch up to the riders that left two flights ahead of us. I look back to see if my groups still together. My brother is not anywhere to be found, so me and the guy on the 650 pull off. Finally my bro comes pullin up. I guess he wiped out hard, twisted his forks a little, but still good to go. Finally we pull up to the first check point. As people started pulling in more and more people kept coming up and telling me "You're nuts for riding that thing!", "You look like you're going to wreck!", "That thing is sweet!", "Haven't seen one of those in a while!"....Then from every check point on, the same people would come up and ask "So your still hangin in there huh?" I reply "Yep I'm still keeping up." After multiple check points, we reach the last one before we hit Dodge City. This boy on a KX500 and I got to talking, and I heard earlier at a prior checkpoint that he didn't have much gas (put his gas in the wrong truck, so he didn't see any gas at check points.) So I ask him if he can make it, he assures me he can, so I tell him if he runs out I have a gatorade bottle full of premix he can have. So he leaves ahead of me and I catch up to him later and sure enough he is out, and is standing there by his bike waiting for me. So it felt good to help someone out. We finally reach dodge city, almost rode by where we were supposed to stop
But anyways nuff chat, onto the pics!
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That is about as close to desert riding as we can get in kansas! The one throwing a cold one back would be none other than the EX triker himself, Smokinwrench
