Suddenly there was a gaggle of kids coming over like a herd of noisy cattle! Sheesh, they all showed up five deep and every one of them looking like they were going to get the holeshot to my sound meter! That's about the time I realized that doing a full and proper soundtest would not happen by way of the tachometer. So my associate, Randy (Ralph asked him to help me), and I pulled out the db meter, clipboard and proceeded to do the "calibrated ear, 1/4 throttle" guesstimate. We started slamming them through like a good factory, when they all started to get nervous as a cat in a dog pen, saying in unison (and pointing) that their practice session was coming up. I informed them that this wasn't mandatory and they could come back later. Holy smoke, the adrenaline started along with each kid's kickstarter and they were gone in a fog. Wow, that was wild.
Throughout the rest of the morning the adult riders trickled in and out and by noon we probably had sifted 100+ riders through. Ralph basically wanted to get an idea how loud his riders were in general. Starting next year there will be a mandatory 101db limit (still too loud in my humble opinion), and on this day, the testing was only to see about where things were. I don't have the data in my hands, but I'd say roughly 80% were over 101db. Yep, you read that correctly, Bart, over 80%. The three loudest bikes were 109db! How did we test? CLICK HERE to read the proper way to perform sound testing. Out of all the sound testing, one guy came up on his bike and said, "Hey Tom, long time!" Didn't even recognize him with his helmet on, but it was David Rose, who used to race the ISDE Series with me years ago. A few riders were very glad some sound testing was happening, a few thought it was silly and a large number of them were wondering why their expensive FMF/White Bros./Yoshimura/Dr. D/Pro Circuit mufflers weren't even close. Better call up the aftermarket people folks and tell them you can no longer pass. Only then will they stop building noisy, worthless, land-closing exhausts.
Okay, 'nuff said on that. From there I cruised on up to Frog Lake to meet Danno for some Black Dog recon work. We finally got around to starting our hogs by about 2:30pm - late! But it was sweet weather, and we were looking in new area. Thank God Danno was able to get out, otherwise I would've been out there by myself, and we all know that's a formula for disaster. We found a couple new peaks to explore, some cool new options and some challenging surprises. Turns out the snowpack has left what seems like more than a normal amount of windfalls, specifically on the trails. We'll be busier than normal with the chainsaw. We called it a day around 7:30pm.
We think you're REALLY going to enjoy what we've pulled out of our hat for you (providing USFS comes back with positive responses for our submittal!).
Ride on,
-Tom
![Image](http://tawmn.smugmug.com/photos/76409452-M.jpg)