A short woods ride

This weekend I started on a house project that's been been on the to-do list for a long time: Strip the siding off, install Tyvek wrap, replace window trim, and nail the siding back on. Like with most projects things always seem easier in the planning stages,  but once underway, nothing goes as it should.
It was sometime between me destroying the second piece of 18-foot long Azek trim and the time I beat the hell of a fence post with a hammer out of frustration, that a buddy called.
"Lets go trail riding!"
I wasn't looking for an escape, but I needed to regain some sanity. So, I filled the KLR with gas, put my gear on, and hit the road.

We started off at our usual place and rode around for about three hours. Due to the recent rains, the trails were pretty muddy, but not so much as to make riding difficult. While the riding was good, it was too much of the same as before, so we decided to explore a new territory - powerlines. Here is a pic of my buddy descending a path on his ATV. (face removed for privacy reasons):

The going got tougher after a while, especially for me. I don't like feeling the front end coming off the ground on an incline, especially if the hill goes on and on without an end in sight. This is the one thing that makes me uncomfortable on the bike. We abandoned the powerlines and rode the trails to a place called Rocky Cascade, which connects two different trail networks. I did this ride last year on my BMW, clutching and climbing in the first gear all the way, trying to balance the heavy bike. It was much easier on the KLR. Riding in the second gear all the way, the light bike just bounced over the boulders and we cleared the cascade in no time.

After that, we decided to explore a different set of powerlines. The trail there is pretty steep, but manageable. At a valley between two hills, my lil'KLR met its match: A water puddle covering the stickiest mud I ever encountered. As usual, I slowed down a bit before hitting the water. This was probably the 50th water puddle I crossed that day - some deeper than others - and it looked like the easiest one of them all. The "puddle" was maybe twenty feet long and about as much wide, with only a few inches of clear water on the surface. So, as I said, I slowed down, downshifted, selected a  path, and rolled the throttle. A few feet into it the bike slowed down. I gave it more gas, but instead of clearing the puddle, my rear wheel started digging into the mud. The next thing I knew, the engine stalled, and I was stuck in deep, sticky mud with over then feet of the same ahead of me.
No amount of pushing and pulling moved the bike even an inch. Fortunately, my buddy has a winch on his machine, so there was yet a way out. As he was turning around to winch me, he took this picture. By the time we hooked the winch to my forks. I sank another 6 inches.

So, sitting there like a lame duck in a pond, I waited for the winch cable. When we finally got it working, it took four attempts to actually free the bike from the mud. I've never seen anything so sticky before.

Free at last, and after the wiring dried off, I was able to start the bike again (hurray for a kickstart), but my boots were full of yucky water. Needles to say, I was pretty tired from all the pushing, and grumpy because of the water in my boots. So, to change the mindset, we rode to the top of the hill to have a smoke break and enjoy the scenery.

After I got home, I set the boots in the sun to dry, took a shower, and went back to my siding project.