Issue link: http://trailridermagazine.uberflip.com/i/1547331
36 www.TrailRider.com out one of my favorite events, the ISDE, and its prior owner, the man himself, Drew Smith. We'll skip the nine months of soul-crushing searching it took to sort out several decades of what DR350s do best: keep star ng and running long past the point of reason (I don't call these bikes Cockroach bikes for nothing), but it paid off in the long run. Much like the ISDE, they like to shack up riders into teams to be er invade the Euro-heavy roster. I was teamed up with some speedy & experienced com- pe tors: Darrell Diamond of Maryland on a '79 Can- Am 175 and Mike Sheetz of Oregon on a '68 Maico 250 GS. Both have done prior EVTs and knew the undertaking ahead. The thing with the teams is that, depending upon the bike you're riding, only certain bikes can be clumped together. Club Teams can only have one modern-ish bike. Trophy teams can't have any. That means someone has to try keeping a bike older than themselves together for four days. A er ditching the bike in Ohio at the container, glad to wash my life of its all-consuming presence; it was nice to see it survived the tanker ride across the Atlan c without sinking the ship first. Added oil, Euro pump gas & the yellow cuss wagon fired to life on the first kick. Took it for a short spin and deemed it healthy enough to leave it the "H-E-double hockey s ck" alone! Now, back to that old Enduro rider saying about fin- ishing: the Germans decided prior EVTs were miss- ing something... Something like modern bike uphills and Ooooooo, be er yet, modern bike downhills. Because nothing says "My brakes suck" like riding a single leading shoe drum brake fit for a PW50 down a quarter-mile-long mountainside with some ran- dom Ore Mountain coal cart rails embedded in it. If you were a mere mortal and chose something older, more "in the spirit" of the event, you probably were recalcula ng those decisions when steep, and some mes silty or rocky climbs ate all 10 of your horsepower, and those aforemen oned downhills involved looking for a truck run-off lane to slow your roll. The average speed for the transfer sec ons was fairly low at 16mph, but screw up a climb or get caught in a bo leneck, and the possibility of losing route points (or worse) was there. With perfect temps and drizzled sunshine, day one was a 25-mile loop with previews of two hills we'd revisit a lot over the following days, highlighted by Lissa Aldakimov Lissa Aldakimov