Berkeley's Off-Road Motorcycles
Oh no! He's into dirt bikes now. :-o
Bought Little B a 2002 Yamaha TT-R90PC (TTR90) for 1.1K. He'll outgrow it quick, but it will be a great starter bike. At first, I was bummed it doesn't have an electric start. I guess that feature was introduced in 2003. No problem, though. It starts easily.
I picked up a 2003 Honda CRF230F for 3.5K. What a cool bike! It's small and light and seems just right for me. Phil's 400 was way too heavy and big, and I couldn't get the hang of it. It starts OK when cold, but not great. The choke is a little tricky. There's no problem starting it once it's warm.
The TT-R90 was getting a little small for B, so I bought a 2002 Honda XR100R for 1.2K. Mom and Sis can ride it, too.
Links - Motorcycle links I find useful.
Research - Here's the research we did on bikes.
Maps of Ballinger Canyon OHV Area. The standard USFS map (left) is all red, so you are forced to look up the trail number for the difficulty rating. What a pain. I spent some time with my graphics program converting all the trails to a color-coded scheme, including the circle/square/diamond markings. Better, don't you think? ;-)
I also cropped the full-size image to make the final colorized copy a little larger out of the printer. The west end of the map isn't all that useful anyway. Just the ends of trails 40 and 46 are cut off... no big deal.
My observation is that the trail difficulties (colors) aren't all correct when compared to the field markings and actual difficulty. For example, trail 25 is listed as green on the map, but the trail head marker is blue. Also, the 17 loop starts easy but turns intermediate after the Y.