King of the Desert

Since we are going to be doing this race on a motorcycle, the last thing I want to worry about is if the bike is going to be up to the challenge.  We will be running a 2003 Kawasaki KX500, 2 stroke beast, AKA the King of the desert.  The bike has a reputation for winning these long races and has a proven race history.  So I believe it was a good choice, and I also found it for real cheap and in amazing shape.  We didn't want a bike that we would have to strip down and spend a fortune to make reliable or have a bike that could only make it on a million dollar race budget either.  Knowing that other teams are still racing these bikes in nearly stock form and being competitive with it is good news to me.  All in all this is a budget friendly bike to start with, parts are cheap, and can easily be worked on by ourselves.  No computers, fuel injection, valves, chains, fancy stuff that requires a degree in computer programming and rocket science to tear into and fix.  So here is the pic of the bike a few days after I got it, just need a few safety things, and some armor i.e. skid plate handguards type of stuff and its ready to race.  I plan on taking it out to the desert to run it around in the next few weeks, and shoot for a District 37 or 38 race in October for the first practice race.  So I will keep everyone posted.