The instruction for our annual Torture Test was simple, purposely vague and left wide open: "Bring us the best all-around dirt bike ever." There were no other directives. We wanted to see who would show and what they would bring. What variations of which bikes would show up? Would they be race bikes or trail hounds? Based on motocrossers or built from off-road bikes? What displacements would prevail? Would they all be new bikes or would some teams look to older bikes in our tough economy? Does anyone care about riding at night besides me and my crazy friends?
As the entries flowed in, we were getting a wide and varied picture. Times are economically stimulated in a bad-dream way, so in place of the typical overload of crazily modified machines there was a lot more concern for costs. Some machines were a few years old, others were completely stock-good thing as the stock bikes were largely the driving force behind such a sinister invite proposal. KTM's XC line, specifically the 250cc two-stroke and the 450cc four-stroke, has struck a chord with our staff and most of our closest riding buddies as such a good platform, we wanted to see if there was anything better to be had.
Ready. Set. Go!
The Torture Test is only torture if you have to compete in it. Otherwise, it is an invite-only industry ride day where you get to ride great trails and exclusive motocross tracks, hang with the heroes of the sport and eat a Red Bull-catered lunch and dinner. It is such an E-ticket day we have guys from other magazines sneaking in, people bidding on auctions that donate money to the BlueRibbon Coalition to get an invite, every member of the staff suddenly gaining a boatload of new friends and there are way more companies who are "very interested" in running ads in Dirt Rider. Where else do you get to hang out with Malcolm Smith, get roosted by Destry Abbott, jumped over by Ryan Hughes, have Thad Duvall show you a wheel on the tight trails and maybe even Pete Peterson will come up to you and ask some silly questions, until he figures out you're not Randy Hawkins? Some guests even took us up on our offer to ride our 450cc off-road test bikes and give us some extra opinions. There were Quantya electric bikes to test ride, and you could even see if you are as fast as you think you are-or as quick as the top off-road racers in the country in our Escargot or Terrain Test (no one was).
Squeezed somewhere in between was the Torture Test of the 21 bikes from almost as many companies with differing strategies on how to make the best one-bike-does-it-all machine. We had everything from stock motocross bikes to all-wheel-drive trail machines. Torture began promptly at 7 a.m. with a brief rider's meeting where everything must have been explained perfectly as no questions were asked. And as everyone knows, Dirt Rider runs a tight ship, so we're sure nobody walked back to their respective pits and started asking each other, "Uh, what do we do now?"
A group photo shoot, that's what, and herding cats into a pool might have been easier. Next year we'll leave a trail of donuts. Confusion again attempted to stymie our individual photos of the bikes, but ingeniously all of the teams figured out where that station was happening. With that came a punch card and a time schedule, never mind that the identifying stickers for the participating bikes were lost with RidePG.com's Bart Hayes' luggage someplace between Georgia and California, proving that no good deed goes unpunished.
From here the plan was simple: Tackle the five timed tests before lunch, one turn at each with the hero rider, one turn with a Dirt Rider tester. Get weighed. Get measured. Get sound checked. Then later in the day the bikes were surrendered to DR testers for the final evaluation, for at dinner there would be a ceremony where the majority of the bikes would get sent home. Just like those TV shows your wife watches, except this time it's with dirt bikes and is 100 percent real. Just ask someone who loaded up early.
Bringing game can come in a few ways, and Red Bull brings game with a plush setup and some fine grub for the troops. Too bad we had too many troops for lunch, a lot of them tired already from roosting around the Rynoland facility. We had two outdoor motocross tracks prepped and three spectacular trails. These ranged from fast and flowing to so tight you wanted to grind on your steering stops. Riders were finding killer cliff-jump hits, and many others were just happy to check each other's style through the array of events. Our photographers were running around everywhere, and even some photographers we didn't know about shot stuff we knew nothing about. Surprising since we're so damned organized.
Now you can't just go out and ride at Rynoland (www.rynoland.com), but you can rent the place. Likewise, you can't just show up at the DR Torture Test as some people tried, and you can't buy or brown-nose your bike into our top six-it has to earn it.