1. Marengo
(By Chad)
2. How to ride the whoops , Or ...Over the bars
(By Flipper)
Marengo is an incredible ride that is fun and for a great cause. Understand you are in a swamp and this ride is a loop except for the 1st ½ mile. Only one-way in and one-way out. It can be a very bad experience if you do not prepare for it. So with that in mind - I recommend the following things at a minimum for a better experience.
1) Pre-register. The lines will be long anyway, last thing you want to do is stop and fill out paperwork. The application in on our web site.
2) Get the one-day license and DO NOT FORGET IT. You will be turned around and sent back. You cannot get this at the ride.
3) FILL your quads with gas - bring extra gallon or two if you intend to play much. My rancher normally gets 25 mpg - at Marengo I get 7mpg and I do not play that much.
4) Go to Kmart or Wal-Mart and buy a 1 to 2 gallon garden sprayer - fill it with water and bungee it to your quad. This will allow you to clean your face and hands during the ride - if any of your quads are liquid cooled, it gives you a way to clean the radiator. If you have to work on your quad, it can help clean the mud off.
5) Put everything in Ziplocs. Bring extra gallon size zip locks for the shirts they sell at the start of the ride (they tend to sell out before they day is out). Bring some hand towels to dry your hands and wipe things off.
6) Bring some water to drink - Marengo is generally VERY hot and muggy and I have seen folks get heat stroke. Water or gator aid is good to have.
7) Somebody bring a first aid kit - you are a long way in a swamp.
8) Put at least 5 or 6 psi in your tires - something very common at Marengo is tires coming off rims - they tend to get knocked off because you slide so much - that is the slickest stuff I have ever seen when wet. And it sticks to everything.
9) If anyone has a small air compressor or flat fix kit - bring them - a tire off the rim 8 miles from the parking lot is not a lot of fun.
10) Get club shirts so you can recognize each other (do not use white - pick a bright color). There were over 3600 4 wheelers there last year and all of us are going through an area less than 100 yards wide - you will get separated from your group sooner or later. We generally make a plan to stop every mile or so and meet back up. We also carry talkabouts. To help us keep in contact and to get help to each other if we need it.
11) Bring some basic tools for the quads.
12) Bring towropes.
13) The ride can be as easy or as hard as you want to make it - the middle will be impossible. You just have to pick the go-arounds you want and go left or right of the really bad stuff.
14) Most folks that like to play in the mud - jump right into the first mud hole they come to... I would recommend you not do that - there is 17 miles of nothing but mud - don't wear yourself out to start with. It is a hard ride and you will be tired at the end. I don't know how your quads are set up, but you can easily stick a big quad running 28" outlaws here - over and over. I guess I'm just recommending that you pace yourself - there is plenty of mud.
15) Plan on stopping at suicide hole for a little while - it is fun to watch... for that matter - the whole ride is fun to watch.
16) Try to get there early (by 7 or 7:30)- there will be huge lines. We generally go past the entrance to the ride and park at the end of the paved road on the left, but you can park wherever you want. We try to be on the trail by 8 and it takes us till 3:30 or 4:00 to finish the ride. Bring a cheap dust mask and goggles for the ride out. There is a gravel road several miles long that is a dust pit at the end of the day and it is miserable to ride out without the mask and goggles.
17) Wear hats - this mud contracts when it dries and will pull hairs like you would not believe (arms and legs too)
18) They always have drinks and burgers at the end of the ride, so bring a few $$$ if you want one.
19) Do not under any circumstances bring beer or a firearm - it is a "go to jail immediately" thing.
20) Most folks are very helpful during the ride - and there are rangers that in on the ride as well.
21) Bring waterproof disposable camera's
22) Bring extra cloths and garbage bags to put your riding cloths in at the end of the ride.
23) There is a wash off spot (bayou) at one point during the ride and at the end of the ride - you can't take your quad into the water at the end of the ride, but you can take your quad seat.
How ro ride the whoops
STARTING OUT
First things first—make sure your quad is in good working order, and you have all your safety gear checked. Whoops are demanding on both you and your machine, you don't want to cut corners when preparing to tackle these gnarly obstacles.
Learning to keep your quad under control in an out-of-control situation is the overall goal. Whether you ride in the dunes, on the trails, or on a racetrack, at one time or another you will come across a section that can put you and your ATV out of control. Most motocross tracks have a whoop section. For those of you who don't know what a whoop section is, it is a section of bumps—mini-jumps, actually—that are intended to slow down the speeds of the rider. A variation on the whoop theme is the braking bumps you see at the entrance to many turns. Either way, not knowing how to handle your ATV in this type of situation can put you on your head real fast.
Attack
First you need to be in the attack position, the attack position is were you are not sitting all the way down, but not standing all the way up either. Instead, you're hovering over the rear of the seat with your arms bent, ready to help your quad take the blow of the first bump. Just as when you're jumping, you want to judge the distance of the whoop section itself, as well as the size of the bumps. Once again, start out small and work your way up. After riding over the whoops a couple of times, and you feel comfortable with your timing runs, then it's time for you to hit them with some speed.
Keep it up
One of the major causes of "endos" is the front of your quad smashing into the face of the next bump. This compresses the suspension and turns your quad into a catapult. The best way to avoid this catastrophe is by keeping the front of your quad light. You can achieve this by keeping your weight towards the rear of the quad, and staying on the gas. It's also important to keep your quad going straight. A common mistake made while going through a section of whoops is that the rider is steering through the whoops, and don't hit the brakes. The loss of your momentum will cause the front end of the quad to dip, and that puts you back into the quad-as-catapult scenario.
GETTING ON THE GAS
Now that you feel comfortable with how you and your quad feel while working your way through a set of whoops, it's time to move on to bigger and tougher things. No two sets of whoops are the same. Some are staggered, while others have a rhythm to them, and some are just plain out of control. While racing, the faster you go, the easier it is to get through. Think about it—if you go slow, your tires will roll into the gap between the whoops. But if you are on the gas, your tires will just skim on the top, like a rock skipping across the water. The transition from being a rider who rolls over whoops to one who skips over them is a difficult one. Practice is the key, and you must start on very short sections with small whoops. Don't go out and try to nail a pro-level whoop section at full throttle, or you will very quickly find out why that is a bad idea. Use your best judgment when approaching whoops at high speed. Test runs will help you determine just how fast you can go. Some whoop sections will have a rhythm to them; in that case you can double them two at a time. Once again, judging your speed is extremely critical; if you overshoot or undershoot the first set of jumps, you have a good chance of going over the bars. Timing is everything when riding through a set of whoops. Just remember to use your best judgment, keep your quad going straight, and follow these few simple techniques to help take the fear out of whoops. Once you master them, you will have a huge advantage, on the track or the trail, over riders who haven't taken the time to learn to tackle this most-difficult of obstacles.
See ya'll on the trail, and remember they don't call me Flipper for nothing.