Last ride of the 600 ?

cleonard

cleonard

Had to get a ride in this weekend and since my new bike isn't here yet, the ole XR got a good ride in. Will it be the last, I doubt that, but the bike will not the first choice.

So lets get started. The drive to the staging area was tough. Really tough. The start of the ride was about 20 miles of pavement so I aired up to 20psi. I did a lot of high speed so I kept that pressure.
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Looking out to the Antelope valley. The start of the ride was cold. It was right about 50F here.
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Freaking windmills everywhere and they are huge. Lots of fencing. These look to be between 140th and 180th or so on the north side of the Antelope valley.
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There is no riding here. Really I mean it. Yea the road that I'm on goes right there, but I didn't. Did I mention that there are no trails there. good.
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From there it was off to Mojave. From there I crossed the tracks at the Kemira chemical plant and got under the 58 with the railroad tracks. Then it was an interesting bit of traveling to CalCity for some gas. After gassing up it was over to the Rands and across the valley.
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I stopped at the geekslide for some detailed pics. Plenty more over on the geekslide thread.
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After the slide I tooled around the El Paso's for a few hours. Had to stop at the tunnel.
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Rode down last chance canyon for my exit to the road. Lots of brightly colored rock. This doesn't really capture it.
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Then I was off to the Jawbone store for a beverage. No one there so I didn't hang for long. Gassed up in Mojave and one more stop with a little shade.
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About 60 more miles and I was home just after 2. Total mileage 211.

I need to do this more often...
 
Agent2

Agent2

Awesome ride, I complain about driving the truck out there to stage, and you rode all the way, high five.
Yes, the windmills are increasing at an alarming rate, lots of surveyor sticks in the area meaning lots more to come.
The calico hills by last chance are incredibly colorful, you are correct, a camera doesn't capture it. How was the trail at the bottom of the canyon just before you hit the "flatland"? Last time I rode there, it was washed out with lots of rocks and boulders.
Last question, was was your plan if you broke down?
 
cleonard

cleonard

Agent2:
Awesome ride, I complain about driving the truck out there to stage, and you rode all the way, high five.
Yes, the windmills are increasing at an alarming rate, lots of surveyor sticks in the area meaning lots more to come.
The calico hills by last chance are incredibly colorful, you are correct, a camera doesn't capture it. How was the trail at the bottom of the canyon just before you hit the "flatland"? Last time I rode there, it was washed out with lots of rocks and boulders.
Last question, was was your plan if you broke down?
Click to expand...

I was a little concerned at the top of Last Chance, but I came upon a few groups of Jeeps headed up so I knew it was not too bad. Sure there were some rocks and washed out parts. The worst was getting around some of the jeeps in the tougher spots just before getting out of the canyon.

Plan? What plan... No not really. For the worst case scenario there is always the SPOT. Now I consider that for injuries primarily. If it were just an equipment failure it would depend on where I was exactly. If I was able to walk out to a real road I would. If not SPOT again. After that it's cell phone to arrange for transport. I do need to work out a better protocol for using the SPOT "help" message. I really should upgrade the SPOT to the one where you can send 41 character messages. That would make it a lot better at sending more useful messages.

One thing that would not have worked is relying on other riders. There basically weren't any. It was really sparse out there. It was such a nice weekend and it was empty.
 
cleonard

cleonard

I ended up not going the BYOB route. It was too expensive. I was able to get a standard model for enough of a savings that I can just buy the other stuff.
 
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