So you came to Rock and Roll!!
"So I found myself in the sun, oh yeah
A **** of a place to end a run, oh yeah
California, I'm fine
Somebody check my brain
California's all right
Somebody check my brain"
-Alice In Chains
And Away We Go!!!
Leaving Texas, seeya, byebye!
Get lost ya punk!!
This is where the state inspector stole Meriden's apples.
We decided to share pics so a few of these were taken by Meriden and Thrasher.
M and I wisely decided to leave a day early in case we ran into any unforeseen problems and believe me, we used every minute of the extra day. After we ran into a traffic nightmare west of Phoenix
we still made it to CA early enough to take a detour through The Joshua Tree National Park getting to Palmdale. M had been there before but I hadn't. It was incredible! It was also very strange, I've never seen such strange flora before and the rock formations were so bizarre it was like I would imagine being on an alien planet.
And this is the Joshua Tree..
We continued on and made it to Palmdale a few hours later and met up with Thrasher who drove down from Seattle. As most of you know Thrasher used to live in Austin so we knew him long before he moved to WA., he's been up there almost a year now and it was great to see him again.
The next day we unloaded the bikes and rode out to explore the area. Here was the K.O.A we stayed at just down the road from Palmdale in Acton.
We hadn't gotten a mile from the campground where we had to pull over and perform an emergency roadside adjustment to T's Rekluse clutch.
Since our friend and fellow rider Hancock grew up in Palmdale he was a wealth of info concerning the area, he even gave us the address of his home so here we are at the House That Hancock Built.
We tried to circumnavigate Edwards AFB but soon realized it would take a couple hours to do so, that place is huge!! Even after getting directions from a local we still never found the main gate. We did run across the outdoor museum complete with an SR-71
and a B-52.
A few of T's pics..
This was Thursday, Thanksgiving Day and we'd heard through the grapevine that the Palmdale Holiday Inn was making dinner for all the riders so we attended and had a wonderful time! And the food was excellent!!
We also met a bunch of great folks that we would run into many more times out on the trail.
M in the lobby conversing with the Mrs.
On the way back to the campground we stopped to fill up, had to get a pic with at least one SoCal Ferrari. Yeah, he thinks he's reeaaal baaad!
The next morning we got up early and made it over to the registration and starting line held at the Palmdale Cycle Center (or it was called something like that). We though we were getting there plenty early to avoid the crowd but wow, were we ever wrong, it was already a madhouse.
We had to stand in 2 different lines that were both a mile long, one line was for signing in and to get our ride packet, # stickers... etc..., the other line was to download the route onto our GPS's.
It was ridiculous! We got there before 6 and didn't pull out until almost 8. It just took
forever !.
This was the "tech inspection" if you want to call it that.
We were each concerned about different reasons out bikes might not pass, for example I was afraid my bike might be too loud and I don't have an analog odometer. I'm not sure what they were checking other bikes for but they didn't check my bike for anything.
Whatever.
And so the ride began
, after all these years of reading about it, watching movies and vids, and dreaming, I was actually in California riding the
LA-BARSTOW to VEGAS !!!!!!!
The ride started with a short, maybe 15mi slab through Palmdale before we saw the 1st dirt. From there we headed N. into the vast California desert.
Thrasher posted a few of my pics already on the 'Upcoming Rides' thread so you might see a few of them again as well as a few of his and M's.
Many miles of very fast
sandy roads leading up into the mountains. We tried our best to stay as a group but if we got seperated we'd agreed to stop at crossroads and landmarks to regroup. Sometimes it was impossible as there was just so danged many bikes and the dust at some places was insane!
It was so dusty at some places it was literally white-out conditions. It was almost as bad as the roads around JMZ's in Gonzales!
These pics are about an hour into the ride. We'd stopped to take a break.
Vid 1, The Desert. I edited out most of the dust.
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaRgdkGCf2w&feature=plcp"]LA-Barstow to Vegas 1 - YouTube[/ame]
M bringing up the rear.
I thought I'd seen wind generators in W. Texas, I'd never seen anything like this.
Thousands of them and they go for miles.
Our 1st fuel stop in God Knows Where, CA about 100 miles in and starting to get into the hills.
Check out my rider #.
haha Serously, M pulled 237 so we switched for fun. It caused quite a bit of confusion though.
We could always tell where we were going by scanning the horizon for the dust plume. From here the trail is heading up into the mountains. As with all pics, this doesn't show scale worth a darn, the mountain is much closer and bigger than it appears.
My favorite pic of the ride.
We ran across what was left of an old chimney somewhere out there.
Another dusty section, luckily the bikes were getting a little more spread out by now so it wasn't nearly as bad as earlier in the day.
Vid 2 Climbing into the mountains.
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyjH_o27jns&feature=plcp"]LA-Barstow to Vegas 2 - YouTube[/ame]
Not sure what time it was but we made it to Jawbone Canyon.
I'd seen pictures of this place through the years but had no idea the route would pass right by the place, that was cool!
It was dark but we rode back by here after riding through Death Valley on the way back to Palmdale on Sunday night.
The ride officials warned us not to stop here for lunch if we wanted to get to the last checkpoint before dark so we ate granola bars and jerky and pressed on.
Vid 3 Getting into the rough stuff.
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_HBlIfiW6A&feature=plcp"]LA-Barstow to Vegas 3 - YouTube[/ame]
Our 2nd gas stop was in Ridgecrest before we started heading south towards Barstow. This is not far from where Thrasher lost his phone. We actually came back here 2 days later and FOUND IT! More on that later.
This is also where my official pic was taken.
Oooops.
That's M right behind me.
This is much steeper than it looks!
Turn right at the bottom of the hill for the 'easy' route.
And after one heck of a wild day we rode into Barstow just as the sun was setting.
But the fun wasn't over yet, we still had a lot to do when we got there. For example, have you ever loaded a roll chart? These things suck!!
If you don't get it just right it gets bunched up in there and won't turn so you have to pull the whole thing back out and start over.
This was the parking area across the street from the hotel. They had a really cool deal worked out with the local Boy Scouts Troop where for a small donation they watched your bike all night. They made a party out of it too with a fire pit, hot dogs and drinks for everybody, free coffee and hot chocolate.
They were serious about security though, NOBODY entered that parking lot without a wristband and then they would follow you to your bike and compare your wristband with the # on the bike. This was one of the issues where M. and I switching bike # stickers caused a problem
, we had to both go up to the guys and explain the deal together but once we explained everything was cool.
The baggage check, this was real convenient. We had all of our clean clothes, personal items and whatnot waiting for us when we got there. Same in Las Vegas the next day. Trouble was, they only took it one way so we were responsible for getting it back to where we started from in Palmdade so instead of lugging all our dirty clothes and unnecessary crap back on the bikes we just shipped it home from the hotel in Las Vegas.
The maintenance area. All this was part of the entrance fee. They'd fix anything on any bike for free. Of course this only covered small stuff like oil filters and such but all labor was covered. They were adjusting valves, adjusting chains, changing tires, changing oil, fixing lights, you name it, they did it. None of us needed the service but it was very nice to have in case we did!
Thrasher at the check-in. We had a blast with the officials. Lotta laughs!
They were the nicest, most helpful, professional people you could ask for. They did a wonderful job.
Gotta ride into town and check the mail, be back in a bit.
R
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