Rediscovering My Roots...and Rocks...and Sand...

2-25-07

I took the derelict GS out for a longer test ride on Saturday, 200 miles of highway, freeway, hills, mountains, snow, and desert trails. Performed flawless, except for a sticky starter
solenoid maybe... First out to San Berdino via Hwy 138 to get some off-road boots.
I misplaced my old lineman's boots somewhere around 1972... On the way back I cut up to Wrightwood via the old Pines Hwy of Sheepshead Road. Wrightwood was full of snow and thousands of snow people in search of the...snow! (I will never use the term "white stuff"...)
The GS handled the road conditions better than the R11S street bike, what-me-worry?
The bike went on reserve coming down the hill, making a wonderful back-pressure
purr through the SuperTrapp, nice! Into Pearblossum for gas and a stretch, then headed back north thru Lake Los Angeles (ugh!) and out to Saddleback Butte Park area, where my dirt biking really began...
I busted up the graded road to the back of Piute Butte to the water tank road.
This is where the desert racers went up "Heartbreak Hill", the turning back point when my parents and Jack Ross had the Ponderosa Hare Scrambles...."the first Sunday of every month".
I spent many afternoons up on that hill watching the mayhem when I should have been back at the ranch hustlin' hamburgers at the Ponderosa Tavern.
The desert was perfect. We'd just had enough rain to give the roads and sandy trails a nice firmness. I cut out across to avenue G and back around to the Ponderosa and back up to 150th Street East and found the trail that cut across the hardpan to the smoke bomb area. I found a wide sand buggy trail that
headed straight up towards the butte. The GS hummed right along in second gear doing 40-50mph without a hitch.
Now I'm trippin'... Then I realized this was the trail that the riders came straight down the side of the rock strewn butte on the return to the final checkpoint....I remember tippy-toe'in down that face a
few times..funny it all seemed larger than life back then...
This is the way it was...these where my idols...



I stopped about 1/4 mile from the top. I was already pushing my luck with 9 gallons of gas aboard.


It's all coming back to me now in more ways than one...the skills, the memories...
Hey! I'm desert ridin' again!...I'm just like JN Roberts, I'm cuttin' the course!

Here's some interesting banter over at the District 37 Forum: For Hodaka Riders Only ...

Rapid Dog Circa 1969

I cut back south across the open desert, greasewood and Joshua my close personal,uh, friends.
One thing I noticed as soon as I got off-road, the mass quantities of dumpage...back in the day there was one common dump out there...apparently now the Mojave is one big dump.
It's amazing this beautiful living dez...it has all the accommodations one could ever need...
(this wasn't dumped...it's an original fixture...)

I decided to take some time to contemplate...

Heck, you can even go to church out here if ya want.

This is the south side of the butte...that's HB Hill on the left.
Anyway, headed back across the valley to Littlerock and stopped at the best Mexican restaurant and picked up some tamales for dinner, cheeken or pordk?...
....and blast off towards Mt Emma Rd on the power line roads...had to cut that short.
I found out that trail riding on unfamiliar roads with the sun directly in your eyes is a gamble at best. Back on the pavement I gave it the full monty.
Over Mt Emma, just in time for a sunset pic at the Angels Crest junction...
Nice bike! ...think I'll keep it...;')
Later!

..and there's more... PONDEROSA 2