Kinda what I'm thinking about - DP trip

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Re: Kinda what I'm thinking about - DP trip

Post by Telomere » Fri May 25, 2018 11:11 am

DarcShadow wrote:You don't seem to have much luck when it's only 3 on a trip.
Are you saying you will be going next time to make it 4?
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Re: Kinda what I'm thinking about - DP trip

Post by DarcShadow » Fri May 25, 2018 12:57 pm

Was tempted to go this time but schedules didn't work work out.
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Re: Kinda what I'm thinking about - DP trip

Post by Telomere » Fri May 25, 2018 1:02 pm

I am sure there will be plenty more scheduled in the future (just not in the sand :SideSplittingLaughter: :SideSplittingLaughter: :SideSplittingLaughter: ).
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Re: Kinda what I'm thinking about - DP trip

Post by SputnikSam » Sat May 26, 2018 2:18 pm

Definitely trip of a lifetime for me. So glad I was able to go! This was longest I've ever spent camping outdoors. We slept 5 nights under the stars, and it got down to 30s at night.

Learned a lot about riding in dirt, sand, uphill and downhill. I got my dismount and roll off the bike down pat! Lost my windshield and a mirror in a crash. Ran down my battery and almost got stuck in the middle of nowhere. No idea how we would have gotten the bike out if it was something electrical.

Lots of walking, hiking and pushing bikes. Even got to jump in an ice cold lake. My feet are swollen. But it was all a blast!

Uploaded some pictures here, start at the bottom for beginning of the trip:

https://www.amazon.com/photos/groups/sh ... 5ChzdSXTbn
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Re: Kinda what I'm thinking about - DP trip

Post by Tooner » Sat May 26, 2018 3:03 pm

Sam those are awesome pics! In one with you guys, and the bikes all geared up helmets and all with the dessert background looked like an alien shot from a sci-fi movie!
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Re: Kinda what I'm thinking about - DP trip

Post by SputnikSam » Sat May 26, 2018 3:22 pm

Tooner wrote:Sam those are awesome pics! In one with you guys, and the bikes all geared up helmets and all with the dessert background looked like an alien shot from a sci-fi movie!
Yeah, the entire time I felt like I was on a different planet! I couldn't have asked for better company in Jeff, Rick and Courtney!
-Sam

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Re: Kinda what I'm thinking about - DP trip

Post by fixxervi6 » Sat May 26, 2018 6:28 pm

SputnikSam wrote:Definitely trip of a lifetime for me. So glad I was able to go! This was longest I've ever spent camping outdoors. We slept 5 nights under the stars, and it got down to 30s at night.

Learned a lot about riding in dirt, sand, uphill and downhill. I got my dismount and roll off the bike down pat! Lost my windshield and a mirror in a crash. Ran down my battery and almost got stuck in the middle of nowhere. No idea how we would have gotten the bike out if it was something electrical.

Lots of walking, hiking and pushing bikes. Even got to jump in an ice cold lake. My feet are swollen. But it was all a blast!

Uploaded some pictures here, start at the bottom for beginning of the trip:

https://www.amazon.com/photos/groups/sh ... 5ChzdSXTbn
While you were over the hill with Jeff working on getting the bike going, Court and I were scheming on plan B, if you can get in, we can get out, we'd have gotten you and the bike out. :idea:
SputnikSam wrote:
Tooner wrote:Sam those are awesome pics! In one with you guys, and the bikes all geared up helmets and all with the dessert background looked like an alien shot from a sci-fi movie!
Yeah, the entire time I felt like I was on a different planet! I couldn't have asked for better company in Jeff, Rick and Courtney!
:neutral:
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Re: Kinda what I'm thinking about - DP trip

Post by fixxervi6 » Sun May 27, 2018 6:08 pm

Video's and pics transferring now, it'll take me a bit to get all of the stuff sorted.

So Courtney and I decided involuntarily to hang out in Albuquerque for a while, as we rolled into town the truck started beeping and the glow plug light came on - odd since it was so warm. So I tell my sidekick to start googling what could be wrong and it was everything from bad grid heater to bad crank sensor, I figured who cares if the grid heater is out. We started pulling a hill and no power so I took the first exit - uh oh somethings really wrong the truck was limping.

Ever tired to get a diesel mechanic on a weekend in BFE? The only people there worked on semi's only, Sam did however manage to find a group that would come check it out, eventually they showed up with a meter and after tinkering under the hood they said it was either a bad throttle position sensor or something else (I don't remember what the other thing was) but he couldn't do anything else without throwing the truck on "the big machine" and they didn't open till Monday... this was Saturday...

Told Jeff and Sam to continue on we'd catch up whenever we could, we limped the truck to a motel and as luck would have it, we were there during peak season so several hotels were booked - I got the last room in the one we managed to find. Completely unloaded the truck (no easy task) and then limped to the shop to leave the truck and uber back to the hotel. Well at this point it was pretty late in the day and the dude was still at the shop waiting and offered to give us a ride back to our hotel - dang. We took him up on his offer and in exchange I have him a $50, he didn't want to take it but I was like look man you stayed late and gave me a lift to a hotel I don't have any other way of showing gratitude for what he had done for us.

Next day we ran up to Sandia peak, 11,300 feet all pavement overlooking the city, pretty cool little ride considering we were slabbing down 40 beside semi's with full knobbie wobbles going on to get out of the city, good times. We took the long way around back and ended up putting down quite a bit of miles with some scenery. As we were looking around I spotted a dust devil on the opposite side of the road - oh cool dust devil, then about 30 seconds later "oh shit, that's going to hit us" so while going full speed on knobbies (which was already sketch) we get hit with the full brunt of a dust devil, shook us around pretty good.

Next day I was like, well lets just start the day late because I don't want to risk getting a phone call while out riding, we'll do a check in and then based on that info we'll go riding - got a call during breakfast.

Truck was throwing tons of codes and they didn't know which ones were correct because one thing was for certain the ECM was bad so we needed to replace the ECM before we could tell what was wrong with the truck, a manual check said there was a possibility of injector #2 being bad but they couldn't fully trust the data with a bad ECM, so $4,000 to get the ECM in and installed by Tuesday in order to run a diagnostic to figure out what was wrong with the truck... The cost of the ECM was due to only 1 place having the particular ECM I needed in stock, the overnight shipping of it, the labor to swap it out - then they had to send the truck off to someone else for re-programming.

So at this point I'm like well vacation over how the hell do I get home.

So to ship the truck back home we seeing figures between $1,000 and $1,400, then to get the rest of my stuff home it was $700 for a uhaul that could pull my camper and NONE were available, so I could reserve one they couldn't tell me when I could pick it up. I called penske and they had two options, one way too big, and one way too small. So I figured well I get to waste a vacation hanging out in a shit hole. I started rolling around a ton of other ideas and one that came to mind was, well simply buy another truck - however I'm technically not employed so hmmm.

We Uber it over to the shop and talk to him in person about the truck and I tell him my plans, and he was like well shoot the guy across the street is an RV dealer but he dabbles in trucks too so I walked over, he offered me a fair price for my truck but his prices were too high and all he had were 4 x 4's. I was like nah man I don't want to pay out for a 4x4 especially a damn Laramie. He said well let me call a few other places I know to see if they have and 2WD stock but I"m telling you now your not going to find one in new mexico, he said he could have offered me more for my truck but no one buys 2wd and no one sells them - fucking wonderful.

So I google around and I find some 4x4's that were not bad at all and I'm like shit it's worth a try, so I called a guy up, told him my situation and she said bring pictures and info of my truck so I said screw this and just limped it to him so he started showing me what he had in stock. Nothing but lifted 4x4's and I"m like man I really don't want a 4wd and he's like good luck with that your in new mexico.

So he proceeds to tell me all they deal in is lifted 4x4 dodge cummins that's it, anything that gets traded in that's not lifted, they lift it. Long story short they offered me a good price for my white dodge so I left with a lifted silver dodge, most expensive vacation in the history of vacations.
IMG_20180523_080853.jpg
So on day 4, we arrived in Utah.
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Re: Kinda what I'm thinking about - DP trip

Post by fartymarty » Sun May 27, 2018 6:43 pm

fixxervi6 wrote:
So Courtney and I decided involuntarily to hang out in Albuquerque for a while,....
$ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $
Nice ride to Sandia Peak....visit inside of dust devil...
..then more $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $
Long story short they offered me a good price for my white dodge so I left with a lifted silver dodge, most expensive vacation in the history of vacations.
So on day 4, we arrived in Utah.
omg :(

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Re: Kinda what I'm thinking about - DP trip

Post by Tooner » Sun May 27, 2018 7:00 pm

WOW, dang, holy crap man! So, is it too soon to talk about the next adventure???
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Re: Kinda what I'm thinking about - DP trip

Post by fixxervi6 » Sun May 27, 2018 7:37 pm

Tooner wrote:WOW, dang, holy crap man! So, is it too soon to talk about the next adventure???
Not at all, I wanted to do another in August but since I'm taking a new gig it'll have to wait a bit, I won't be going back to the Grand Staircase - while I think it was worth while, simply too much fucking sand. And it's not like Texas dirt park sand, it's like baby powder shit.

I already know one spot I will be taking the KLR, big bend in the winter, I also need some time around google maps looking around greer, last time I went through there I saw lots - and lots - of dirt roads. Like real dirt, that imaginary thing people talk about but all we ever really find is some crap called sand.
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Re: Kinda what I'm thinking about - DP trip

Post by fartymarty » Mon May 28, 2018 11:44 am

This will probably get answered through the videos, but while we're waiting..... which of the Kml's posted earlier did you get to do if any ..and which one had the 55 miles of sand?

Years ago when I was out there we wanted to do all of the Cathedral Valley road. We had just done the Valley of the Gods the previous day and were pretty full of ourselves, so we thought it should be a piece of cake. However we got only this far but we looked at the sandy road ahead of us and said almost at the same time "Hey, we are on vacation to enjoy ourselves, not to get a merit badge for pain and agony." we turned around and the sting of defeat was with us, but it left quickly because we are old and sometimes forgetfulness is a blessing to be savored.

No mention of the infamous Utah tar snakes...on Knobbies...am I still the only one that thinks that Utah has the worst tar snakes in the U.S.?

Was this:
Image

..Zebra Slot Canyon?
fixxervi6 wrote: I already know one spot I will be taking the KLR, big bend in the winter, I also need some time around google maps looking around greer, last time I went through there I saw lots - and lots - of dirt roads. Like real dirt, that imaginary thing people talk about but all we ever really find is some crap called sand.
I hope you'll keep me in the loop on the Big Bend planning...greer?....Greer Arizona? That is a nice area on pavement..hopefully on dirt as well.

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Re: Kinda what I'm thinking about - DP trip

Post by fixxervi6 » Mon May 28, 2018 12:17 pm

I was thinking it was in new mexico but checking the map it's close but yes, Greer Mountain Arizona, I remember wizzing by a ton of dirt roads that were state/county roads and google maps confirms that the go quite a ways.

Pretty much anything off the main BLM 200 road is sand for the most part including the majority of BLM 200, and it's not just sand its baby powder sand with washboard.

Jeff and Sam made it to hole in the rock while Courtney and I were in Albuquerque, we decided to take the "short" Northern loop route, the one marked PS and got into some gnarly technical stuff, there was some sand on that route but nothing like the other routes. We were on the alstrom point route when ~30 miles in I said f-this and tapped out. If i would have know that "around the corner" we would have been out of the sand I would have pressed on but as it stood I was looking at 30 miles back through all that damn sand, and the further I went I was just adding to that number.

That is indeed zebra slot canyon, pretty cool
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Re: Kinda what I'm thinking about - DP trip

Post by JeffStrom » Mon May 28, 2018 12:31 pm

Yes, Zebra slot on the last day. The long sand road was Hole in the Rock Road (BLM200). Departs Utah 12 to the Southeast of Escalante. It was really only the first 40 miles that were a bad combination of washboard and sand, after Dance Hall rock it was pretty decent, a lot more rock and ups and downs. If the entire ride had been like the last 20 miles I would have volunteered to do it again. After Sam and I took the beating all the way down, getting back out didn't seem as bad. We were able to learn some technique for getting through the bad patches. Still didn't enjoy it but I could tolerate it.

I think if I go back to Escalante, I'll bring Sarena and we'll rent a Jeep for Hole in the rock and Alstrom Point. My truck is 4WD but I don't think it has the ground clearance and approach and departure angles needed for those roads. Plus I'd feel better beating up a rental on that washboard.
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Re: Kinda what I'm thinking about - DP trip

Post by fixxervi6 » Mon May 28, 2018 12:47 pm

JeffStrom wrote:Yes, Zebra slot on the last day. The long sand road was Hole in the Rock Road (BLM200). Departs Utah 12 to the Southeast of Escalante. It was really only the first 40 miles that were a bad combination of washboard and sand, after Dance Hall rock it was pretty decent, a lot more rock and ups and downs. If the entire ride had been like the last 20 miles I would have volunteered to do it again. After Sam and I took the beating all the way down, getting back out didn't seem as bad. We were able to learn some technique for getting through the bad patches. Still didn't enjoy it but I could tolerate it.

I think if I go back to Escalante, I'll bring Sarena and we'll rent a Jeep for Hole in the rock and Alstrom Point. My truck is 4WD but I don't think it has the ground clearance and approach and departure angles needed for those roads. Plus I'd feel better beating up a rental on that washboard.
That's exactly what I was just telling beck, rent a jeep and make it a more open trip. The scenery there is worth it.
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