Floribama Riders

Saturday: The day starts with another fine breakfast from Ge Ge, eggs, pancakes, and some incredibly good bacon rubbed in some kind of spice. We suit up, gas the bikes from an onboard tank on one of the trucks, lube the chains, fix some crash damage from previous days, etc. Ge Ge brings out our roast beef sandwich lunch which we put in our backpacks, and we roll out around 9. The day starts out much warmer than yesterday, but we are warned to prepare for anything. I stuff my riding jacket into its own fanny pack. Fill up the camelback with 100 ounces of water, put another bottle of water in for lunch, and we're ready. Today's ride is more scenic, and a bit less 'technical' than yesterday's ride. We ride through various ORV areas. They all have different rules. An 'open' area means you can go anywhere you please. A limited use area means you can go anywhere there's already a trail, but you shouldn't get off the trail. At one point we stumble onto some course markers for a desert race the next day, and follow the course for a few miles to kind of get a flavor for desert races. Another great “On Any Sunday” moment.

The terrain is constantly varying. We ride through an ORV area called Wagon Wheel, through fields of mostly vertical boulders ranging in size from VW Beetle to Two Story House. Back up in the mountains, we stop at abandoned mines, tunnel shafts, old houses, etc. We actually came upon a desert tortoise on the road. We gave it a wide berth, and it seemed to completely ignore us. We went over the mountain by climbing a rock filled wash, the rocks were all rounded like river rocks. Odd. This was a fun and challenging climb. Down the other side, we're looking for a shady spot for lunch, a tall order in the Mojave. We find a small group of trees and have lunch. Looking around after eating, Brad discovers a nest of owls in one of the trees, a momma Owl and a couple of fuzzy baby owls. Momma was not happy with the attention and gave us her best evil eye. We took some pictures and moved on.

Next we rode through some fairly heavily used areas, including a very long section of whoops that had us begging for mercy at the end. By the end, the damping on the rear shock of my ATK had gone away, and it never really came back. The road smoothed out and we made a high speed run over to the Trona Pinnacles. This is a very odd looking formation that used to be at the bottom of a lake. If you had the misfortune of seeing the recent remake of 'Planet of the Apes' the otherworldly terrain in the movie was actually the Trona Pinnacles. (http://www.blm.gov/ca/ridgecrest/trona.html ) We ride into the town of Trona, buy gas, water and gatorade at the only store and decide what to do next. Some of the group are hurting, tired from the miles of whoops, and want to get to camp. Others, like myself, are ready for more. We divide into 2 groups, one headed for camp via the road, and our group of 5 headed for Fish Canyon. We headed up Fish Canyon, a neat, scenic, and not especially difficult climb. As we top the ridge, we see a huge valley with a dry lake bed at the bottom. On the way down, my eye keeps being drawn to the scenery, and I have a couple of 'interesting' moments until I focus my attention on the riding. We are descending the spine of the ridge, and for someone who had grown up riding while surrounded by trees, it is a strange experience. Agoraphobics need not apply. Near the bottom we encounter a couple of miles of 'rock garden' consisting to rocks from softball size to bread loaf size. Many of them are embedded in the ground, but enough are 'rollers' that you have to really concentrate to get through without taking a soil or rock sample.

After the rock garden we just have to ride 'over there' to camp. It looks like a couple of miles, but turns out to be about 15. The road is a fun, high speed jeep trail. We pair up and ride side by side to avoid the dust. An interesting sensation, kind of like racing, you have to trust your partner to stay in his 'lane' and match your speed. We make it through without incident and ride into camp at Ballerat.