Well friends, I mentioned the potential for a desert ride today, and it was quite nice!
Temps were in the 70's F (lower 20's C) with a few rain sprinkles to settle the dust.
Met up with Greg and we headed out west of Skunk Hollow to the Sonoran Desert National Monument to run the power line and pipe line roads a bit.
We did about 20 paved miles to get to a turnoff that wanders along the various powerline and pipeline service roads. Ran around maybe 50 miles on roads that in hot weather are basically deep moon dust, but with a little rain, become substantially more palatable.
Roads start out wide and flat, with minor whoops where washes cross the road mostly perpendicularly.
Things get a little narrower and twistier as you veer off on some of the available side quests:
Some of the smaller trails still had really deep sand. They make this a little more interesting by sinking the road (with wear) deeper and deeper below the modestly more solid desert floor.
Greg was sailing down one such road, with me following behind, fast enough to float on the sand. He suddenly hit his limit of tolerance for the sand work out, and made a decision to take an abrupt left up and out onto the desert floor. I was paying less attention to what he was doing than to what silliness Black Betty (That Sweet Girl) was up to trying to throttle steer out of the direct path into some sage brush overhanging the road.
I blew past the turn off, and kept the speed up so as to not sink. I believe Greg thought I did not see him, and just went on down the road. The road got progressively more and more interesting, until there finally was another dirt ramp up and out of the trough and into the Desert floor. We managed to locate each other and pick a route back to the main powerline road without serious issue. Fun stuff!
Nothing else very dramatic happened; lots of whoops and slides. 60 MPH seemed fast, so natural speed limits were mostly obeyed.
Would love to say nothing broke or fell off, but my inattention to wire strain relief on the hack fender tailight caught up with me. All three wires vibration fatigued and broke on one of the hack tail lights. Guess I will have something to work on tomorrow, after all!
