Sunday, November 28, 2010

Motorbiking at El Mirage was great

So my family got to go on saturday to the place 100 miles away from where i live called El Mirage, a dry lakebed just outside Victorville.

We met up with a few friends there that went in their Motorhome and we went and towed our trailer. Along with a full complement of Motorcycles on the back of the truck. It was in fact in doubt wether r not we would get there, as my daughter was not well over thanksgiving and my wife was taking ill. So we ended up leaving a day late, but going anyway on saturday. My wife is a real trooper and so wanted to go and see our friends (and ride of course).

We got there and found them near the top of the dry lakebed. the whole of el mirage was quite busy, and although i say busy, for a place that big, it is not a problem at all. So we circled the camp firepit and said hello to our friends, one of whom is pregnant with her second boy, woohoo!

I won't bore with too many details apart from the fact i got to do a nice ride with my family, but also a couple of major rides with the guys (4 of us). We did 22 miles on one of the rides on saturday and that was pretty epic. All sorts of terrain like sand and rocks and cliffs(they looked like cliffs). Only 1 spill happened when one of our friends tried to ride over a ditch (made of soft sand) and the bike sunk like a stone and he went clean over the bars. He wasn't hurt and that was cool. After the ride i think we were all hurting, it was quite tiring.

during the afternoon and then into the night the wind kept picking up it's pace, it was also very cold. Even though we had a huge bonfire it was still rather cold outside. Which was unfortunate as it tends to stifle free flowing conversation. Once the finished with the smors and glowing bangle things it was time for bed (about 10:30pm ish). That would have been ok, except it started to rain quite hard, and the wind was whipping it like mad. It was very noisy inside the trailer and things were clunking and banging, thoug i could not see what was doing it. I attempted to go outsdie at one point, but the wind and cold and sleet put me off.

Nevetheless at about 2am the rain had stopped so i ventured outside into the biting wind to see what damage had been wrought. I found the thing that had been knocking and tied it up using a motorcycle tie-down. That put paid to it's noise. Walking around outside really got my shoes all muddy, which was a pain. I left them on a bunch of kitchen roll till morning.

Still the new day dawned bright and dry and the wind was drying the lakebed out nicely. If it had continued to rain, getting of the lakebed would have been very difficult.

So the boys got together to go for a ride and i ended up leading. Now noone told me they were just out for a short ride. In fact everyone in camp knew about the ride being short except me, and i was leading, lol. So lead the 4 of us all over El Mirage and in the end did about 8 miles. It took us some time because the wind was so cold we kept stopping to get feeling back into our lips and thumbs. It was on this ride that one of my friends attempted a troublesome hill a couple of times and didn't fall off, at least according to him ;)

It was a wonderful time with wonderful people.

Tomorrow it is back to coding and game design. Maybe myxbox will be on it's way back as well... I sure hope so.

G'night

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