March 7, 2013 - Martinez Lake Dual Sport Ride

Good news!! I got a new camera, finally!!!

After being alone for 2 weeks, our friends have come back to Quartzsite.  We were getting lonely, and we had run out of rides that we had GPS tracks for. We needed the experts to come to the rescue. And they did!!  Once Bill, Rainer and Maria, and Bob and Cindi all got settled in, Bill planned a ride that would have us loading up the trucks and heading south.

7 bikes/riders and 2 return drivers made the trip 

We drove about 70 miles south on SR 95 to Martinez Lake.

There we unloaded the bikes and said “Thanks” to our drivers Jerry and Sue

Bill prepping his stuff

We started through the Imperial Wildlife preserve and headed north through the Painted Desert.

Nice day for a ride

The hills were very colorful.

So much rain this year means the flowers are everywhere.

 

Our first stop was the Red Cloud Mine. This minewhich started as a silver mine has been here in the desert for a long time. The Red Cloud Mine is only one of several places in the world that produces gem quality Wulfenite.

Gem quality Wulfenite

 

 

 

This is really interesting! These holes along the wash banks (there is quite a few of them) were miner’s homes back when the mine was going gang busters. You can see the chimney pipe stuck up out of the ceiling of the tunnel for the stove.

 

The mine has a full time caretaker, who doesn’t let anyone onto the property just to look. He was an interesting fellow.  He told us many stories, many of which had our bulls**t meters pegged.  I like the one where he claimed that 2 fighter jets from the local military proving grounds ricocheted off the tower, leaving so quickly he didn’t get their license numbers!!! We told him we were glad we were wearing boots; the bull was so deep, so he told us that the tower had actually been dropped several times while being installed.  That one we believed!

Wayne at the mine

Rainer takes a small break, before he gave up to the flu and headed back to camp.

The pack

 

 

 

After leaving the mine we continued on, turning off the dirt road, and heading up this hill.  The jeepers we saw on the road said they didn’t like that route.  I can see why.

 

 

Yes, sometimes we get into places that take all of us working together to get us all up the hill.

After taking his bike up, Wayne comes back to get my bike.  He knows I suck at this kind of stuff

Cindi heads up through the rocks 

She passes Bills bike 

Bill gives her a hand 

Off she goes, just as Wayne is coming back to get Maria’s bike for her.  Maria rides a small Yamaha TTR 125, with little wheels and no power.  This is not a place that it works well.

Wayne takes Maria’s little bike upthrough a rough section.

The view from the top, worth the trip!

Wayne had brought Maria’s and my bike up through the worst of the rocks, but it was only part way up.  Then he headed down to help Rainer who was very sick with the flu.  Rainer decided to head back, so Wayne rode part way out with him.  Maria and I still had to get up to the very top.

Cindi is riding Maria’s little bike up the hill to the very top.

Wayne soon caught up with us and we grouped back up at top.

 

Then it was down the other side and into a wash to find shade for lunch.

Wayne, Cindi and Bob find good seats

Maria and Bob at lunch

Wayne and Bob

After lunch we headed down to the Clip Wash.  This is a corridor through the Trigo Mountains Wilderness Area.  It is also ten miles of deep soft hard to ride dry wash.

Yes, 10 miles of soft ruts.   

I had to stop once when my hands cramped up, right next to this arch.

Finally we get to the end of the wash and head out through the Cibola Wildlife Preserve along the Colorado River.  Then we get onto the Ehrenburg-Cibola Road and head out through the desert again.

One of the realities of following a GPS track somewhere you have never been is that you spend a lot of time figuring out where in the world are you, and is it where you are supposed to be?

Nope, we go that way

We’re turning around again?

Bob, Cindi and Maria

Patti and Wayne

Finally, a place I recognize.  This is the Power line road that you can see from I-10 as you head east from California toward Quartzsite.  It is much steeper than it looks in this shot.

Patti headed up the Power Line Rd

 

This is taken from the top, and shows a little better how long and straight this road is.  It starts at an elevation of about 900’ peaks at 1700’ and then goes back down to 1000’ all in about 6 miles.  From here we went around that hill on the left, caught the paved Pipe Line road into Quartzsite and home, after 100 miles.  It was a great ride.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If Not for Bad Luck…You know the rest! February in Arizona

Where to start...  I still didn’t have a camera, so this will mainly be text.  Let’s start with my mom.  She finally lost her battle with lung cancer on February 3^rd.  I was at a friend’s house when I got the first call. Jeff, Robin and Dad were with her, and within an hour and a half she was gone. Even though we have been dealing with this for more than a year and even though it really was a blessing for her, it was still hard, really hard. I was still pretty numb emotionally when we left Quartzsite a couple of days later. I miss her, even if she hadn’t been able to talk on a phone for several years, I miss talking to her.

Patti and her Mom

At the end of January, while the big RV show was going on in Quartzsite, Wayne had a performance chip added to the coach.  We did this to our last coach and loved it. Wayne had spoken to John Brazel of Brazels in Centralia.  We thought they were going to put it in but it turned out to be Redlands Trucks out of California.  We didn’t drive it until after my mom died and we headed to Wickenburg for our next group ride.  Wayne got about 10 miles down I-10 and thought he had an exhaust leak.  We stopped in Wickenburg and ordered new gaskets, but 12 miles later, at camp, it was obvious that we had major problems.  Wayne changed the gasket in case, but it was actually fine.  He and some of the other guys in camp tried to troubleshoot it during the next week, to no avail.  So we called a shop we had found in Wickenburg and made an appointment to be towed in.

The day before our appointment I was in town doing laundry so I stopped at Craig Motorcraft where we were taking the coach so I could confirm our appointment, and spoke at length to Terry Craig.  He said that he thought we would have to replace the motor, which would take a week, just to have the motor shipped from Colorado (the closest one).  But he wasn’t sure, so after work that day he drove out to where we were camped; just to listen to the motor.  Yep, it sounded like the crank or something in the bottom end.  So I called the tow company.  Since tow trucks usually don’t like to go off the pavement our friend Bob actually towed us out of the desert and onto the shoulder of the paved road.

The tow truck hauled us into Wickenburg (thank you roadside assistance, if you don’t have it you should!). Of course it was nowafternoon on Friday February 15th, so it was Monday before we got the bad news.  Four pistons were destroyed due to detonation, which is what our mechanic says was the problem.  He feels it is completely a chip installation problem, that they did not change the timing as they should have. 

3 bad pistons

Clear down to the ring

We spent 4 nights living in the coach at the shop, leaving during the day so they could work on it.  By Tuesday, the group had been at that camp for the limit of 14 days so they moved as scheduled to Lake Pleasant in Peoria.  We however headed to Quartzsite.  Lake Pleasant was too far for us to go back and forth each day, and we have some of the nicest friends.  Bill and Kris offered to let us use their little 1 bedroom house in Quartzsite. They were going to be at Lake Pleasant until the end of the month, so we had the place to ourselves, well us and the cats. Before we left we got some more bad news, once Terry gets the motor in, he can’t run it with the faulty programing in it and the Chevy dealer can’t reprogram the brain without the coach, so we get to pay for a tow to Phoenix after the motor is installed.  Cha-ching!  More money going out. I didn’t know whether to cry or puke, it was so awful.

Bill and Kris's house

Trailer parked in front

Once in Quartzsite we called Brazels, what a joke.  Of course John was not available and the guy we talked to had what Wayne would call a ‘silver tongue’.  He spoke in circles and never accepted responsibility for the issue. He kept saying that he wanted to do anything he could to help us, but it wasn’t their fault that the motor blew up.  Yeah right.  10 miles after having the chip put it and it isn't related?? who is he kidding.  He wouldn’t even give us our money back, getting them to cover the engine is never going to happen.  It was supposed to be 100% satisfaction guarantee, obviously we aren’t satisfied, so …    He said that Redlands had actually taken our money so we would have to go to them for a refund.  Yeah, he’s a lot of help.  He did ask that we have our mechanic call him.

They work on anything at Terry's shop

After a week, the motor is in and Terry finally has some good news.  Brazels is going to reprogram the brain, at no charge.  That will save us about $1000.  So Terry sends it off next day air and expects it back on Friday.  Next call comes, and Terry says that the new motor needs different bolts for the head and just to make it fun, Schwan’s the Ice Cream trucks have corralled all the extra 8.1L Chevy engines and parts to repower all their trucks.  The bolts are in Pennsylvania, they will take 2-3 days. On Friday March 1^st we get a call, none of the parts are in so it will be sometime next week.  Enjoy your week end.  Yeah right…

Monday comes, and Linda from Terry’s shop calls, Brazels sent out the brain, but instead of next day air as agreed, it is coming ground.  Shouldn’t be here until Wednesday.  Finally while we are out riding on Thursday we get the message, the coach is ready!!!  $10,000 later and it is running and ready!  Finally! 

The original plan was to pick it up and continue east to Mesa, then go south to an RV park north of Tucson where we have won 7 days free stay.  However our luck is still the wrong kind, and we have to come back to Quartzsite as we are expecting parts to be delivered Friday or Monday.  See, while all of this was going on, Wayne’s Gas-Gas 250 has still been laid up. 

Working on another bike!

It started when we were waiting for parts and tools from Chaparral Motorsports for the KTM 525. (See Shipping Woes post)  While the 525 was apart, we went on a couple of dual-sport rides, rides that he would normally use the KTM for.  However with it laid up he rode his 2-stroke, the Gas-Gas 250.  On the way back from the ride to Bouse AZ, we came back on the Sunquist Trail.  This is a very straight, flat gravel road.  I had pulled over and waved Wayne by, knowing that while I might do 45-50 MPH down this road, he would go much faster, and he had been stuck behind me all day.  So off he went, having a great time sliding the rear wheel; that is right up until he stuck the piston.  Quick reflexes meant he pulled in the clutch and slowly let it out, and the motor started up and he continued on.  When we got to the end of the road, the 250 died.  He couldn’t get it to restart, so he rode my bike the half mile to where we were staying and got the truck.

The next day he checked out the piston through the intake and exhaust ports and it looked fine, but no spark.  This was right as we were leaving to go to Wickenburg, so he ordered a new stator from Trail Tech because the old one tested bad.  We had to have it sent to Quartzsite because we knew Wayne was going to come back (200 miles round trip) to get the package from Chaparral, once it finally arrived. (See Shipping Woes post)

So there we were, the coach is broke down in the desert and once the stator is installed, the bike doesn’t start.  So Wayne decides to continue working on it in Quartzsite as we were headed back there the next day. Once here Wayne orders a CDI from Go-Fasters (the major parts importer).  They say they have 2 coming from Spain and they should be here on Wednesday. On Thursday Wayne calls and finds out that although it is in the country, it is not at Gofasters. The next time Wayne calls a box has arrived at Gofasters, but the parts guy is in Vegas at a conference, so this guy on the phone doesn’t know what is in the box. Sheese!! Parts guy should be back either Thursday or Friday.  So Wayne decides to install the new springs he bought for the shock and forks.  He gets the bike apart, unwrapped the shock spring, and it is the wrong size.  And it appears to be miss-marked at; wait for it …Gofasters! Wayne has had it.  This bike, while he loves how it works for him, it has absolutely no support from the importers.  It took 2 months last summer to get a fender, and 6 months to get the electric starter working right.  Wayne calls up the shop he ordered the springs from and asked if he could return them, as he is going to sell the bike.  Nice shop, they said we could return them. 

Once he gets the bike back together he tries the e-starter just for kicks and giggles, and the darn thing sounds like it wants to start, go figure it has spark!   Next he calls Gofasters, and although the parts guy is back, he hasn’t sent out the CDI. So he cancels his order. 

But what is keeping it from running???  Wayne decides to tear apart the cylinder to see how bad it seized.  Turns out it stuck at the wrist pins, which Wayne says is very unusual.  Now the cylinder has to be sent out for recoating, and to do this he needs the new piston and rings he ordered to arrive from Skeeter’s shop in San Diego. That is why we are coming back to Quartzsite instead of heading to Tucson. We want to send the cylinder to a place in Henderson NV to be recoated.  They are very busy and it will be about 2-3 weeks before it will be done, and we can pick it up on our way to a ride in Nevada in early April. Even the order from Skeeters gets delayed.  The original order was on Friday, the parts guy says he'll send it out the next day.  Of course there is no UPS on Saturday and they are closed on Monday.  When they try to send it on Tuesday, UPS doesn't like the street address in Quartzsite.  When they try to send it again on Wednesday, it finally goes.  It arrived here on Friday, while we were picking up the coach.

And if this all wasn’t enough, we spent a day running errands in Parker AZ; about 30 miles from here and Wayne slowly went through an intersection and didn't see the stop sign, was pulled over and got a ticket for $184.  Will it never end???

Shipping Woes - Quartzsite AZ – Part 2

When we were in California this past fall, we stopped at Chaparral Motorsports to explore their gigantic store and to pick up the parts Wayne would need this winter to work on his KTM 525. So once he got the Gas-Gas maintenance done, he started in on the 525.  However, he had forgotten to get a gasket that he needed.  Plus he had purchased a high output stator for my bike while at Trail Tech and it would need a gasket when he installed it.  Usually we order everything we can from Rocky Mountain MC/ATV in Utah, but they didn’t have these particular parts, so remembering Chaparral, he decided to order from them, plus they are really close by.  The parts arrived via UPS very quickly, but several items are on back order.  Nothing we needed immediately, so no big deal.

 A week later the back order is still not here, so Wayne calls Chaparral, only to find out that the backorder was sent out the next day, but it went through the Post Office.  Great, Quartzsite is one of those towns that have NO street delivery, you have to use a PO Box and no one had called to get an address (how could Chaparral know to call??).  When something comes to a street address the post office promptly returns it to the sender so Chaparral has it and will resend it. He asks if they can add a puller and an installer to the order (he needs these to finish the 525) and they agree and will send the package out via UPS this time. 

We wait another week and Wayne rides his Gas-Gas instead.  During one of these rides he is having too much fun zipping down a gravel road and seizes the piston. And to confuse matters he loses spark at the same time. It makes it really hard to figure out what is wrong with his bike. This means both his bikes are now out of commission. The 525 is getting closer to being done, our friend Rainer has the puller so he gets the flywheel off, but can’t put it back together without the seal installer. So Wayne calls Chaparral again (and they always have you on hold for 15-20 minutes before you get to talk to anyone) to see where his parts are. The rep tells him it did go out via UPS and traces the package; it should be there by the end of day that day.  Yeah!  And our friend Richard realizes that he has the installer Wayne needs, so the 525 is finally up and running again!  Yeah!!

Only no happy truck (UPS truck) comes to see us.  It doesn’t come the next day either. It is now Friday so Wayne calls again, sits on hold again and when the rep verifies the package information she keeps saying it is going to Quartzsite Idaho. No we say, that is Arizona, there is no Quartzsite Idaho. We ask for a supervisor, and go through the whole explanation again and this person reads the whole address to us and I realize that someone transposed the zip code from 85359 to 83539 which is Kooskia ID.  The supervisor goes online and redirects the package to 85359 and says it should be here by Tuesday. The original order was placed January 14^th, it is now February 1^st and we are leaving Quartzsite on Tuesday, but our friend Kenny will still be there and he will call when it arrives.  Wayne will have to drive the 100 miles back to pick it up. 

Kenny finally calls on Wednesday, still no package.  Wayne calls Chaparral and is put on hold again, and finds out the expected delivery day is now put out to Friday.  By Friday when we call, they know us by name and say it will be there by Tuesday the next week.  Sheeze!!! Finally we get the call from Kenny that the package has finally arrived, it has taken 4 weeks to get a gasket for my bike and 2 tools that Wayne no longer needs.

During this same time, 2 more friends have ordered from Chaparral, had the website say the package will ship by standard shipping, so they figured it was UPS and gave the street address.  WRONG! Both were sent via USPS and they both were sent out and returned to sender just like ours.  One package took as long as ours, the other has never arrived.  Obviously we won’t be ordering through them again.

If this sounds like bad luck, wait to you see what else was going on in our life.  If it wasn’t for bad luck, we’d have no luck at all!!!  Stay tuned to next time.

January in Quartzsite AZ - Part 1

Sunrise in Quartzsite

It took us 5 days to make the trip from Seattle to Quartzsite, but we got to spend 2 nights with friends we usually only see in the summer, that was a bonus!! Once we got to Quartzsite it was time to settle down and to Wayne that means it’s time to start working on all the bikes.  He had his Gas-Gas in Seattle when we when home, and rode at ‘The Facility’ at Brady’s house.  This place eats up bikes and spits them out.  Wayne’s is no exception. It seemed like he had one or the other of his bikes torn apart for the next month.  It was so cold when we first got to Arizona, but he was out there working on a bike, wearing a coat and ear muffs in the cold.  We did take one day to run down to Yuma to start on my dental work.   It would take 2 more trips to get it finished. After a whole week of really cold weather, Cindy and Bob arrived, bringing warmer weather with them.  We are very lucky to have friends who own property in Quartzsite, with room for us to stay, and the hook-ups to make it comfortable.

On January 19^th, we drove to Peoria to watch the WORCs off-road motorcycle race. We didn’t know it yet, but the mechanical problems we had with the truck that day would be just a preview of what was to come.  We took State Route 60 through Wickenburg to get to the track.  On the way the truck overheated because of a broken fitting on the radiator.  After a quick detour to O’Reilly’s for parts and a stop to add more water; we continued on to the race. 

 Our friend Brady was there helping RPM Racing pit for the KTM riders. It was a pretty small showing of riders and spectators. The weather was warm and the sky was blue, what more could we ask for.

Pit row

The race was held at a motocross track north of Phoenix.  The 3 mile course started on the track before heading off the track and over the hill into the wash. After roaming around in and out of the wash the course headed back on the track and out the other side to hit a long straightaway for a high speed section before coming back onto the MX track.  We spent a great afternoon walking around the track watching the race action.

First on the track

 

Out to the wash

Through the wash

 

Back up on the track

Through the track and onto the pits

 

We also spent some time in the pit with Brady who was down from Washington to pit for the RPM/KTM team.  It was just not my day (soon to turn into “Not our month', then "Not our winter”) because without warning, my camera’s programing went nuts.  It wouldn’t take pictures and when I turned it off, the lens would close and then open again, with an error message stating to turn off and then on again to restart.  It would be more than a month before I finally replaced my camera. Good thing my phone has a camera!

 

Wayne and Brady in the Pits.

 

Time out for a little ranting and raving…

We found these two cacti as we headed out of the wash area. I am so tired of hearing the environmentalists whine about man interfering with nature.  They want everything left alone, as it was.  So why are they out here interfering with the cycle of life?  Or did these grow their own 2X4's?  I bet when a cactus falls over and dies, other animals move in and use it for food and shelter.  So what are they thinking??? Not only that, but they weren't very successful in their efforts.



Really? Can't we let nature take its course?

All that effort for nothing, Mother Nature wins in the end!