Trophyhunter, Fabless and I rode a long time.

[paulmbowers 236]

Fabless rode down from Carlsbad for a 630am rendezvous, and we headed south to meet up with Trophyhunter.

We rode:

Otay

Monument 250 (without hassle!)

Tecate Peak

94 to Tecate

Border road from Tecate to Campo, with a stop at the tunnel.

Buckman Springs to Cameron Truck Trail

CTT to Thing Valley

Thing Valley (gated) all the way to Sunrise Highway

xxx

Rodriguez to Banner Grade

BG to Wynola to 79 to Santa Ysabel

SY to Mesa Grande

MG to Black Canyon

BC to Ramona.

Ramona to our homes- for me, 205 miles, all on the same tank, with GALLONS leftover.

Weather great, we all dropped our bikes once at very low speeds, no harm, no fouls, no border patrol, just a whole lot of fun. Fabless took photos, and he'll provide an in-depth writeup below:

[hobiee 28]

Great ride !

[paulmbowers 236]

Great ride !

Stopped by AAKTM to reset the suspension sag.

Off by 18mm.

The guys were in awe of my bike. They all said awwwww walked away shaking their heads.

I took it as a compliment.

[dirt dame 561]

Great pics.....oops, I mean great account of the route .

[hobiee 28]

Great ride !

Stopped by AAKTM to reset the suspension sag.

Off by 18mm.

The guys were in awe of my bike. They all said awwwww walked away shaking their heads.

I took it as a compliment.

Awesome ! Sorry i missed your mug

[danrider 5]

Sounds like a fun and long day Mr. Hunter. I still am planning on going at the end of Feb or March to Yuma, just wanted to let you know.

[TrophyHunter 15]

Thx to PMB for a great ride lead! Just what I needed after weekends of work related stuff for the past 2 months.

Put the windshield on and bundled up for 20 mile run down 125 to the meet spot. About 45 degrees and a little cool in some of the valleys on 125.

Lots of BP on the border road. We waived, they waived, we rode.

Looking south into Mexico at the 250 monument

Curtis working his way up Tecate Peak

Obligatory tressel pic

Dirt road off Buckman Springs turned into this nice back way to Thing Valley

Didn't break out the camera after this and I'm sure Curtis' pics will be better. Good times.

[paulmbowers 236]

I got all "Strega" and worked the route over, cleaned it up, added waypoints and published it here:

http://dualsportmaps.com/?link=102275

Notice I'm not so "Strega" that I know how to embed it in the post.

BE AWARE: There are several gates, three on Thing Valley, that you may experience as closed and unpassable. This ride is 99% big bike friendly, with some exceptions working around certain obstacles. For me, big-bike means a KTM 990-ish or an 800 GS. Skilled riders might be comfortable with others, but I wouldn't take a VStrom.

A great day, and I encourage you to ride this!

PS: The photos shown on DSM are not mine- they come up automatically. Further, there's no need to extend so far west- we rode out of my house (thoughtfully edited from the route).

[Fabless 0]

You can say there's something slightly insane about getting up shortly after 5 after a few hours sleep, jumping on your bike and riding into the cold dawn; but as with many things in life, this view discounts the payoff.

It was a 35 minute ride down to Paul's house on 5-slab. Which is OK because it gave time to wake up, and the bracing temperature swings as one drops into the valleys and lagoons along the 5 helped with that. Arrived on time at 6:30 and waited for other people to not show up; left at 6:50 and headed south to Brown Field where Ken was waiting in the lot of Chevron.

The night before I'd installed wiring for the 2-way radio Paul is a proponent of, thinking that it would add significant annoyance to mounting/dismounting.

From there we rode east along a road just south of Otay County Open Space Preserve. This is a somewhat rocky road with some erosion ruts that you wouldn't want to slide into ;-) but not difficult riding and well-suited for nubbish riders like me.

The radios work quite well. 146MHz diffracts nicely around the deep canyon switchbacks so that we were able maintain contact almost throughout. Managing the wiring was also pretty hassle-free in a way I wouldn't have expected.

After a few miles we headed further south (not figuratively) toward the border. The fence is an impressive sight, an undulating, rust-orange serpent hugging the forbidding terrain (evoking in me memories of similar barriers in other parts of the world); the roads along side are sufficiently maintained without having had all the fun taking out of them. The morning sunlight coming straight at us was the only thing that made things a bit unnerving at times.

We stopped at marker 250 and this is one of two places I had a chance to take photos.

For those who like taking photos, god-light is one of the payoffs for getting up early. I could have spent another 15 minutes shooting the fence and environs, I think.

PMB-ride

Descending on switchbacks we dropped into a wide valley which let us open the throttle a bit. We ran through what was my biggest water crossing, about 30 feet of water that was probably only a couple feet deep at the most. The straights didn't last long as we were back to climbing a ridgeline loaded with switchbacks leading to 94 and Tecate.

Due to radio interference from Ken's motorcycle, I took over sweep somewhere around here.

I don't know if our being able to traverse the border unmolested is related to the time of day we were riding there. Just out of Tecate we made a stop at a railroad tunnel crossing the border.

Here, Paul hails down a passing train.

Rust + wood + clear sunlight = rich colors.

The stretch along before Campo is a wide straightaway with rolling hills where we passed a lone dirt biker puttering along, shot passed our turn, and backtracked, heading north to Campo where we took a detour on S1 past a gated section of Campo TT to Cameron TT reconnecting with our original route, then to Thing Valley. I remember this being a particularly fun section of the ride as we climbed up into cooler weather and forested terrain.

We had lunch at the Blue Jay Lodge off Sunrise in near Mt. Laguna. (Credit for the photo goes to Google.)

The place was deserted and I felt bad for the owner but it was probably because it was well past noon by the time we arrived. Burgers and cokes all around, very nice venue with good food (though I'm still thinking about what we had at Frosty Burgers last weekend post-Lark Canyon). Climbing up to Mt. Laguna took us above 5000 feet and the air was brisk despite the ample sun. I was just about to pull over to throw an extra layer on when we took a hard right east on to dirt, dropping our speed and our altitude as we followed rocky switchbacks to the desert floor and Rodriguez Spur. On this day at least, this part of the ride was not as difficult as expected, with some rocky sections as we climbed back up to Banner.

This put us back on 78 --> Wynola, which is a beautiful winding graded dirt road that most riders know about. From there we took Mesa Grande to Black Canyon back to Ramona, where we parted ways. Back in Carlsbad my odometer stood at 243 miles, with the reserve light turning on moments before returning, so I had about a gallon to spare on 6.5 gallons. This was a fantastic ride. I had not been on most of the roads we were on, the weather was perfect, the terrain varied/interesting and mostly dirt, and we had no mishaps.

Apologies for the few photos -- with the temperatures warming and my extra layers removed, all the stuff in my camelbak plus the radio wiring made the barrier to accessing my camera too great, and cut down on the photo ops; I'm fixing this.

-Fabless

[Strega 0]

Notice I'm not so "Strega" that I know how to embed it in the post.

You can't embed maps on SDAR, the board doesn't allow that. Your link does work though.

[paulmbowers 236]

Notice I'm not so "Strega" that I know how to embed it in the post.

You can't embed maps on SDAR, the board doesn't allow that. Your link does work though.

Wow. One would think that'd be entry-level. Is it the software framework on which it's written?

[Strega 0]

The BB code needs to be added on the backed via the admin console to allow it. I've never done it via IPBoard, but it can't be much different than any other forum like EZboard, etc.

[dirt dame 561]

Nice pics, you guys1

[pyro 1]

Nice one, Great job ya'll! Wish I coulda joined you.Here's my favorite pic: