Tag: New Mexico

White Sands National Park

Gresh has New Mexico pretty well scoped out.   I was worried that after visiting with him at Tinfiny Ranch there wouldn’t be much left to do in the area, but boy, did I have that wrong.

“White Sands,” Joe said.  “We can do the missile museum and the National Park.  It’s really not sand, you know…it’s gypsum.”  I didn’t know that, but I do now.  I first visited White Sands 50 years ago, and on that visit, we took in the missile museum and the National Park on the same day, too.  It’s doable; they are not far apart.  White Sands National Park is about 15 miles south of Alamagordo on US Highway 70, and the missile museum is a few miles south of that.

I shot this photo of Joe Gresh on an RX3 in 2016 as we rode through the Gobi Desert. We were both rolling along at 70 mph; I was about 10 feet to his left on another RX3. The Gobi looks a lot like the Mojave.

White Sands National Park looks about like what I would imagine the Sahara Desert to be, although having never been in the Sahara Desert, I could be wrong.  I always thought the Gobi Desert would look like the Sahara, too, but when Gresh and I rode through the Gobi a few years ago on our ride across China, it looked like the Mojave here in California.  But not White Sands.  Nope, it looks like, well, white sand, even though (as Gresh said) it’s really gypsum.

The photo ops really are amazing in White Sands National Park. You can get by with a cell phone, but to me it would be a crime against nature to visit any US National Park without a good camera and a circular polarizer. I use a Nikon and it usually wears a 24-120 lens.
The sky, the clouds, the white sands…it’s all very impressive.
Folks walking the dunes in White Sands National Park. Many people bring sleds (of the circular pan variety) to slide down the dunes. You can rent them in White Sands National Park, too.

The ticket in is $25 per vehicle, but I have the lifetime senior citizen pass.  I was looking forward to using that pass, but when we went the entrance gate was unmanned (or unwomanned, or perhaps unpersoned, or whatever passes for politically correct these days) and we just rolled in.  It’s funny, I guess.  That’s what happened when Gresh and I led the CSC Motorcycles Western America Adventure Ride when we entered Yellowstone National  Park.  Gresh must be the national park admission fee good luck charm.

Gresh was really showing us a good time in the Alamogordo area, and we hit both the White Sands Missile Range Museum and the White Sands National Park on the same day.  From there, he took us to his favorite Italian restaurant in Alamogordo, but the day didn’t end there.  Our next stop was the New Mexico Space Museum.   Both WSMR and the New Mexico Space Museum are coming up in future blogs.  Stay tuned.

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Nobody Puts Baby In A Box: Tractor Supply Box Blade Review

Most people think of New Mexico as a barren, desert state. Much of it consists of broad expanses of high, scrabbly bush land. But that’s not nearly all there is here. New Mexico has two mountain ranges running north to south dividing the land into separate areas each with their own style of terrain, east of the Pecos River you’ll find the flat, oil-rich Permian Basin. This area is New Mexico’s Golden Goose that never seems to run out of eggs. The Permian Basin pays a huge amount of taxes to the state coffers. The odor of salt water mixed with oil is everywhere. It makes me a little homesick for the bilges of boats I used to build and repair in Florida.

Moving west from the Pecos River you come to my mountains, the Sacramento Mountains. Tinfiny Ranch lies on the western foothills of the Sacramento Mountains looking out over the Tularosa Valley. At 6000 feet Tinfiny Ranch is both wetter and cooler than the small towns down in the flat lands of the valley 1500 feet below.

Tinfiny Ranch has small trees, maybe 20 feet high and all of the plant life is larger and happier than the small shrubs you find at lower elevations. Within Tinfiny Ranch there are two different ecosystems: the relatively damper lower arroyo area where some idiot decided to put the shack we live in and the higher, just slightly more arid upper area where the off-grid trophy shed sits. The elevation change is only 50 feet but the trees are noticeably larger and the undergrowth denser down by the Arroyo. There’s even a little grassy lawn struggling to survive in the lower reaches.

The upper and lower areas are connected by a steep dirt road that is always in need of repair. Whenever it rains the water cuts deep ruts across and parallel to the road. Monsoon season makes the road 4-wheel drive only. UPS and FedX stop delivering when the road gets too bad. They leave packages by the entrance gate instead of at our door.

Tractor Supply’s County Line Box Blade is just the ticket for grading and smoothing out the ruts in our driveway. Five feet wide, the box blade connects to the 3-point hitch on the back of standard tractors and comes mostly assembled except for a few thick bars of steel that make up the top mount. It’s a heavy chunk of steel and I can only lift one side at a time to move it.

Five depth-adjustable scarifying teeth mounted ahead of the leveling blade allow the box blade to break up hard ground. These teeth will catch roots and rocks and rip them out of the ground making it easier for the following blade to level the area. If you didn’t have the scarifying teeth the blade would just bounce over some obstacles leaving behind an uneven grade.

Tinfiny Ranch has a lot of big rocks from softball size to larger than a shopping cart. Running over one of these big boys will kick the box blade into the air with a loud crash. Some rocks you’ll want to dig out of the ground with a pick and pry bar instead of beating up the box blade.

With the box blade it took just a few hours to straighten out the road leading to the upper level. I’ll need to do some more work on it to fill in some low spots and cut down some high spots but it’s still raining so I don’t get too excited about making it perfect. At some point we will either asphalt the road or pave it with concrete. I’m leaning towards asphalt since I won’t have to do it.

I give the Tractor Supply box blade high marks for its low-ish $1000 price tag and high quality. That seems like a lot of money but try to find a used one. If you manage to it will be a wreck and cost $500. This County Line unit is a well built, heavy tool that will last your lifetime and maybe more. Once you get a box blade you’ll start finding all sort of areas that need leveling. Soon there won’t be a plant standing and your yard will be a broad, featureless plain, like some areas of New Mexico.

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Rain Delay

There are three paved routes across the Sacramento Mountains in southern New Mexico. To the north, highway 380 crosses from Hondo all the way to the small town of San Antonio on the Rio Grande River. Thirty miles south is the central road, Highway 70, running from Roswell to Tularosa. Highway 70 is 4-lane all the way and is the main east/west route over the mountains. Another thirty miles further south is Highway 82. Highway 82 twists and turns its way from oil rich Artesia to Cloudcroft at 9000-feet elevation and then runs downhill to the valley floor at Alamogordo. There is another route, unpaved, called 506. Yet another thirty miles south from 82, Route 506 takes you from Queen in the east to the border patrol checkpoint on Highway 54. Not really a highway, 506 is a fairly good dirt road but in the wet it can be tough going. 506 is the lowest-elevation passage as it crosses the southern tailings of the Sacramento Mountains, which flatten out towards El Paso, Texas.

I’m telling you this geographical information because of the tacos. I took the RD350 on a lunch run with the Carrizozo Mud Chuckers the other day. We did a great circle route that brought us to a taco stand in Ruidoso, on Highway 70. This particular taco place was one I had not been to yet.  It was rundown-looking and at first I thought it was closed. The front had an enclosed porch area that had 2X6 beams roofed with plywood. One end of the porch was open. The ceiling was low and I could touch the 2X6 beams if I jumped a little. Inside this patio were three wooden picnic tables thickly coated with a gummy white paint.

Dozens of coats of paint left the texture sort of soft, like skin, but more like dried skin. If you stood up fast enough you could just catch the fading impression of denim on the bench seat. To the far right was an entry door. Through this glass entry door I could see an indoor dining room with six, orange, Formica-topped booths but the door to this room was locked.

“Can I help you?” a small plexiglass window swung out into the patio. Inside was the one guy running the taco place. It was my turn to buy so Mike ordered nachos with cheese and a Mexican Coke in the tall, glass bottle except they were out of nacho cheese. I ordered a Pepsi and 3 beef tacos with rice and refried beans but had to order the items individually since there was no meal option. Eddie ordered a single tamale with rice and beans and a Sprite. The order was scribbled on one of those light green paper pads with a piece of carbon paper between the pages for a copy. Our taco man tallied up our stuff in his head and it came to 31 dollars, which shocked me a little. I gave the window guy 2 dollars as a tip. The guy in the window said, “Let me have your name, I’ll call you when it’s ready.”

It’s monsoon season in New Mexico and dark clouds were encircling the taco place. Any direction you looked had rain curtains slanting across the sky. I heard my name called, no mean feat with the thunder, and picked up the order. Eddie carried the drinks. My food came in a styrofoam, 3-compartment box. The main, triangle-shaped compartment held three disintegrating tacos. In the little square area to the upper left was a spoonful of rice, in the right compartment was a squirt of liquefied, refried beans. My tacos fell apart on contact. Mike’s nachos were like tiny burned triangles of cardboard. The nacho cheese would have really helped those chips more than I can say. Mike looked at the chips and said, “I’m not really hungry.” and he shoved the festive, red tub of ashes over to Eddie and me.

The guy in the window leaned out and asked us how the food was. I gave him a thumbs up hand signal. I don’t know why I did that. I guess I should have complained. I figured why spoil the taco guy’s day. If he hasn’t learned how to cook by now he never will make better food and telling him how truly awful the stuff was would change nothing on the ground. We finished up and decided we better make a run for home before it started raining on the taco place. I didn’t like our odds staying under that roof.

By sheer luck I had a rain jacket in the Yamaha’s tank bag. Eddie had a t-shirt and Mike had a semi-water-resistant jacket. To understand how unprepared we were you have to understand the optimism all motorcycle rides start with. We split up, Mike and Eddie turned north towards Highway 380 and I headed directly west on Highway 70. Within a mile it was pouring rain.

Great, horizontal bolts of lightning lit up the dark grey skies. The Yamaha ploughed through deep pools of water hydroplaning slightly and I dropped my speed to allow more time for water to squeeze out from under the tires. At 7600 feet elevation my wet jeans were starting to get cold. The raindrops were huge and felt like pea gravel hitting my hands.

Water trickled in from my ungloved wrists and pooled in the rain jacket elbows. My boots began to fill with water. Past the fire station, Highway 70 begins its descent into Tularosa. Each mile downward raised the air temperature a fraction of a degree. I entered the Mescalero Indian Reservation. Weather-wise, it was still raining but the skies were looking lighter further ahead and I was no longer shivering in my wet clothes.

Both lanes of traffic on Highway 70 came to a stand still. I could see flashing blue police lights reflecting off the wet pavement. It was still raining pretty hard and on a motorcycle you don’t want to be stuck in a line of stopped traffic. The head of the stoppage wasn’t far away so I lane-split between parked cars and the smell of brake linings until I found a gap in front of a late-model, white Chevy pickup. I turned right into the gap at walking speed. The truck driver got on his horn for 10 or 15 seconds to scold me. Here I was, soaking wet, trying to get off the road, while he was sitting snug and dry in his $70,000 pickup. Yet he begrudged me because I got 35 feet ahead of him. What kind of perpetually-miserable person does that? How much better would things need to be for him before he let go of the anger?

I parked the Yamaha at a cut that led up to a wide parking area. Water ran through an earthen ditch, pooled for a moment, and then crossed an asphalt swale before dropping off a tiny waterfall where the undermined asphalt had broken away in chunks, like calving icebergs. There was a guy standing in the rain smoking a cigarette, I asked him if there was an accident. “No, a mud slide has blocked the road.” He said. “The cops say it will be about 30 minutes before the road is cleared.” The man finished his cigarette and flicked it into the ditch where the current swept it down to the pool. The butt eddied several times then floated over the asphalt swale, plunging down the falls and drifted with the current until it was out of sight. The man walked back to his car and got inside out of the rain.

My boots were full of water and my feet needed to dry out a bit so I pulled off each boot and then poured out as much water as I could. Standing barefooted I rung out my socks, then pulled each sock back on followed by the side-specific boot that corresponded with the foot I was working on. Should I turn around and climb 9000 feet to Cloudcroft and home? It would take about an hour of cold, wet, riding. The rain clouds looked heavier in the direction of Cloudcroft and there is no guarantee that route won’t have a mudslide. The rain picked up strength and the blue skies ahead were closing in.

I could go north to Highway 380 and home but that’s back into the main part of the storm and two more hours of cold feet.  I‘m nearly home, maybe 40 miles to go. Another cop pulled up and spoke to the one blocking the highway. The first cop started his SUV Ford. It looked like we were getting ready to go. I started the Yamaha; it’s a cold-blooded engine and cools off fast when not running. Steam rose up from the warming engine, fogging my face shield. I could hear cars starting in the line of stopped traffic. The first cop drove down Highway 70 towards the mudslide and the second cop took up his position blocking the highway. And then he shut off his car. I let the Yamaha run a few more minutes then turned it off. A big cab-over box truck turned around and drove away in the opposite direction followed by a new Jeep Wrangler pickup truck. Then some more cars gave up and headed back. I walked over to the new cop and asked him what was happening. “They had the road cleared but another mudslide came across and buried the road.” Across the highway a yellow Case backhoe drove down the wrong side of the road.

“Any idea how much longer?” The new cop said maybe 30 minutes. Things were getting complicated and my calculations began to factor in the road not opening for quite a while. Going over Cloudcroft at night in the rain would not be fun so if this thing went really long I planned on going north to 380 to go south back home, a distance of 110 miles or so. If we could just get a mile or two down the highway I could get on reservation roads and work my way around the stoppage. The rain fell steadily and in my wet clothes I was starting to get a bit chilled so I took a walk to get my blood circulating.

The longer I waited the more I had invested in Highway 70 home. If I had made a decisive move back when we were first stopped I could have been home by now. I was well over an hour stopped and the blue sky ahead was gone, replace by dark clouds. I guess I could go back to Ruidoso and get a motel room for the night. I could dry out my clothes and try again in the morning. Another cop pulled up and spoke to the second cop who looked over to me and said “We’re getting ready to go.”  I ran back to the Yamaha and started the engine.

The police cars formed a rolling blockade and the miles long line of traffic followed behind slowly. The mudslide section was still pretty slippery and there were small branches and stones to dodge. Further on we came to another mudslide area but kept driving through the inch-deep goo. A few miles outside of the Indian reservation the road was just wet and the cop cars pulled off the highway. I was at the head of the line, or P1, and no way was I going to let all those cars pass me and kick up a wet fog of water. I spun the Yamaha up to 7000 RPM and the run into Tularosa was fast and violent but I got there first.

It was warm and dry in Tularosa. I backed off the throttle and puttered along at the speed limit. The honking guy in the white truck passed me and then got in front of me. He just had to, you know? I made it home several hours after the Carrizozo Mud Chuckers. They got hammered by the rain also but didn’t have to stop for blocked highways. In retrospect, if I had taken their route I would have been home much earlier but then if I did that I wouldn’t have had anything to write about.

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The 2022 Tarantula 100

They say time flies and that’s corny-true but I think time accelerates the closer you get to the end. We have been living on Tinfiny Ranch for 6 years now and I have missed the Prairie Dawgs Tarantula 100 desert race each of those years. It seemed like there was always something that needed doing or I was off somewhere else. I usually hear about the race after it has run and say to myself: I’ve got to make it down to mile marker 45 and check it out next year.

This year was the someday year. My old high school chum Greg was in town so we burbled Brumby down Highway 54 early Sunday to catch the second day of Prairie Dawg action. The event is held at a huge off-road playpen about halfway between El Paso and Alamogordo. When we first moved to La Luz I attended a Prairie Dawg club meeting. They were a great bunch of guys and gals (another of those things I keep meaning to do is join The Dawgs). I’m not real big on organized motorcycle events preferring instead to toss about on the floor picking up cat hair like a gigantic sticky lint roller. To enter a race, to pre-run the course, to get in physical shape so that I could hold on to a bucking 1971 Yamaha 360 for 100 miles of desert seems like a lot of effort.

Effort that could be better spent consuming beer and eating beef jerky in the warm February New Mexico sunshine. So that’s what me and Greg did. We arrived on a perfect day just as the riders meeting was ending and wasted no time getting to the start line. The PD riders lined up according to class. The start is dead-engine. When the flagman, who gave no 30-second board or hint of when he was going to drop the flag, gave the signal you had to start your bike and off you go. It was so unexpected I missed several photos. With the dead-engine start, the electric start bikes had a bit of an advantage over the kick start bikes.

The race is run in 50-mile loops. When the riders come back through the pit area they ride underneath a red, pipefitting type of arch where the transponder records their time. We had a bit of a wait after the last class was on their way so we got our chairs, beer and beef jerky and settled down to discuss how old we were getting, the various ailments we were suffering under and to try and remember some long ago event that the other guy was reminiscing about.

One hour later the first of the Pro Class arrived at the transponder. Most everyone took on a gallon of gas, a swig of water and were on their way for the second lap. Some guys pushed their bikes under the yellow pit-tape ribbon and called it a day. Greg and I set up behind a hill at a spot that had a good view of the last mile or so of the course and the red transponder arbor. Some pits were located before the transponder, some after, but I guess it didn’t matter as the second lap was the one that counted. The sun beat down, the early morning chill was long gone, and our world became a balmy 70-degree red dirt sand dune. We shed our jackets and settled into a mellow, New Mexico low simmer.

Greg was heading to Fort Stockton, Texas later in the day so we decided to hang around until the first youth-class rider completed his lap. That came around 2 hours into the race or almost exactly twice the time it took the first pro-class rider. We folded up our chairs, shook the sand off and went back to the Alamogordo Moose Lodge where Greg had left his gigantic motorhome. I read later on the Prairie Dawg’s Facebook page that there was some trouble with the scoring system and I’m not real sure who won. I figure why mess up such a nice day out with accounting issues.

I don’t know if I’ll ever compete in the Tarantula 100. I’m still able to trail ride all day long but can only make about 2 miles at race pace. Staying up to speed for 100 miles would leave me rubbery-armed with blood pooled in my calves. I don’t want to take that helicopter ride. There is a 60+ class but those guys looked pretty fit. Maybe they’ll let me enter the mini-cycle class. Pouring concrete would be easy in comparison.

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The 2021 Rubber Chicken Ride

If you had asked me a week ago what the Rubber Chicken Ride is about I would have replied, “I have no clue, Bubba.” Held annually in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico the 2021 Rubber Chicken Ride resisted any defining characteristics and after three days participating I still have no clue what it was about.

There’s an entry fee, $50, that goes to the New Mexico Off Highway Vehicle Association, (NMOHVA). I guess it’s a like a fundraiser except a motorcycle ride breaks out while passing the collection plate.

I met up with the near legendary dirt-riding group, The Carrizozo Mud Chuckers at the Truth or Consequences Travel Lodge motel. The Travel Lodge is one of the few remaining old school types where the room doors open out directly onto the parking lot. I like this layout as you can hang out as a group tinkering with the bikes. It fosters community spirit and you can lock your bike to the uprights supporting the overhang. At the motel we met six other Rubber Chicken Riders none of who had any idea what was going on and all pushing 70 years old. That’s like 3 years older than the Chuckers.

This year’s Chicken was stripped to the bare bones due to Covid. No group dinners, no Show Us Your Scars competition, no organizing at all: just show up and ride. Part of the confusion was due to my not bothering to download the GPX files from the Rubber Chicken thread on ADVrider, which I knew nothing about until I was at the event. I probably couldn’t have figured out how to migrate the files to my GPS anyway. It annoys me that those old codgers can download files into their displays and I’m still using paper maps. I think of my GPS is kind of a last resort deal; I use it when I’m not sure how to get home.

That first day we tried to find the Rubber Chicken sign up area at Healing Waters Plaza, a place no one in Truth or Consequences seems to have heard of. Everyone we asked sent us to a different Healing Waters but they were hot springs, not the sign up staging area. The town was named Hot Springs in the past and has quite a few still around. Luckily, my Garmin knew about the palm-lined plaza and after riding past it several times we were able to find the pocket park along with a couple other Rubber Chicken Riders. Oddly, there was no water in sight.

The other riders we met at Healing Waters were as clueless as we were so we sat around and talked bikes for a while then the Chuckers and I decided to ride out to nearby Elephant Butte Dam to check out the scenery. After the dam tour we hit up the local Denny’s. You know how they say landing and take off are the most dangerous parts of flying, that’s how it is for me getting on or off the tall Husky 510. The Husky’s kickstand is so designed that once you’re on the bike you can’t tip it over far enough to retract the stand. This means I have to get on or off the bike with the kickstand up. Not a problem on a normal motorcycle, with the Husky it takes Baryshnikov-level flexibility to toss a leg over the high seat and rear luggage stores. I’m no Baryshnikov.

I got half way off the bike but my boot hung for a life-altering moment, still on one leg the bike started to topple over the far side. I pulled the bike back towards me but pulled a little too much. With my stubby, grounded-leg near the centerline of the wheel track the bike toppled over onto the near side taking me out in the process. In the Denny’s parking lot. In front of everyone.

Back at the Travel Lodge we grilled the other riders.  They resisted at first but stopped struggling as soon as they were evenly browned on both sides. The way it was supposed to work is you download route files and load them in your GPS before arriving, then at the plaza meet up with like-minded riders and off you go, a merry band of riders. It’s a great way to meet new riding buddies. There’s no NMOHVA sanctioned rides. This is the loosest possible group ride you can imagine. One of the riders had an old, Rubber Chicken event T-shirt. In a testimony to how damaged things have become since Covid all we got this year was a tiny NMOHVA sticker with a rubber chicken on it.

The second day there was a sign up table at the Healing Waters Plaza. Maybe 15 riders had gathered and we had a good gabfest with the boys and one girl. By now we pretty much had the event figured out so the Chuckers and I headed out to Chloride, an occupied-ghost town for one of the routes: the Chloride canyon loop. We didn’t have GPX files but the Chuckers had paper maps.

At the end of the road in Chloride the road turns hard left and becomes unpaved. It’s sort of rough and rocky being a dry streambed at the bottom of a steep canyon. After about a mile of this abuse we stopped to reassess our riding skills and time left in the day. For a route that 6 guys on dirt bikes had done just a day before there were no tire tracks except the ones we were making. I dreaded turning on the Garmin because I’ve never read the owner’s manual, it always leads to a bunch of button pushing and frustration instead of riding. The Garmin said the road went for 5.6 more miles then dead-ended.

We started doubting our direction. Maybe we are on the wrong route, those 70 year-old guys couldn’t have gone this way. None of us liked the idea of riding this rocky trail 5 miles and then turning around and riding it back. We chose an alternate route. Seeing as there were no official routes anyway we felt we could take liberties with the Rubber Chicken.

Our alternate route was a long, 60-mile stretch of fairly easy dirt bookended between 80 miles of pavement on either side. The route seemed to go on forever. We went over the continental divide twice, once on paved Highway 59, once on Dirt Road 150. The later it got the faster we went. Highway 152 was a marvelous twisty road that we could use as much of the side-tread of our knobbies as we dared. We arrived back at the Travel Lodge at 7 pm; 9 hours of riding over widely varying terrain made for excellent sleeping.

On the third day of the Rubber Chicken Ride, a Sunday, the other riders at the Travel Lodge had loaded up their bikes and gone home. The Mud Chuckers and I decided to leave the Rio Grande Valley and work our way one valley east to Tularosa Valley, our home turf. In retrospect, we didn’t get much for our $50 but it got us away from our usual dirt-riding spots and it supported the NMOHVA so it was money well spent. While I was telling this story to my wife, CT, it must have sounded like I was complaining. Maybe I did bitch a little. She said that volunteer organizations always need help and that maybe next year we should print a few maps, plan a Rubber Chicken route and set up a ride instead of waiting for others to do the hard work for us. That sounded an awful lot like a gauntlet being thrown down to me.

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Riding With The Carrizozo Mud Chuckers

Sixty-one miles north of my place in La Luz, New Mexico lies the town of Carrizozo. The seat of Lincoln County, Carrizozo’s streets are laid out at an angle to the intersection of Carrizozo’s two main highways, 380 and 54. There are colorful donkey statues stationed around, a junkyard church on the outskirts of town and the Carrizozo Mud Chuckers motorcycle club.

The Mud Chuckers MC, founded by my riding buddy, Mike, is primarily a dirt-based riding club. The area around Carrizozo has hundreds of graded farm roads and tight mountain trails. It’s an ideal spot for racking up miles on the dirt. I recently joined them on one of their frequent moto-camping rides. The Chuckers shun traditional campgrounds preferring instead to camp anywhere they can find a spot with no people around.

Like all the ‘Chuckers rides I’ve been on the pace was downright leisurely with frequent stops to look at old mine sites, hunt for geodes, gold deposits and old metal objects or just sit in the shade to discuss unimportant things. The ‘Chuckers are in no hurry to get anywhere and that suits me just fine.

On this day we rode west to Socorro, NM and took the Escondida Lake exit to the Back Country Byway. The Byway meanders generally east-west then south with the terrain ranging from desert scrub to medium-high trees. At the speed we operate it’s best to look for a campsite early because ‘Chuckers don’t like stress. We checked out several places but nothing looked appealing. There was either no shade or no firewood or a stinky dead cow rotting nearby so we pushed on.

Eddie dropped his KLR 650 in a sand wash and bent his clutch hand so that it didn’t want to work right. He was doing 45mph so the impact, while soft, still hurt. The ‘Chuckers are not spring chickens. In perfect tune we can hardly swing a leg over the motorcycle. Eddie called it a day. Since we never leave a man behind we short cut the Byway and followed him back to his house in Carrizozo where we had begun this adventure.

With Eddie’s DNF, that left me, Dan and Mike still on the lead lap. By now it was getting late so we abandoned our plan to camp on the Back Country Byway and decided the higher mountains behind White Oaks would be the best option. It was late and we still had a 30-mile ride to the forest.

We found a spot with plenty of firewood and soft ground. We managed to get camp set up just before dark, which is always a good idea. Once they find a place to roost the Carrizozo Mud Chuckers really come on the pipe. The fire was roaring, Mike brought along pork chops and a metal grill to cook with. I don’t know where he stores all that junk on his 390 KTM. Sizzling pork chops, boiling coffee, cookies, beef jerky, Wheat Thins: man, things were hopping at camp this evening. The altitude we were camping was around 7000 feet, it got pretty cold, probably in the 30’s but around the fire it was 75 degrees.

Campfire nights last longer than regular ones and I turned in at midnight. Mike and Dan sat up longer. Flickering lights and murmured shadow conversation played across the inside of my tent. I felt safe knowing the bear would go after them before me. The next morning The Mud Chucker’s were in no hurry to leave. We restarted the fire and had coffee with whatever scraps of food we had left over from last night’s feast. The Mud Chuckers always leave their campsites cleaner than they found them and the way they put out a campfire borders on obsessive.

When I got back home it felt like I had been away a month instead of only two days. Camping on a motorcycle seems to distort time and distance. Changing your observation point really does have a profound effect.

Mike and Eddie want to start a motorcycle tour business. Their plan is to buy a few TW200 Yamahas and run all inclusive, guided camping tours around New Mexico. It sounds like a pain in the butt to me. Why ruin a nice motorcycle ride with business?

I’ll let you know if the tour company idea works out. Maybe a full ExhaustNotes.us tour review or something. Get the ‘Chuckers to kick in a free tour as an ExhaustNotes subscriber gimmick?

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Day Tripping: Three Rivers

At Tinfiny Ranch it’s been kind of cool this winter. I haven’t been riding motorcycles much at all lately. Zed, the Z1 Kawasaki, needs its float needles changed as it has developed an intermittent incontinence on the far right carburetor. I have to keep turning off the fuel petcock because I don’t trust the carbs to reliably do their carb thing.

The Husky is way overdue for a valve adjustment but I have too many other projects apart and going on to hobble my Italian/Swedish mish-mash motorcycle at the moment. The Husky still runs fine so when Mike, my Eastern Assassin riding buddy texted me photos of his new KTM 390 Adventure bike and said, “The hell with this cold, lets do a little ride and you can check out my new bike,” I was all over it.

Mike rides more dirt than anyone I know. I’ve done thousands of miles of gravel roads with him and I’ve only seen a quarter of the trails he has. His normal trail bike was a 650 BMW single but that bike turned out not so great on rough trails. It’s a heavy, low-slung bike and it tended to fall over a lot. Mike, a reformed street rider, had a Harley Davidson Fat Boy that was gathering dust in his garage so he sold it off and used the proceeds to buy a new KTM 390 Adventure. I’m guessing not many people go from a Fat Boy to a KTM 390. The 390 weighs about 100 pounds less than the 650 BMW and straight-line performance is nearly the same although naturally the 390 spins faster to get the job done.

We met up for coffee and potato chips at a little tourist trap on the corner of Three Rivers and Highway 54. The 390 looks great. It’s very light feeling off the kickstand. The bike came with street tires similar to the crappy tires I run on the Husqvarna. The KTM is a bit high in the saddle but its wide seat is actually lower than the Husky seat. My short legs reach the ground about the same on both bikes.

We rode towards the Sacramento Mountains ending up at the little Santa Nino de Atocha church. While not a religious man, I like earnest churches and old graveyards. Last time I was here my Kawasaki gas tank sprung a leak and I had to hurry home before I ran out of gas. I didn’t have time to check things out properly.

The graves at Santa Nino de Atocha are fairly well maintained. It’s a lonely spot but I believe the church still draws a few congregants from the huge ranches situated all the way to the mountains.

Poor little Sofia never had much of a chance. As I grow older I realize everyday is a gift.

Fancy glass-enclosed Mary (I think, I don’t know my saints)

Raiders fan for all eternity.

Laser-cut steel cross. Very nice metal work.

It gets a little nippy in New Mexico’s winter but the brilliant blue sky warms your soul.

Somebody left the sprinkler on and created an ice fantasy over by the church’s RV camping area.

Mike and I shot the breeze for a while and made grand plans for the rides we will take his new motorcycle on until the temperature started dropping along with the sun. I don’t want to do much night riding anymore so we bundled up and headed back to our little towns on opposite ends of Highway 54 (La Luz and Carrizozo).

It was only a 100-mile ride but I felt recharged when I got home. Mike has managed to put a thousand miles on the KTM in only a few cold weeks. If I don’t hurry and get back to motorcycles he’ll have the thing worn out before I ride again.

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Skip Duke

Skip Duke lived in New Mexico and died before I got the chance to meet him. I don’t know the exact date he shuffled off. Judging from the condition of Tinfiny Ranch when we first bought it from his daughter I’m guessing five or more years had elapsed between our purchase of Skip’s run-down mountain property and his death.

I never met Skip Duke but I get a strong sense of the man from the junk he left behind. I found boxes of mixed fasteners and some really nice ¼-inch by 8-inch screws with flat-topped heads. The heads are 5/8-inch wide and made so that the fastener countersinks itself like a giant deck screw. These screws are so nice I want to build something just to use them. Skip left behind two really nice red-painted, bottle jacks; one of them must be a 50-ton model. It’s a bruiser, like a foot tall and weighs 40 pounds. Skip was into radios: he was a Ham operator I’m guessing. Tinfiny had several antenna wires strung over the trees and arroyos. In his broken down shop I found a signal generator, watt meter and some other radio test gear that I couldn’t identify. That’s some old school radio stuff, man.

I never met Skip Duke but I think I would have liked him. Skip Duke had multiple uncompleted projects running in parallel when he died and that’s the same way I work. I get bored with one project and switch over to another, never finishing any of them. The 1975 Kawasaki 900 I call Zed was one of Skip’s unfinished projects. In the scattered debris of Skip’s life I found motorcycle magazines from the 1970’s featuring the new Z1900. The bike got universally rave reviews in the magazines, and rightfully so: the 900cc Z1 Kawasaki was a landmark motorcycle.

From reading old correspondence I found that Skip was having trouble with a Dyna III electronic ignition system he bought for the old Kawasaki. A melted wiring harness on Zed and no sign of the electronic ignition leads me to believe Skip sent the rotor and pick up coils back for a refund or tossed them in the bushes. One day I’m going to look for it with a metal detector. I found the original points plate in a box of MG car parts and after I cleaned them up the bike ran fine. I remember when electronic ignitions were novel, high tech stuff. I didn’t like them back then either.

Abandoned for years, Skip Duke’s house was overrun by rats when we looked at it with Ronnie, our real estate agent. A converted garage, the house had one bedroom, a living room, a kitchen and a bathroom. Maybe 500 square feet under roof. On the right side of the house was a small garage where Skip kept his tools and his motorcycles. I found a working 4-inch Makita belt sander in there. The bottom garage door panel was broken and the door hung off its track. You could walk inside. Ronnie looked around and said, “There used to be more motorcycles in here.” Next to the garage Zed was sitting outside in the weather, leading me to believe thieves had made off with Skip’s better motorcycles. As if there ever was a motorcycle better than a Z1.

We gutted Skip’s house. Every night after work I would put down 5 of those green rat poison blocks. Every morning they would be gone. Eventually the pace slowed until one day I found the poison untouched. The rats ate a total of 3 gallon-size buckets of poison but I won the war. I spent a pleasant two weeks hauling out dead rats and disinfecting the entire place with a solution of 50/50 bleach and water. My lungs burned and my vision blurred but at last the place was clean and rodent free inside.

We replaced the siding, drywall and insulation, and rewired most of the the electrical system. Skip’s little garage area is now my wife CT’s walk in closet. The concrete ramp leading to the garage has been leveled off and is a 5’ X 14’ office and storage room. We re-plumbed the bathroom and redid the kitchen eliminating any appliance that hinted at being a stove. We named the little house in the arroyo “The Carriage House” hoping to boost the little shack’s confidence. New paint and tile made The Carriage House look fresh inside. Skip’s old fiberglass shower stall was hard to remove and we were running out of time so it still serves, the last remnant of a bygone owner.

Skip Duke was not satisfied with the little Carriage House and had bigger plans in the works. Further up the property there was a graded area where Skip was going to build a structure. Two large, wooden sawhorses held 8-foot x 20-foot sheets of a composite material consisting of 6” white Styrofoam sandwiched between two layers of glued-on, exterior grade, 1/2’’ oriented strand board. There was enough paneling to build a 20 X 40 insulated building. Unfortunately, death has a way of messing up the best of plans. The 20’ X 40’ structure never got built. White plastic sheeting covered the composite panels but the relentless New Mexico sun crystallized the plastic. The sheet lay in tatters and it would crumble when you tried to pick it up. Without protection the panels fell victim to the elements.

Oriented strand board is fairly weather resistant but you can’t let it remain wet for long. Stacked horizontally on the sawhorses, the panels couldn’t shed water and the pooled moisture between the panels rotted the OSB. I’m sure if Skip Duke knew he was going to die he would have stacked them vertically allowing water to run out from between the panels. I managed to salvage enough panel material to build the walls for another of Skip’s unfinished projects: the pump house.

The original pump house was a 55-gallon metal drum over the wellhead. Inside the living room was a 40-gallon pressure tank to smooth out the cycling of the well pump. I can’t figure why anyone would want a gigantic pressure tank in their living room but Skip was not a man who trifled with cosmetics. The amount of paneling I could salvage determined the size of the well house so I poured a 6’ X 10” slab with a central drain and built a small shed over the well. I moved the 40-gallon pressure tank to the new well house and installed a water softener next to the pressure tank. With 6” thick Styrofoam walls the pump house is so well insulated a 150-watt chicken coop heater keeps the pipes nice and toasty in winter. Too bad so much composite paneling was ruined; it would have made for a super energy efficient house.

When Skip Duke died he left behind a 24-foot motorhome without an engine, an 18-foot Hobie Cat sailboat on a trailer, a 1974 MGB-GT hardtop 4-seater, a 4-person Jacuzzi with seized air and water pump motors, two large dog houses and a backyard chicken coop with camouflage netting over the top. Skip was a man who was into everything cool. I got rid of the junk except for the MG. Those hardtops with their Italian, Pininfarina-designed hatchbacks are rare. I might get it running one day.

Life is funny. I have an Internet buddy also named Skip Duke. He is very much alive and a Kawasaki Z1 guru. The living Skip Duke’s Kawasaki advice has saved me untold woe in the long restoration process of dead Skip Duke’s motorcycle. I bet the two Skips would get along famously (either that or they’d kill each other).

I never knew Skip Duke. We’ve remodeled and reused his vast pile of junk in ways he could not have foreseen. I wish he had left details of his future plans, like notes stuck to each project describing what he saw as success. I hope he’s looking down (or up as the case may be; Skip might have been a real jerk) and smiling as he sees his old Kawasaki motorcycle (now my old Kawasaki motorcycle) roaring down the highway full of life and power. I hope whatever becomes of that soulful part of a man after death is aware of the happy life CT and I have built atop the 5-acre spread he must have loved dearly. And I hope he finds joy in all that we have done.

Follow the complete Z1 resurrection here!

For more on Tinfiny Ranch and the Tinfiny Summit, check out the YouTube videos here!

Zed: Miles of Smiles

During this Covid-19 lockdown I’ve been racking up the miles of Zed. I fill the tank before I leave home and gas up once mid-ride making sure to rinse my hands with gasoline to kill any virus remnants left on the bowser keypad or handle. For those of you who are concerned about my crashing the bike and adding to the overwhelmed medical staff, fear not: I am riding easy like Easy Rider. Also Southern New Mexico is at the very beginning of the infection curve so the hospitals have plenty of room.

Since the last oil leak was stopped Zed has done 650 miles and she’s dry as a bone. I checked the oil level and it has not dropped. I feel confident that zed’s engine will take me anywhere. It feels like the bike is running a wee bit too rich but my riding area goes from 4500 feet elevation to 9000 feet. The jetting is stock in Zed’s carbs so if I chose to ride only in New Mexico I’d re-jet the thing. As it is I get a fairly steady 40 miles per gallon, mostly highway miles @ 70 to 80 miles per hour.

But I’m not going to stay around here. Berk and me are going to ride down to Mexico when this thing is all over. We’re going all the way to the end of the road, man. We’ll pick up Big John on the way. We’ll drink Modelo beer in the evening and eat Mexican food until we burst. Berk has a new 650 Royal Enfield that will get enough miles per gallon for both of us. I’ll bring my syphon hose. Orlando has a Texas Hill Country ride planned and I’d like to get down there. I’ll be interested to see if Zed’s fuel mileage improves at lower levels. I tried the magic gas treatment on Zed but unlike the 10 MPG improvement I see on the fuel-injected Husqvarna the magic sauce doesn’t seem to do anything for the carbureted Z1. Maybe there are just too many carbs.

Riders today think all bikes handled badly before they came on the scene. The Z1 was reputed to be ill handling, not as bad as the two stroke triples but still deadly. I’m not feeling it. At sane speeds the bike is steady and it corners with a delightful, easy steering. The bike does not show its 500 pounds. Winding it up to 110 MPH reveals no wobbles. Hitting a bump mid-corner induces a tiny wiggle but it’s no worse than other bikes I’ve ridden and quite a lot better than some late-model heavy weights. Maybe modern bias-ply tires are better than they were in the early 1970’s.

The front brake squeals at slow speed. The aftermarket pucks did not have the threaded hole to screw the thin, anti-vibration shim to. I thought I could get away with leaving it out. Looks like I’ll have to try some of that disc pad backing goop.  Or, once all other options are exhausted, get the correct pads.

I’ve tried to social distance on my rides but in the Carrizozo Park my perimeter was compromised by a scraggly looking dude walking two scraggly dogs. “Nice day for a ride!’ he exhaled a dense stream of almost pure Covid 19 virus across the picnic table. I staggered to stay upright, it was a water main gusher. My to-go hamburger was glowing with a faint greenish light. Covid dripped through the expanded metal tabletop peeling the paint from the metal as it went. “Yep, It doesn’t get any better” I said scooting farther down the bench. “What ya riding? A 200?” the wind was at a better angle now, the covid pooled by the dog with one front paw in a sling, who sniffed at the greenish mass with nothing like enthusiasm.

“No, it’s a 900cc.” I said. Scraggly squinted at the bike. “That’s a small bike, 900 you say?” He didn’t believe me and I didn’t want to prove it with a tear down and bore inspection. “I’m a Vietnam vet!” He said. “I’m crazy but it’s not my fault.” He had one bad eye and used it to glare at me. “It’s the stuff they made me do, and now the VA won’t help me!” I said I thought the VA was supposed to be getting more money. He laughed; a chunk of grey, spongy lung flew out of his mouth. “That’s all a lie! That money is going in their pockets.” He stuck his right hand in his pocket for emphasis.

“This town sucks, there’s no prostitutes!” he shouted. I looked around and had to agree that this section of town did not have any working the street. “I hate it here. I’d like to go back to Vietnam and kill people!” I was beginning to suspect Scraggly might really be crazy. I quickly ate my burger and stood up. I told Scraggly, “Well, I’ve got to hit the road.”

“Okay, I’m leaving in 28 days, going to Georgia.” We shook hands; at that point I was already covered in Covid. Back at the bike, I stuck a paper towel inside Zed’s gas tank and used the cool gasoline to wash my hands and face. Then I cleaned my arms and then lit a match and set the whole shebang on fire.

The brakes on the Z1 are not awe-inspiring. It takes 4 fingers to get the front tire to break traction. The rear is pretty good but who uses rear brakes? The front suspension clatters as it tops out over bumps but after a few cycles they quiet down. The back shocks are original and I assume 45 years old but they keep the tire from hitting the fender and that’s all I can ask from shock absorbers.

Me and my riding buddy Mike took a long, 280 mile ride. The Z1 ran perfectly. Mike was on his Fatboy Harley. The Zed hits reserve kind of early. Like 100-110 miles. I still have a lot of gas so I may shorten the pick up tube a bit. I don’t like drawing from the bottom of the tank if I don’t have to. The 104 cubic-inch Harley gets 50 miles to a gallon! Zed is a thirsty beast.

Next up is an oil and filter change on Zed as soon as my oil arrives from Amazon. I’ll be checking the spooge closely for any odd bits of metal. That is, assuming I’m not on a ventilator by then.

Read the story of Zed’s resurrection here!

The 100-Mile Loop

If I had to guess, and I really can’t imagine why I’d ever have to, I would say New Mexico has two or three times as many dirt roads as paved roads. I’m not getting on those trails at anywhere near the frequency I should be so I called up my moto-buddy Mike and asked him to show me the volcanoes. With the morning temperature hovering around 30 degrees Fahrenheit it didn’t take much convincing to get Mike to ride along in Brumby, the 1992 YJ Jeep.

There is a huge expanse of territory encircled by Highway 380 to the south, Interstate 25 on the western edge, Highway 60 up north and Highway 54 marks the eastern edge. Roughly 50 miles square, this land has hundreds of miles of dirt roads crisscrossing in all directions. These roads lead to huge cattle ranches and as such are kept in pretty decent condition. In dry weather you could run most of them in a two-wheel drive sedan. In wet weather they become much more challenging.

With the Jeep heater on high, we turned north off 380 and headed 25 miles into the outback to find the volcanoes. I didn’t really see a traditional cone-shaped volcano; at the volcanoes it’s more a lava field with an impressive variety of colorful minerals scattered about. Rust reds, crumbling ochers, and black lava dominate. The area is pockmarked with sinkholes several feet deep. What looks like broken beer bottles is actually exposed glass fused between layers of lava. I need to quick-learn geology because this spot is interesting and needs further exploration.

Forty miles from the volcanoes are the Gran Quivira ruins. The Spanish have a long history in the area. If you are a Native American you probably don’t think highly of the Spanish. The ruins of three large churches with pueblos built around them are thirty to forty miles apart. The southernmost one, Gran Quivira dips into our loop and it’s worth taking a trip just to see the masterful stonework.

The ranches out here have a loosey-goosey cow containment policy. Since the land is so dry it takes many acres to support one cow. Fencing huge amounts of land is not cheap so you get just a bit of fence near the road and the cows wander around doing cow-like things. It’s best to drive past slowly. If a cow hits your truck at 30 MPH things will get compressed rapidly.

After the ruins we ran for many miles on a slippery mud road that seemed to be the final drainage point for 50,000 acres. I put Brumby in 4WD because the little Jeep wanted to spinout when we sunk into the really muddy bits. Having the front wheels pulling seemed to make the truck go straighter.

In Corona we pulled up to the only good Mexican restaurant in town, also the only restaurant in town. As soon as I managed to unfurl my body and escape the Jeep’s door the neon “Open” sign went dark. I looked inside and the chairs were leg-high on the tables and staff was cleaning up.

I cracked the door and stuck my head inside, “Are you guys really closed?” The Senorita in charge said, “Yes, but it will take us a while to clean up, come in.” Not wanting to create more trouble, Mike had a burger with un-sweet tea and I seconded the order.

After a late lunch we ran the county-maintained dirt roads all the way back to Carrizozo. With the setting sun illuminating Brumby’s bug and mud splattered windshield I nearly overcooked a few turns, but only because I couldn’t see them.

All told we did over a hundred miles of off road exploring and we only scratched the surface of this one tiny section of New Mexico. It will take many lifetimes to see all this state has to offer and next time I’m bringing a metal detector.

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