{"id":13011,"date":"2021-05-01T03:24:17","date_gmt":"2021-05-01T10:24:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/?p=13011"},"modified":"2021-05-01T03:24:17","modified_gmt":"2021-05-01T10:24:17","slug":"riding-with-the-carrizozo-mud-chuckers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/2021\/05\/01\/riding-with-the-carrizozo-mud-chuckers\/","title":{"rendered":"Riding With The Carrizozo Mud Chuckers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sixty-one miles north of my place in La Luz, New Mexico lies the town of Carrizozo. The seat of Lincoln County, Carrizozo\u2019s streets are laid out at an angle to the intersection of Carrizozo\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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Like all the \u2018Chuckers rides I\u2019ve 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 \u2018Chuckers are in no hurry to get anywhere and that suits me just fine.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

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\u2019s best to look for a campsite early because \u2018Chuckers don\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

Eddie dropped his KLR 650 in a sand wash and bent his clutch hand so that it didn\u2019t want to work right. He was doing 45mph so the impact, while soft, still hurt. The \u2018Chuckers 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.<\/p>\n

With Eddie\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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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\u2019t 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\u2019s but around the fire it was 75 degrees.<\/p>\n

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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\u2019s 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\u2019s feast. The Mud Chuckers always leave their campsites cleaner than they found them and the way they put out a campfire borders on obsessive.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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?<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll let you know if the tour company idea works out. Maybe a full ExhaustNotes.us tour review or something. Get the \u2018Chuckers to kick in a free tour as an ExhaustNotes subscriber gimmick?<\/p>\n

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Like what you read?\u00a0 Sign up for a free subscription, leave a comment, and share the hell out of this blog!<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sixty-one miles north of my place in La Luz, New Mexico lies the town of Carrizozo. The seat of Lincoln County, Carrizozo\u2019s streets are laid out at an angle to the intersection of Carrizozo\u2019s two main highways, 380 and 54. There are colorful donkey statues stationed around, a junkyard church on the outskirts of town … Continue reading “Riding With The Carrizozo Mud Chuckers”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13013,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[182,96,66,89,138],"tags":[2014,254,2015,1246,38],"class_list":["post-13011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-camping","category-feel-good-stuff","category-joe-gresh","category-motorcycle-adventure-ride","category-new-mexico","tag-campfire","tag-husky","tag-ktm","tag-motorcycle-camping","tag-new-mexico"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/0-1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13011"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13011\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13020,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13011\/revisions\/13020"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}