Just One Dirty Biker.: 2011

First thing first was figuring out how tall I wanted my bar. I wanted about a 2.5' bar and so we measured out the 3' mark on a 6' bar of 1/2" stainless. Using a medium diameter round in the bar bender I got a nice tight bend in the top. And the thing wasn't too bad to push.

Then Randy custom fabricated the bolt holes with a drill press. Cutting some small 1/2" bits of the bar he bored out two different hole sizes in either end to custom make the bolt holes.

Here is a nice cutting shot.

At some point in the evening Adria brought some grub to the garage, and we feasted on burritos, took a little time out, and made some bathroom breaks.

Here is the freshly bent bar leaning on the bike. Also notice the newly upturned handlebars.

After the bar was bent, we mounted the custom bolt holes to the rear struts, and then put the bar up to them, and welded the bar to the bolt rounds. This ensured that the bar would fit perfectly on the mounts side to side.

Here's the bar welded to the bolt mounts.

Once the bar was in place, and I had got the angle just right where I wanted it, we then went to town on the supports. This is the part where the little support bends get formed via an old Ford tail pipe and some pressure on the fender and you get a real nice little custom bend. The angle was duplicated for the second support arm, via the same bending treatment.

measured and cutting the supports

And here are the gorgeous fin pieces freshly cut and fit and ready for welding.

fully welded

Here I am totally stoked about my new custom addition.

I could barely sleep that night, knowing I had a new custom sissy bar. I couldn't wait to strap my things to the bar, since I was tired of just slopping them over the rear fender or finagling my rolls with some bungee madness to my handlebars. I was soooo anxious to take her out for her first daylight spin around town. I dreamt of the open highway.

The next morning I ran outside and leaned back. Way back. It's like the holiday inn on that thing.

Never felt better!

Along came a cat.

That morning we all rode out to the radest cheapest diner in the world. Lucky's diner in San Diego. It's truly an experience. Like a time warp or something. The prices and customer service are seriously out of this world. An older Asian fella is the only service in the place, and he jokes around with the customers. You can get a 2 egg breakfast with toast and hashbrowns for 3$. I could live there.

Poaching outside the Lucky diner.

Tea bath, anyone?

It is now time to tell you the tale of the Slab City Riot gone cancelled, and how about approximately only 10 handfuls of riders were privy enough to get savvy with the low down underground info for a side show riot gathering unbeknownst to the of masses of asses that were about to descend on the slab. It was now an Ocotillo Riot.

Here's what happened firstly: Well, the flyer was a real sweet doozy, such that it makes one wanna jump on their two-wheeler to mob out to the desert and partake in a night or two of epic debauchery amongst like-minded folk for a little freedom fun, desert and sun. Now to me that is just good ol' marketing. But unfortunately for the religious nuts at Salvation Mountain, they saw it more as hell descending on their aggrandized delusions of the holy land. And so the word of mouth started flying around the slab, and the cops of Niland were notified that the locals were pissed off, and then they tried scaring off our group. So at the point when the cops gave a cease to gather announcement to the Riot organizers at Slab City, complete with hearsay of arrests and bike impoundings and other nasty legal shmegal, we got the hint. Sure you and I would love to roll up in there and flip the bird to spite them all, but there comes a time in a bikers life when you gotta pick your battles, some still being more fun than others. However, some of our friends and family, well, they might not end up having so great-a-time getting a sleepover with the fuzz, and then the heartache of trying to figure out how to get a new two wheeler, so for safety sake and the organizers consideration of their fan base, they agreed to steer the assembly away. Word however spread extremely quickly, under the radar, that they were rewiring the happenings at an unannounced location. Ya See, you can't announce another meeting spot publicly, otherwise that alerts the fuzz in the areas you're going to gather secondly. And who wants their feathers ruffled secondly? Not I, and certainly not any other peeps I know.

So, now here comes my tale of the pilgrimage to the desert, or what was otherwise known among larger underground circles as "Operation Elusive Unicorn." Been there, done that, got the hat. I mean nobody rains on our parade, especially mother nature. And boy was she trying! I had left Los Angeles for San Diego Thursday evening, cause I knew the storm was coming in later that night. The clouds looked evil and the temperature was worthy of layering. But I rode those 2 hrs to San Diego only taking the first light drizzle of the storm on the way down that night.

Central air (aka: easy access)

Splitting lanes, and pants, on my ride to San Diego, Thursday night.

Friday morning I woke up to the fresh mountain grown aroma of classy import fair trade wafting my senses to life. Laying warm and cozy under the covers on the ever so comfortable guest mattress of the livingroom floor, evidentiary proof of accurate weather predictions came to me with the pitter patter of rain tap dancing down the gutters, and stomping all over my roadways. Adria had left for work hours before I was cognizant of the day, and Randy was probably up just as early making pot after pot after pot of coffee, peering out those windows and cringing at the weather. I was finally out of bed. Sipping the soup, I plotted my attire. Of course there were no black trash bags, so I threw my legs through two white plastic sacks and then wrapped another rather diaper-ish around my midsection. Then I added some duct tape for seams, and before you could sing Y-M-C-A, I had some fancy white chaps. I was more ready than a baby popping through the channel. At first light up of the storm, Randy and I were on the road and headed for the desert. Yeah, all 5 minutes of a lighter rain than had been dumping all day, but nonetheless, lighter. We wove a blanket through the San Diego traffic and headed into the first pass up to Alpine where we were to fill up Randy's peanut tank. Good thing for a pit stop, too. My efforts to thwart the weather penetrating my undergarments failed 2 minutes after we left the house. My cowboy boots evidently have holes everywhere, and I'm talking about the kinda holes that let water in and don't know how to let it back out. Next time I'll just wear flip-flops. Cause you see, everyone loves a good warm foot soaking and a foot rub, but just wait till they get their toes on the award winning combination of ice water and foot peg vibration. The rain had wormed its way through dry cracked holes of my leather jacket and my core clothes were now soaked, and the diaper I was hoping would keep the rain off my ass, was now holding my butt nicely in a puddle of fun. We had only come 1/3rd of the way by this point.

[Gas station where the magic happened. Picture this darker and wetter... much wetter...]

First order of our first stop was me pulling my boots off, draining out my buckets, and then ringing damnation out of my socks. Then I ran inside to see if there was a wall dryer where I could do some thawing. Alas there were no such amenities. I would just get to enjoy this for a little bit longer. Randy managed to catch an incoming call from Adria to whom he talked to for a while. And we sat there in that station long enough for passers-by to get some tourist photos of us, and receive odd looks from grossly posh Americans in their fat heated SUVs. Well, the weather along our route promised snow, freezing temperatures, unlit roads, and which would prove ever so fun in my borrowed shade shield. Now I'm down for adventure and crazy death rides, but this time I wanted to keep my last few toes and teeth. And the rain was fiercely coming down outside the roof of those gas pumps. Right then a couple of wet rats pulled into the gas station on their Harleys, and rode right up to ours. Lo and behold it was an old acquaintance. Greg and a pal of his. They had been just as miserable as we were, and even less water proofed than we had tried. We all put our heads in a bucket and started pulling ideas out such as, "hey, let's get a hotel for the night," and "hey, let's set up our tents in the gas station parking lot," till we got this one "I know someone who knows someone's number who lives in the area." Well, that was the best idea yet. A few minutes of waiting for a call back for a phone number and we were talking to the local that was gonna open their doors for us for the evening. It was certainly better than driving back to SD, or freezing wet in a tent all night. So we bought and bungeed a 30 and 12 pack to our bikes and rode 3 miles down and around and up a hill to a well-lit house were we rolled all 4 of our better halves into a bikers den and were immediately treated to: a dryer, warm changes of clothes, a fire place, rounds of pool in the club house, Johnny Cash blaring on the loud speakers, shots of Jack Daniels, beer after beer after beer after beer, and we cheerily topped the evening off with a soak in the jacuzzi. I slept ever so well that night.

drying our babies off in the garage.

many rounds of pool and shots.

sandwich making post jacuzzi

Greetings from the morning sun.

The sun was breaking through the windows on Saturday morning. The rain-soaked roads were steaming off under the sun's rays. We rustled around the place grabbing toasty boots, and articles from various drying sprawls. Eyes still squinting, we tied our loads to our bikes and our engines were roaring for the open road. This mornings destination was Julian, CA, a quaint little tourist destination nestled in the foothills where the 79 and 78 highways meet just north of the 8 highway. The roadsides were covered in most places with about a 1 to 3 inch dusting of snow by the time we rode up the 79 to Julian at 11am. Evidence of the reason we didn't forge the storm through that passage the night before. Stories of cars and trucks sliding off the roadways and tow trucks pulling these sidewinders out of ditches would soon entertain us once we reached the camp, but for now we were just glad that we'd bedded up for the night, toes and teeth intact.

our first stop once we reached snow.

We stopped for breakfast (buffalo burgers) at a small diner called The Miners Diner on the edge of town, wadding through swarms of weekend warriors picking the boutiques for pies and souvenirs. And well, we didn't care much for any of that hooplah, but to fill our stomachs and tanks, and get back to threading those hillsides, back and forth, in and out through the crevasses on down to the Anza Borrego desert. And so we rode.

We raced down those desert straightaways, over those whoop-dee-woos, along the Ocotillo highway, until we made a left at a small indescript lightning bolt on a sign that looked like it might have been our indicator. We shot down this sandy and rocky road, all fun elements. We rode for longer than we should have until we found another group of riders with puzzled looks on their faces posted up in a sandy embankment among the tumbleweeds. We pulled up and dismounted our horses to see what the business was about. They had been hanging out thinking the same thing we had: "I think we've gone too far, but maybe we haven't gone far enough, what's around the next bend?" And so we all kicked it and sipped beers while a chase car kindly went ahead and forged the road for us to see if there was any sign of partying hope on the horizon. When the car returned without any positive word of a gathering yonder, we turned around and sought that offshoot desert road that could have been a right or a left somewhere that we obviously and easily missed, and so slowly and squiggilingly we scurried over and around large rocks and slippy slided through the deep sand, keeping our eager dusty eyes open as much as we could for any sign of a biker ruckus. and then.....

We found it! There it was, a small cluster of bikes atypical of the traditional Ocotillo goer. Out-strethched springer front ends poked out from the sparse shrubbery. Visible were powwows of bikes surrounding group sleeping zones, vans advertising some sort of biker company, memorabilia, media, or culture, a bar oasis, bbq's and late night activities consisting of initiating rights of passage. The circling recreational vultures would spy from the surrounding ridges on our activities. Bikers would hike or try to shoot their bikes up the sandy chutes to intermingle with said vultures. At one point in the night, right about when the bands were rockin and some guy was getting dragged by a motorcycle, is when the vultures swooped down and landed their rules on the campground stating: "no amplified sounds." And so the music stopped, but somehow they allowed us to use a PA to make vintage biker movie announcements, and dole out awards, such as brain buckets laden with variations of gaping genitalia. At least I scored a Wuss Ride hat. Shortly after I realized my state of affairs was plateauing and I had nothing left to mix with my beer to make the night more interesting. At this point I visited my cozy tent quarters with the creature comforts of a tent floor for a mattress, and the central heating parallel to the warmth of a mexican blanket.

someones pipe blew a hole, and this was the solution.

Randy's sweet machine.

I fell asleep to the sound of people cheering on a bike racing up and down the road on a makeshift path outside my immediate north facing tent wall, only to find out in the morning that it was our friend riding through a fire pit enjoying the flame trails.

Everyone packed up and ready to hit the road.

Mornings are my least favorite part of the campout. Everyone scrambling to pack their things and load up before the rest, so as not to be the last one everyone is anxiously waiting for. I for one, like a slower approach to mornings, such as when someone hands me a coffee, while I kick back and let the sun warm me up.
We traced our steps back up the 78 to Julian, and down the 79 to the 8, destination San Diego. This time we didn't meander, stopping for breakfast and the such due to more incoming weather patterns. And since the snow was mostly gone by now, we were moving through those mountains faster than our approach. We rolled into port within a couple of hours to a roaring fire and a whole lot of story telling.
Can't wait till next year.

Hold onto your horses....