Today, the day before Ian’s birth­day, he and I went for a very nice motor­cy­cle outing.

I rode over to he and Rebekka’s home this morn­ing at ten. The three of us had a fun chat while we got ready to ride off then it was over to Gibral­tar Road, up to East Camino Cielo, and east for sev­en miles until the pave­ment end­ed. We had been here last year when I was new with the Suzu­ki and very wet behind the ears so we only ven­tured down the unpaved road for a cou­ple of miles before turn­ing around.

Today was much more fun and adven­tur­ous with me hav­ing the Suzuk­i’s new tires along with many more miles under my belt(??). Today we road 11.4 miles down the dirt high­way, all the way to Agua Caliente Spring, a place I have not known about although Ian has been there. It was beau­ti­ful back coun­try scenery all the way in and back and the spring itself was fas­ci­nat­ing with all its enhance­ments so far into the back country.

Hap­py birth­day Ian and thanks for the great day.

The cau­tion­ary tag on the label for the new tires sug­gest­ed that one should ride 100 miles care­ful­ly before start­ing to ride nor­mal­ly (uncar­e­ful­ly??). So, to get in some miles I decid­ed to ride up to Jala­ma Beach for a turkey burg­er lunch. While eat­ing lunch the idea came to return home by way of Refu­gio Beach, Refu­gio Road, and West Camino Cielo. In days of old I have rid­den West Camino Cielo sev­er­al times on my bicy­cle so I kind of knew what to expect but it would be new ter­ri­to­ry on the motor­cy­cle and cer­tain­ly a chal­lenge for me with the off-road part.

Here’s the view as I was eat­ing the deli­cious turkey burg­er at Jala­ma with a few locals mean­der­ing about hop­ing for a piece of the pie. The right image is an autum­nal shot I liked as I returned along Jala­ma Road.

Up on West Camino Cielo now. The left image shows the nice 4 miles of sin­gle lane paved road pre­ced­ing the 10 miles sans pave­ment shown in the right image. After those 10 the road returns to pave­ment near the Gun Club.

A panora­ma shot I took a lit­tle fur­ther up the road. Pret­ty day, no?

Alas, after I took the three images for the nice panora­ma I returned to the bike to notice the low fuel alert blink­ing at me. I was only 2.8 miles along the dirt sec­tion and had no idea how much there was to cov­er. Oh well, I decid­ed to push on rather than turn around (heck, I’d already seen that part). I had last looked at the gauge leav­ing Jala­ma and it seemed like lots was left to use and to go explor­ing with then 🙂

Twen­ty five min­utes lat­er I came to the most inter­est­ing part of the ride. I was mov­ing around a gen­tle right hand turn when Whoa Nel­lie! there’s water all across the road, con­tin­u­ing on around a slight left turn and up the road for about 35 yards. The water seemed too silty to see the road­way so I just head­ed in and tried to stay along the right side while hop­ing for no big rocks or dips under me.

About a quar­ter of the way through the water fea­ture I rode too high into the right side of the sub­merged road­way and spun the rear wheel to a stop. For­tu­nate­ly, I was able to hold the bike upright while stand­ing in four or five inch­es of water.

Once stopped and try­ing to fig­ure out what to do next I noticed that I could see the road­way through the water and that it was all smooth and not more than six or eight inch­es deep in the cen­ter, although quite slip­pery under foot and tire. It took me five or six starts and restarts before I got the bike mov­ing and under con­trol. I head­ed to the cen­ter of the road/pond for a ways then over to the left side as that was the first land­fall. You can see some of this here but the over­all length of the pond appears much reduced in this image than when one is stand­ing at the far end of it.

From the point I saw the low fuel alert I remained anx­ious about run­ning out as I was not cer­tain how long it had been with me when I saw it. In the end I got to the bot­tom of the pass and into the near­by gas sta­tion for a top­ping up of the tank. Run­ning the num­bers it seemed I still had about a quart left in the tank.

The skid plate I pur­chased and installed last year paid for itself today. At least four times I came down heav­i­ly on it and it was a com­fort to know it was not the Suzuk­i’s crankcase tak­ing such abuse.

Friend Steve rode motocross bikes in his younger days and was of a mind that my new TKC80s might per­form the same way at high­way speeds as his old knob­bies, i.e. be all bumpy and vibrat­ing. For­tu­nate­ly, the TKC80s only exhib­it a small bumpy feel­ing at very slow speeds and seem as smooth as the Suzu­ki orig­i­nals at any rea­son­able speed.

It was anoth­er 145 miles of fun, chal­lenge, and explo­ration in the local environs.