Moab.....Part 3

We stood around the ashes next morning while trying to get the chill off. A good dose of gasoline soon had that problem solved.

But speaking of problems, I still had to get my charging system fixed or I wasn't going to have much fun today. I don't know much about the DR350's electrics, but experience has told me that connector terminal plugs are the biggest of fixable problem.

I stayed in camp when the boys went to town for breakfast. I had a Jump Start battery source that I hooked up to get some charge in the battery. I remembered all to well last year getting stuck on the beach, and being in the surf of Baja. I imagined that I would hear from that incident again, and figured the time was now.

I started looking at fuses, and pulling all electrical plugs apart. I found some green corrosion starting in a few plugs. I cleaned them up a bit and applied a little oil to each one to seal out the moisture from the air. I found a bundle of wire under the seat and regulator. There were 4 multiwire terminal plugs down there. I checked the first three and again a little corrosion but I didn't think it was what I was looking for....

But on that last plug, I found the mega source of all green. Two of the three wires were not bad, but the third one was corroded in two. Voila, I had most likely found the problem. I cleaned things up and lapped the two ends together and connected them with a crimp splice.

In the meantime, I had blown the main 20 amp blade fuse, so I fashioned one out of a piece of plumbers tape. I say ride today and fuse tomorrow....and by the time the chowhounds got back from breakfast I was ready to ride also.


We selected the trail out to 'Gemini Bridges'

We took some of our own pictures of the natural rock structure.


When you walk up to this bridge to take a picture you are standing on a surface that you don't quite understand until you go over to the bridge and see where you were just standing. It's a little unnerving.


And looking the other way off the Bridge you find this neat box canyon.

As we left Gemini Bridges, Tom was exhibiting his feminine side, and was doing some artsy fartsy, retro photography. Kinda cool really. Don't tell him I said that.


While we were down there a rental jeep came along with some pretty big rock crawling type of tires. They rent those thing pretty reasonably, and pretty nice Dual sport bikes as well. So it isn't really necessary to bring your own equipment out there in order to have a look see at Moab's underside.

We went on to a trail called 'Metal Masher'....again there were a few Ds on the map. It was a pretty easy trail until one down hill. I was lagging back because of dust and didn't see how the others got down. I didn't give it much thought,until I spied the two ft step going down. I looked for the easy part. There wasn't one. I was kind of committed so I eased myself off the thing. I was kind of stuck with my front wheel turned hard right which wasn't the way I wanted to go. The back of the front wheel was hard up against that step.

I was in a predicament. The bike was quite vertical, and I couldn't do much with it. I couldn't get off the bike. Not that I wanted too, or that it would have helped. I worked with it not knowing quite what to do, but apparently something worked as I did get on down somehow. That is the best that I can explain it. I would like to know how the others handled it.

So I was a quarter mile behind by now, and to further that problem I recognized Tom's hat in the trail, and I had to go back for. By the time I caught up the boys were stopped at 'Mother-in-law' hill. Bruce was on top. Ian was trying to get his foot out from under the KLR where it had him half trapped. Tom had already picked himself up, but his bike was still horizontal at the bottom.

I picked a path and skilfully rode right to the top. As You heard me say before, 'Luck beats Good', and it also added to my over confidence.

Anyway, Ian got loose, he and Bruce went to help Tom with his bike. By the time I got off my bike Tom was showing real signs of pain. The type that you might not walk off. He was telling Bruce, "I'm hurt dammit. When I say I'm hurt, I'm hurt". There wasn't any smiley attached.

So I didn't know, but Tom had got up the hill and cut left onto a 4 ft high rock. the bike somehow stalled and Tom fell off the bike onto 2 big rocks below....a second later the bike fell on top of him. In John Maddens best voice, "Thud, boom"...or something like that.


It wasn't very funny. Tom had some seriously bruised back muscles, and a bruised thigh muscle. He was hurting. The bike was having sympathy pains as well. A broken headlight housing, a two piece disposable front fairing, and mirror #2 were most of the bike's casualties.

It was near the end of the trip, before Tom's son, Bruce, got the nerve to buy dad a T shirt that said..."Dirt biking is a lot of fun until someone gets hurt, but then it's hilarious".

So that was enough riding for the day. We found a 'bail out' road, and got back to camp by about 4pm. We sat around and began to imagine the worst case scenarios. Bleeding spleens being the scariest. By 5pm we decided to take a stroll through the local emergency room.

They are funny over at the hospital. They have a chart on the wall with all the trails on it, and injuries on a particular trail are tallied up. Metal Mangler isn't even close to the top. That sucked...being hurt on a lesser trail.

Turned out that Tom was just sore....as hell..., but not seriously hurt.
On the next day, Tom rested.......