Desert Sessions

Dana and Ali were kind enough to let Francione and myself hop on the first part of their LA vacation to see Rick and Heather. I jumped at the opportunity because I knew what it would mean for us… desert ripping.

Day One:

-Flew in and rented a Wrangler for the desert.
-Hung out at Rick and Heather’s catching up, crushing beers, listening to Rick fire up his bikes, and getting excited to be in the desert once again.
-Stuffed out faces on tacos because they don’t get any better outside of Mexico than SoCal.
– The bikes we will be taking are Ricks Yamaha’s LT1, RT2 (which he has basically turned into an MX), WR 426; and Heather’s Kawi KX100.

Day Two:
-Loaded up all four bikes and headed east to the high desert.
-After a quick stop over at our ultra modern Air BNB oasis in Yucca Valley, we loaded up in the Wrangler and went to Pappy and Harriet’s for the Rolling Heavy Van show and Desert Generator music fest.
-Checked out all the sick classic vans done to the nine. This is not helping the current van fever I have. Out here these things last and survive unlike back home where they just wither away.
-Pioneer Town is a rad mock old school western town w/ Pappy and Harriet’s bringing people in for music and BBQ.
-Had our faces shredded by some righteous riffing stoner and desert rock bands.

Day Three:
-After getting breakfast in Joshua Tree it was finally time for ripping.
-We headed to a place that Rick had brought Radke and I to on our Manifest Destiny trip; BLM lands outside of Landers, CA. The land here is wide open but has all kinds of riding options. A dirt choose-your-own-adventure. People come out here to ride everything. From bikes to ATV’s, side-by-sides, rock crawlers, etc… A lot of target practice is done out here too. A freedom that us east coast city dwellers don’t get to experience as often as we should.
-Heather’s friends Nina and Joni had joined us. All 3 lady’s riders  themselves and were as fast as us to get on the bikes and go.
-Rode all day till the sun became low in the Horizon then drove to another Air BNB in Big Bear. The girls weren’t hot on sleeping in the 40 degree weather it was to be. To be honest either were we plus a change of scenery is not a bad thing.

Desert dirt bike crew

A post shared by Ali Rae (@aliraesanderson) on Apr 9, 2017 at 12:47pm PDT

Day Four:
-Said goodbye to the ladies and the four of us dudes went to the Cactus Flats OHV lands about 20 minutes from the Air BNB.
-The staging area was basically a big warm up course that you can rip around on before hitting the trails. Yesterday was a wide open, go anywhere type of adventure but today was trail riding. The OHV lands out here are taken care of by the state. The first trail (Joshua) was a sick dirt loop full of whoops and berms. Takes about 5 minutes to ride the full loop. The 2nd trail we went on lasted for miles and started similar to Joshua then became a large long access road w/ terrain that alternated from hard pack to rock to soft sand. We got pretty far out but soon found another trail (Pinyon) that took us back to the staging area. Pinyon was the most difficult of the trails. All up hill and crazy rocky. It made the Bald Eagle trip look like a beginners course. The champion of Pinyon was Francione because he made it through the whole thing on the LT1. Once back in the staging area we had a few more beers and ripped there before packing up and heading back to LA. The ride back to LA (CA rte’s 18 to 330) were the best mountain twisites with overlooks and vistas that you just do not get here on the east coast. I would have done anything to get my KZ on those roads.

Day Five:
-Fly home.