My Substitute Reality -You're just jealous cause the little voices only talk to me-

Friday April 8, 2011

Pismo again

Filed under: Quads — don @ 8:56 pm

I’m heading to Pismo Beach again next weekend. My friend Scott had his quad worked on and wanted to go see if it’s faster.

We are trying something new this time. We will be leaving around 6am which will get us there by 9am and then we’ll ride until 3-4pm and then come home. We always before have stayed overnight but it’s not really that bad a drive on a weekend.

That means I should be home by no later than 7pm which means I’ll have Sunday to recuperate.

Edit: I added pictures from the trip here.

Saturday September 25, 2010

Another Pismo Trip

Filed under: Family,Quads — don @ 8:42 am

For the last year or so Michelle has been bugging me to go back to Pismo so she can ride a quad again. The last time she rode she was in her middle teens and I wasn’t sure she liked it. She was riding a small quad in the small dunes and went down a hill that, at the time, looked fairly large. Since then we’ve learned it was actually a very small hill but it scared her quite a bit.

My buddy Scott and I had scheduled a trip last Saturday and this time Michelle finally got to go. It was Scott, Michelle, Michelle’s boyfriend Toliy, and me. Toliy has never ridden a quad but he does ride a big Harley so I recommended that he rent a 400. They were going to get a 250 but I knew he could handle a 400 and wouldn’t enjoy it as much on the 250.

In order to save money Scott let Michelle use his Yamaha Breeze which is a 125 and gets around the dunes fairly well if you don’t weigh much. Shell fit the bill on that so they went down and picked it up from Scott on Thursday before we went. They went up on Friday and spent the day at Montana del Oro about 50 miles north of Pismo. They came down in the afternoon and were planning to stay the night on the beach but got stuck in Toliy’s 2WD truck. I had told them to let the air out of the tires before they tried to drive into the softer sand but they forgot. They ended up staying at a campground a half mile from the beach.

Scott and I drove up on Saturday morning and met them at the entrance to the beach. This time they let some air out and did better but I still had to pull them out once.

They rented Toliy’s bike about 10:30 and we rode for the next 4 hours. Michelle got stuck a lot early on but she finally figured out you have to keep that little bike at full throttle if you want to not get stuck. Toliy seemed to have a great time and is now talking about getting a quad of his own. We’ll see.

After they were done Scott and I went out for a little over an hour and rode hard. When we don’t have anyone to slow us down we cover a lot of ground in a short time although we always enjoy showing newbies around. After our hard ride we were beat and went to the hotel for the night. We were both hungry for wings so we found a spot up the rode and ate.

We’ve decided it’s best to just drive up on Saturday morning, spend the night in a hotel, and then come home Sunday. It’s a much faster trip when we don’t pull the trailers and don’t camp out. We’re also getting too old to ride a lot, or at least I am. Scott is almost 10 years younger than me so he’s still got lots of energy.

You can see the iPhone pictures on my Facebook page plus here’s a couple more from my good camera.

Wednesday April 22, 2009

Bees!

Filed under: Cool Stuff,Life,Personal,Quads — don @ 3:50 pm

We had bees! We actually still have them but they should be gone later tonight.

A few weeks ago we noticed a few bees buzzing around an old wooden box we had out back. I went over and opened it to look inside and didn’t see anything. Then about a week ago Ann and Jenny saw some of them buzzing around near the same box but this time there were a lot. Now we must take an intermission.

While growing up in Tucson and going to Flowing Wells I had a friend named Roger Taylor. He was with me from Kindergarten on up and graduated with me but I hadn’t seen him since then. A few weeks ago I learned of a web site that is getting my class together for a reunion later this year. On that site was a map that shows where everyone is. Roger showed up as being in the San Fernando Valley not far from me. I happened to exchange some messages with Lynette McGee who is still in touch with Roger and Mike Keller, another school mate. They got a message to Roger to contact me so he did and we met for lunch. I found out he is also interested in riding quads so I invited him to Pismo over this last weekend. At that time I found out he was also a beekeeper. Now back to the bee story.

When we got back from Pismo we decided he should come and get the bees so today he did. I learned some interesting things and got some great pics. Here’s one and the rest are in my gallery.

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Sunday June 8, 2008

Mikuni

Filed under: Quads — don @ 6:53 pm

Here’s some pics of my new TM45 Mikuni carb for my quad.

Sunday November 13, 2005

Glamis pictures

Filed under: Quads — don @ 7:09 pm

I’ve put all the pictures from Glamis in the gallery. I’ll write a little more after I unstiffen.

Thursday November 10, 2005

Glamis bound

Filed under: Quads — don @ 9:23 am

At 4am Friday morning I’m headed to Glamis, CA. It’s billed as a “Duner’s Paradise“. I’ve never been there but I have been to the dunes south of there called Buttercup. They are both part of the Algodones range of dunes in eastern CA.

I used to go to Buttercup with my dad in the dune buggy we built together. I remember him coming home from work and telling me his boss, Larry Long, had a dune buggy and he thought we should go look at it. When we saw it he and I both got the “bug” to make a buggy. I found an old Corvair that had an automatic transmission for about $50. We wanted a manual but my dad said the automatic would be ok to start with.

We spent the next few months in the shop building this buggy with galvenized pipe. Most people used steel tubing but the galvenized was a lot cheaper(and heavier). After we got it all together we took a trip to Buttercup. It did pretty well but the automatic was a definate disadvantage. We also had oversize truck tires instead of the grooved slicks everyone else was using. We later put a 4 speed and grooved slicks on it and it would keep up with most of the other buggys.

That was a really fun time in my life. Sometimes I wish I had had one boy to share stuff like that with. I wouldn’t trade any of my 5 girls but it would have been nice to have a boy too.

So now I’m going back to the dunes of my youth. Instead of a patched together dune buggy I’ve got a state of the art quad. Instead of the old “Tramper” I’ll be staying in my trailer. Instead of my family I’ll be with my good friend Scott and his son Jeremy.

And that’s part of the fun. Jeremy is one of those kids you hated when he was 8 but now he’s 14 and actually listens most of the time. When I see the 2 of them it always reminds me of my dad and I with the dune buggy. Of course I ALWAYS did what my dad told me to do. I was a model child. At least that’s the way I remember it. The rest of my family may have different realities.

I’ll take pictures.

Monday July 18, 2005

Pics from Pismo

Filed under: Quads — don @ 6:16 pm

I installed Gallery and put all the pictures from the Pismo trip there. I also uploaded a few other Pismo trips and plan to add some more pictures in the near future. For now here’s the link to the gallery and I’ve added it on the sidebar.

Sunday July 17, 2005

Back from the dunes

Filed under: Quads — don @ 8:08 am

I got back yesterday around 4:30. It’s always nice to get home after camping for a few days. Camping isn’t as rough as it used to be since we got the trailer but you still have to deal with not taking a shower for a few days. The trailer does have a shower but when it’s 3 guys there doesn’t seem to be a real incentive.

So here’s some pictures from Google Earth. I’ll post the actual pictures I took a little later.


View of the whole area.


The blue line(except along the beach) is the outer fence. It’s 10.2 miles long according to Garmin.

And here’s a link to the .kmz file from Google Earth if you’d like to see it yourself.

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