DOM Desert Riders

Our family spent Thanksgiving the same way we've done for the past few years: out in the desert with our off road club, the Dirty Old Men. The D.O.M. goes out to a location known as Charlie's Place. This is my personal favorite place our club goes to because of the variety of riding and the sights to be seen.

Our family was originally planning to leave on Wednesday night before Thanksgiving day, but that turned out to be too busy. Not only is it one of the worst days to try and drive out of the Los Angeles area in any direction, but my wife Laura had unfinished "cheer" business that had to get done. I can write an entire post just on Laura's involvement in La Habra Pop Warner and Cheer, but I'll bore you with that on some other occasion. This post is about our Thanksgiving weekend. So, we left for the desert on Thursday morning at about 7:30 a.m.

We arrived just about 3 hours later, which is pretty good time in my opinion. Our destination was only about 160 miles away, but we had to take the Cajon Pass out of San Bernardino. This is a steep climb along Interstate 15, and gets slow for those of us pulling a trailer. I'm sure many of the people speeding by us were hurrying off to Las Vegas. Once in our camp area, we quickly leveled our trailer and unloaded our quads, and we otherwise transformed the cargo area of our travel trailer into our living space. We spent the rest of the day visiting with friends and getting ready for the Thanksgiving potluck that the club traditionally has. The club provides the turkey, and all the members bring side dishes and desserts.

The members who want to eat together near the potluck table bring their own tables to the area. Nina put this place-holder on our table. It says: "Reserved for Danny Nina Laura Brady or whom we let"

Here's Laura and Nina eating their Thanksgiving dinner. Laura has a Margarita, Nina has pink lemonade in the Margarita glass. You can also see the people standing at the potluck table in the background. (the dog with no legs did not get to eat off of the potluck table)

And here's me and Nina eating. It was such a beautiful sunny day with no wind, and warm enough to keep our jackets off until nightfall. This picture was taken at about 4:30 p.m.

Since Nina finished all of her turkey, we let her have a big piece of chocolate cake for dessert. Laura and I had pumpkin pie. Brady ate with his friends in their motorhome, that's why he is not in these pictures.

That evening, we stayed in our trailer and watched a movie. We had not quite adjusted to the cold temperatures at night. Besides, we still had two more chances to go to the campfire over the next two nights.

On Friday, I took a lone ride to Randsburg. Randsburg, an old mining town that is now a tourist attraction, is about 17 miles away. I missed out on going there last year, which you can read about here if you want. This year I was going no matter what, and selfishly I didn't want to have to take a group of other riders. It took me just about an hour to get there on my quad, and I grabbed a seat at the bar and watched some college football. I ate a cheeseburger and an order of fries, and I had a couple of beers to wash it down. Then I returned for our camp via a different route. It was very enjoyable, but I don't have pictures to share. The camera stayed with Laura.

While I was gone, Brady joined the big group ride to the pinnacles, and Nina stayed back at camp and played in the sand. Here's she is along with a birthday cake she made:

Also, just like during our first ride of the year, the Ice Cream Man came out to the desert again! So even though Nina and Laura didn't go on a long ride on their quad, they did get cake and ice cream.

Part two to follow in a week or so. Bye for now.

Labels: Regular Season

The 2008 - 2009 D.O.M. riding season begins today!  This season, Dan & Leslie, our King & Queen, are asking members to sponsor a ride.  Below is the schedule of dates for this year's rides, and where applicable, the sponsors:

Labels: Regular Season

I finally got around to participating in Carmi's Thematic Photograph theme. This week's theme is "Poignant", and for me, this picture of my wife and daughter looking over a dry lake bed in the Mojave Desert fits the theme:

This was taken on May 23, 2008, when the three of us were riding our quads in the area of Camp "C" - an open area for off road vehicle riding - northeast of California City, California. The dry lake bed has soda ash on it's surface, which gives it the look of being covered with white shinny dust. You can clearly see the trails on the face of the hill in the foreground where quads and motorcycles have left their mark. The mountains in the distance are the Sierra Nevada's. Not the ones on the other side of the dry lake; the ones to the left that blend into the clouds. One of the things I enjoy the most about being in this spot is how quite it can be. When there are no riders nearby, the only sound you hear is the wind blowing.

Labels: Annual

After Saturday's race events, Nina and Laura were hungry for lunch. Afterall, all that riding makes you hungry. Laura and I wanted to BBQ some hamburgers, but Nina wanted taquitos.

Somehow, I ended up feeding more than just my wife and daughter. Two other little ones came along to play with Nina, and stayed for lunch. No worries, there were plenty of hamburgers and taquitos to go around.
Here's the one that I dropped as I was flipping it. You can see that it needed to be cooked more. I hate wasting food.

This group of pros would never waste food. These folks know how to BBQ. L-R are Pablo, Butch and Queen Leslie:

To close out this post, here's a random photo taken at the Annual. For no apparent reason I took this picture of this cone:

Labels: Annual

One of the best things about the D.O.M. club is the campfire. People gather around to talk and enjoy each other's company. It's always a good time. We've tried to capture that fun in some pictures. At this year's Annual, the weather was a little colder than normal for Memorial Day Weekend. The way people are bundled up in jackets and sweaters, one would think that these are from a ride during the winter. Here's Billy and Gaye smilin' for the camera:

Here are party-girls Patty and Laura:

Pictured here left-to-right are: Jimmy, Butch, Terry and me

Laura met a new friend at this year's Annual, Amanda. They both enjoy the same type of music and decided to bust out some dance moves:

People do silly things when they've been drinking. Case in point: Jack thought that he could sit on Claire's lap while she was sitting on a folding chair. The problem was that the chair wasn't designed to hold that much weight, and it collapsed. Claire and Jack fell to the ground. Laura tried to capture a picture of this "incident" while the two were on the ground, but the shutter didn't snap fast enough and King Dan stepped in to help them up. Sorry, all you can see is Dan's backside and part of Jack on the ground.

This is what was left of the chair after the "incident". You can also see evidence of the alcohol that caused this tragedy.

Well that's enough for this time. I still have more pictures to post, so do check back in a week or so.  Thanks, Dan.

Labels: Annual

I'm back with more pictures. This time they're of people other than my kids, my wife, or me. Well that's only part true. There's a couple with Brady and his friends. Let's start with one of the hardest working members of our club around Annual time: Ray. Here he is waving the victory flag for one of the younger kids whom just finished a scrambles race event. He's also checking his stopwatch for their time:

Ray has also helped set up the Scrambles race track for several years in a row. Ray, for all that you do, THANK YOU! Below we have David, Haley, Joey and Brady. Unfortunately, Haley is wearing a helmet and goggles, so you can't see this beautiful young lady surrounded by these handsome young gentlemen.

Here's our club King Dan ordering his subjects to bring him more beer. Excuse me your Royal Highness, but you haven't finished the beer that you're drinking.

Carol decided to take her grandson through the slalom course. What's not pictured below, but took place moments before this shot, was when Carol fell face down and the stroller fell backwards. Grandmother and Grandson are doing fine.

Joey, Jena, Nicole and Brady pose for another picture on this beautiful day:
And that concludes this post of pictures. I have a few more, so please check back later. Thanks for stopping by, Dan.

Labels: Annual

As I promised in my last post, here are some pictures of the actual race events that were held at the Annual. These are just of Brady and Nina. I'll post pictures that I took of other people next time. Here's Nina in her first event - the Slalom. Nina placed 3rd in her class (the Brats class) in this event.

Here's Brady in his first event - the Slalom. Brady also placed 3rd in his class (the Boys class) in this event.

Here's Nina in her second event - the Barrel Race. Nina placed 2nd in her class in this event.

Here's Brady racing to the finish line during his second event - the Barrel Race. Coincidentally, Brady also placed 2nd in his class in this event.

Here's Nina lining up for her third event - the Blow and Go. I didn't get a picture of her crossing the finish line because I had to help spot one the winners. Nina took 3rd place in her class in this event.

Here's Brady lining up for his third event - the Blow and Go. Same thing, no finishing picture, but Brady didn't actually place in one of the top three positions anyway. Something scary did happen to him though. Brady popped back onto his two rear wheels at the start of the race. He almost fell backwards. Later during this same event, but in the Men's Quad class, one of our members, Don, did just that: fell on his butt after he popped back onto his two rear wheels. When his quad came back down, it was still in gear and rolled forward several yards as if it were running the race un-manned.
That's it for this post. Thanks again for stopping by. My offer still stands for any club members who want me to post any of their pictures on this blog.

Labels: Annual