The Rooster
November 2020
THE ROOSTER A monthly update from the Inland Empire Offroad Association
What’s New The sand season has started with a weekend of fast riding at Dumont. Get your toys ready because riding time is here.
New Group e-mail List For many years we have used Yahoo Groups for a club email list, but they are now discontinuing that service. We have set up a Google group, so you can join in to receive the group e-mail. See more information on page 5.
Dumont October 9-11 By Jim Kastle Our annual start of the season Dumont trip was down on numbers, but we still had a great time. I arrived on Friday around 2:00 P.M., and was again surprised by the number of camps, even for the Columbus Day, or for you Californians, Indigenous Peoples Day, weekend. John arrived around 6:30 with special guest Brianna, visiting from Norfolk, Virginia. Anna and Matthew arrived later that night; as did P.J., Melissa, Allie, and Marshall; followed by Barry and Ann. It was cool enough none of us needed A/C. In typical Dumont fashion, it was quite windy overnight. That made it cool enough I
Glamis and Ocotillo Wells are Open As shown in the articles this month, Ocotillo Wells is open for riding, and Glamis remains open, despite online rumors to the contrary‌
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November 2020 shut the vents and windows and slept UNDER the sleeping bag! That reminds me the weather was perfect this trip, despite having just had one of the hottest summers on record. We caught a break, as a week earlier it was over 100 degrees at Dumont. This weekend I don’t think it was ever over 90.
Upcoming Events • October 24th: 9th Annual Mona Bacon Memorial Spook Poker Run. • October 30-November 1st: Halloween weekend at Glamis. • November 12-30: Veterans Day through Thanksgiving at Glamis, Wash 6. Some people will stay the whole time, while others will join for one or more of the three weekends.
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Saturday morning the four high school cars with passenger Brianna went for a somewhat fast ride and were pleased at the lack of traffic in the dunes. The only problem was a broken shifter u-joint on Barry’s car. That barely slowed the ride, as the LS1 was happy in second gear, no matter the speed. Back in camp Barry used John’s welder to replace the u-joint with one from a swivel socket. After lunch we went for a long, fast, smooth ride with Matthew riding with Barry and Ann, and Brianna again riding with John. I don’t think there were any problems, in large part due to the new axles and CVs that Barry installed over the summer. Both John and P.J. had their Go-Pros, and used them on the rides.
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The traditional “loosely coordinated carne asada potluck” went pretty smoothly, and we all ate very well. It turns out that tri tip can be a great substitute for carne asada. The evening’s entertainment consisted of videos of the day’s rides projected
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November 2020
onto Melissa’s large inflatable screen. We all got a kick out of watching ourselves and our high school cars. Sunday we went for a smooth morning ride that was interrupted when Barry said his car was making a noise from the right rear. I don’t know how he did it, but P.J. almost immediately diagnosed it as a bad wheel bearing. No problem, John carries two spares in his trailer. We watched, and offered a little bit of help as Barry replaced the bearing. It didn’t take long to make the repair. Allie then drove her ACE following Dad, with Grandpa following her for a good ride. She never got stuck and had a good time. After lunch we went for our last ride of the trip. For the first time of the trip we went to the southern part of the dunes. As we climbed Comp, P.J. reported his clutch seemed to be slipping. We slowed down a bit and continued for a few minutes before the clutch began chattering. When we stopped, P.J. noticed oil coming from the bell housing. We’re pretty sure it lost a rear main seal. He was able to drive it back to camp and into the trailer. We packed up, and as always seems to happen, were ready to hit the road within 10 minutes of each other. We caravanned to Dairy Queen, as our traditional stop, The Mad Greek, was still closed, hopefully due to Covid. We were able to grab a table and enjoyed a snack and rehashing the trip before heading home. We plan a return trip at the end of the season.
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November 2020
Fighting COVID in Anza By Mike Bacon, Photos by Mike Bacon & Pat Starr As of the middle of September Ocotillo Wells SVRA is open again, after being closed since May due to the COVID virus. The Schellingers joined Pat and me for a day ride the last Saturday of September, just to get the lay of the land and spend a little time in the dirt. My cousins Jon & Malinda were going to join us however they had a small incident the weekend before while on a ride in Barstow and tore the front suspension off their Can Am. It is currently in the shop and awaiting word on insurance. We hope they are back in the saddle for the poker run.
We arrived at the golf course about 9am and it was starting to warm up. We unloaded and headed for Techtonic Gorge and the north end of the park. There were a couple of trucks in the camping area, and the rest room by the 4x4 Training Area was open, but you could see the area hadn’t had much traffic in a while as most of the trails were clear of tracks. The canyon looked like it had some water down through it over the summer clearing out most of the tracks and causing a couple of walls to fall.
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November 2020
We rode though Techtonic and Tierra Del Sol, went by the Honda Monument, and stopped for a break at the Pumpkin Patch, where we ran in to a few people. The rest rooms at the Pumpkin Patch were still locked up for the summer. After a couple bottles of water, it was getting very warm, we headed off to find Little People, then rode across to the Blu Inn to see if they were going to open in October. We saw Lisa, our favorite waitress and she remembered us but was confused at first because we were in a green Honda instead of a blue RZR. This was the first trip to OW for our new Honda. She told us Blu Inn would be open as of October 16th, so we will try to add them to our poker run route.
We then took the main roads back to the golf course where we loaded up and went down to The Alamo for lunch. They are open but restricted to outdoor seating only. We downed plenty of iced tea and had a great Mexican lunch, then headed for home. It was a great day, we really enjoyed being back riding at OW, and we are getting ready for the poker run, which as this is published is only a few days away. We hope to see you all at the Salton Sea Golf Course for the 9th Annual Mona Bacon Spook Poker Run And Hot Dog Weenie Roast!
New Group e-mail List Since Yahoo has announced that they will be discontinuing Yahoo groups in December, we needed to establish another way to e-mail the group. For many years we have been using the Yahoo Group e-mail list that Steve Tharp set up and continued to maintain. Fortunately Google offers a similar service, so we have set up a new Google Group for Inland Empire Offroad. I couldn’t copy over the e-mail addresses directly from Yahoo, so if you are not receiving messages from the new group (and you want to) you can sign up at: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/ieoa/join This link is also posted on the club website. Once you are signed up, you can send messages to everyone by e-mailing: ieoa@googlegroups.com from the e-mail address that you signed up with. If you have any questions or problems, you can e-mail me directly at pkastle@msn.com. -P.J.
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November 2020
Sand Show Occurs With Significant Issues Event was not allowed to open for its scheduled second day. The Sand Sports Super show was held at WestWorld in Scottsdale, AZ on October 17 after being relocated from California due to COVID restrictions. The event reached its capacity on Saturday, forcing an end to ticket sales and leaving many potential visitors disappointed that they couldn’t get in. Things got worse on Sunday, when according to the show promoter, “We have just been informed by the City of Scottsdale that due to noncompliance with COVID restrictions the City and the venue will not allow the event to proceed.” With the cancellation, vendors and visitors were left to head home without having the second day of the show. Based on the many comments posted online, the show had a rough time with its move to Phoenix and larger than anticipated demand. There were many complaints of long lines in the sun and heat to get in and a lack of food and beverages once people were in the show. We hope this doesn’t end the Sand Show as we know it, and especially hope it is not a sign of things to come for events in the COVID era. Only time will tell what the future holds. -P.J.
ASA Raffle to be held October 25, in CA Since the rules governing the American Sand Association (ASA) would not allow the raffle to be held outside of California, it was decided that the winner of this year’s raffle would be selected the weekend following the sand show, at Berts Mega Mall on Saturday October 25th at 3:00 PM. Since gatherings are not permitted in CA, the event will be live streamed on Facebook. In other ASA related news, the latest ASA newsletter reminds us of many things we should be doing to help preserve our access to the dunes. In the current era, they urge us to be aware of many issues, ranging from group gathering size, mask use, not importing firewood, and even dust affecting air quality around camp. It seems there are lots of opportunities for us to “do wrong” and risk loosing access to the dunes, but supporting groups like the ASA is one way we can ensure that someone is fighting on our side. The latest ASA newsletter is available here: https://americansandassociation.org/images/documents/newsletter/asa-newsletter-september-2019web.pdf
This month we’d like to thank Jim Kastle and Mike Bacon for sending in articles for the newsletter, and encourage everyone else to do the same. What have you done during the off season to get the toys ready? Are you now racing to get stuff ready for Thanksgiving (or is it only me?) Please send anything you want to me at pkastle@msn.com and we will publish it along with a calendar of events each month. -Paul, Melissa, Allie, and Marshall. 6