Out of the Jaws of Death

Bud and I woke up rested from our nests there on the Colorado River some 30 miles northeast of Moab on hwy128. BTW, Bud sleeps on the ground with no mat or anything. He used to use bubble pack but not anymore. I sleep on an Air mattress. 'Tip of the day' is that I blow the air mat up with my exhaust from one of the bikes. If the muffler is cold it will blow the mat up in a minute or so....If the muffler is hot, that's another issue. :)

OMB's ignition switch didn't act up that morning.

We broke camp and headed to Moab for coffee. The early morning sun on the canyon walls was inspiring as well as beautiful. While we sat at Burger King with our coffee and biscuit, Bud said that he would like to get some contact cleaner and try to spray some into his Ig switch.  I've reconditioned a half dozen Honda ignition switches of that era, and I couldn't imagine how any clearner could get where it needed to go, but why not try it?

Just across the street was a Radio Shack so Bud went there and retrieved a can. The Ig switch is more accessible on his half-a-bike than my Sabre so that part was easier....and throughout the morning the contact cleaner seemed to help some. Cool, we would see as time went on.

In the back of my mind, was concentrating on taking a look-see at Muley Point, and showing Bud the Moki Dugway as well. I'd been skunked twice before at Muley, once by mud and once by snow, and thought that the 3rd time would be the charm. I'd make a determination whether or not to go on down to Mexican Hat After we had seen Muley point. It was likely to be hotter down there.

Well as many of you know, Muley Point is one of the great sights of the world. Once you get there you futilely try to capture the place on Camera. Click, Click, and more clicks, but to no avail. Here's my best effort.

Those Buttes in the background are 50 miles or more away in Monument Valley.

I always thought it'd be neat to spend the night sleeping on that rock.  It's about 15ft X 60ft as I remember...don't know how I'd get on top though.

That's John Brown's Trail down there. I'll have to check that out one day.

We rode back out to the main road at the Top of the Moki Dugway for some more hard to capture pictures. There was always a horse trail here but it wasn't until a mining operation needed to get the ore to Mexican Hat that an actual wagon width road was cut into the cliff.

At the bottom, we met a 30 yearish European couple that was doing a western Tour. She asked us if the going got too tough up there, and were there places that they could turn around. Scheesh. She was really worked up about the possibily of dying up there.

 I told them it was ok and worth the drive.....We would see them again the next day....

The weather was only moderately hot due to many clouds and thunderheads so we motored on thru Monument Valley To Kayenta

See the rain clouds??

Monument Valley is great... It looks like that cloud dropped out from the big cloud above leaving that blue sky.

We stopped in Kayenta for dinner at McDonalds where we had the fatal incident with Buds Ig switch.  I'd been telling him it would be ok.   Now you know how much I know about the future.  I do know a lot about those switches, though, but I'm never positive that I can fix one for certain.

I had an ig switch meld down in Anchorage with my Sabre in a Meyer parking lot.  I fixed that one, but it's never a sure thing. 

In Kayenta it died for good when we walked out of Micky D's at about

6pm. Oh Shit. That's strictly Indian land and motels will be at

least 75 bucks. Woe is me...... :(

The good news is that it's the same Honda switch that my 84 Sabre uses.  More good news it that his switch was easier to get to than the switch is on my bike.

So in the MD parking lot we started pulling his switch apart. Turned out a

bad contact had gotten things hot enough that the red wire (that brings all the juice from the battery) un-soldered

itself from the switch. Beautiful, just fucking beautiful. Most IG

switch repairs only require contact cleanup, but not soldering.

However, I did have one of those pen-sized Benzene torches with me

(first time ever). I'd never even lit one before, and couldn't keep

this one lit. It turned out that it was out of benzene fuel..... A nice

Indian gal in a pickup nearby told me to check the Ace hardware that

was a couple blocks away.

Sure enough, I got in the hardware store before it closed, and they had a refill for lighters that would fill my torch.

Woohoo, we were back in business.

While we worked on the bike, 3 Indian grifters hit us up for money,

and a fourth told us of a campground at the Navajo National monument

just up the road 30 miles. That was good news.

And another Indian was watching the goings on. I asked him if he

knew all the words that came from the Indian music played by a car

radio in the drive-thru lane nearby. He said he did, but that some of the

younger kids weren't keeping up with traditional languages. Also, he said there

were hundreds of top Indian recording artist making records out there,

just like we have in LA and Nashville.

But back to the repair.....I got that red wire to make a solid

solder connection with the switch base, and reassembled the switch

right the first time.  I'd also scraped the corrosion off the switch contacts that caused the heat that caused the problem.  Voila, a new switch....all by 8pm.

We had enough time to get to that Campground and bed down just barely beating the darkness, There was a thunderstorms in the area and one  going on to the east, which seemed to be traveling north of us with bright lightning, and a 3 mile, 15 second delayed thunderclap arrival. That would put the edge of the storm at least a mile away. We thought that the rain would blow on by. 

At our Campsite

Looks like there are more storms running around in the area.

That storm didn't blow by. It hit us square in the kisser. In fact, three storms hit us that night. The Ranger in the morning said about 2 inches of rain fell. We got soaked. My Blue tarp acted more like a mosquito net in regards to shedding water. Again it was warm so no real harm was done. But I am going to get a new tarp for sure. Ha

Before we left in the morning From The Navajo Natl. Monument (it was free camping by the way), I took a long walk over to the canyon rim and watched the sunrise. Wow!

Knarely old tree from my walk

Morning walk

Bud and I also walked down to the canyon viewpoint to view the Indian ruins in the cliff on the opposite Canyon wall. The visitor center offers an 8 mile walk to another ruin as well....that's not round trip distance...no thanks

Zoomed in a bit.  There is a walking tour from the Visitor's Center that will take you down to get closer.

Indian Pottery at a roadside stand

We ran into that couple from the Moki Dugway at the Visitor Center. Turns out they didn't have the 'honies' to drive up that killer road. I'm sure he would have gone up, but he had lost control....too bad.

I strapped my soaked sleeping bag to my towed bike and aired it out as I rode.  Bud did the same.  They dried it out pretty well. At one point in our ride to Kingman Bud wanted to get down for a nap, so we pulled off I-40. We wandered off 30 yrds from the bikes for a bit of shade. A bum showed up to hitch a ride near our bikes. It bothered Bud so much that he couldn't sleep. I figured that if Bud was watching the fort....there'd be no problem if I nodded off. Heh he.

Bud trying to nap.....

About 5pm we pulled into the Value Inn in Kingman. We splurged at $42 for the night. I didn't like breaking our 'camping only' streak for the trip, but what the hell.   

It turned out that we only spent a little over $400 each for the trip, and it was just too hot as we dropped down in altitude to enjoy a campout.

We rationalized that we deserve one night on sheets, and slept without guilt....or fear of thunderstorms. :)

We got up early to beat the heat and made a bee-line the last 350 miles to our homes in North San Diego County

About a hundred miles out in the mtns southwest of Palm Springs we got in another nap under some trees

It had been a great trip. Bud and I were tickled to see our wives, and thankful that we had escaped, once again, from the jaw of death on our journey to the unknown. Was that too dramatic??   Hummm, I don't think so.

Thanks for reading about OMB's Last Ride..

A live map of the day.

The rest of the story:
After this trip, I realized that I wasn't being fair to OMB's wife who was alone when I dragged Bud off on these trips.  I left Bud alone after that.  Bud lived to be 93 when a stomach aneurysm got him one day.  Peg lived several year longer.   That was the end of 2 beautiful people.  I'll alway think fondly of Old Man Bud.