The Adventure Brigade, Garrett, Samantha and Crazy Dave

Goatfest. It sounds like a weird name, but it all started with Goatman...he's a real person. I'll take a guess and say it's the way his Jeep is able to cruise the rocks like a goat. That's close to how Billie Jean (the van) got her name; Tyler called it a billiegoat and we ran with it.

Anyways, we cruised out Friday morning to Means Dry Lake bed in Johnson Valley CA. I met up with Vlad and Ivan, some new friends who I was taking to the Jeep event. Odd...I don't have a Jeep anymore, but I felt like this is one event you can't miss!

Messing with fire

The van all set up. Kinda messy

Most of camp, before Max arrived with his off road teardrop.

So we arrived later in the afternoon. I unloaded the bike and was really excited, especially when Sebastian got there with his bike. Now we could play! Where are my keys? Where are my keys? Where the heck are my keys? Los Angeles.

Crap! I frantically jumped in the van and high tailed it back to the main highway where I had cell reception to give Sam and Max each a call. I completely forgot my keys in my motorcycle jacket (for road) and didn't bring them. Luckily, Max hadn't left yet and Sam helped me out meeting him in Santa Monica.

So the first day, there was no riding. Just relaxing...and some shenanigans.

Shenanigans

The next morning, we discover that Max has a leaking brake line. Rather than risk it, he runs to town to get a new one; about 20 miles away. While we hang out and wait, Sebastian teaches his son and girlfriend how to ride a motorcycle. Needless to say, both of the bikes fell a few times.

Teaching Nick to ride.

Finally, Max gets help from the BSC camp and we hear that the scenic run is going to leave. It's about 11:30, I'm having a sandwich for lunch knowing that I can't eat and ride like the Jeepers can! We start to get ready, got told Max would wait for us at the BSC camp. I looked across the lakebed and the group is leaving! Yikes! LET'S GO!

Off we go. I'm taking lead across the lakebed. Nick is following on his dad's bike. Then we hit sand. DEEP sand. I knew Nick would go down, but I knew that if I stopped then I'd have a tough time getting started again. I pushed on knowing that the X5 was behind Nick in case anything happened. Stopping at the mountain bottom, I could see the Jeep group making the ascent. Good, we caught up. Well...not we, but me. Poor Nick went down in the sand and they ended up turning the bike around (tires not meant for sand). So I waited for another 10 minutes and watched them take the bike back. Eventually, all was right, Nick got in the X5 and we jammed on. We got lost. We lost the trail and took a left instead of a right....into ROCKS.

Where is this trail? D'oh!

We eventually backtracked, after the X5 took a few rocks to the skidplates and I had to walk my bike through rocks. NOT FUN and NOT what I remembered! We came to the sand dunes, which were familiar and there was a group of dirtbikes having lunch. "Did you see a big group of Jeeps?" "Yea...about 30 minutes ago." "Which way?"

I rooster tailed the X5 in the sand trying to get a start (Sorry Ivan!) and we eventually started to catch on to the tracks of the Jeep group, but we knew we were too far behind. HAM radio didn't pick anyone up. At thsi point, we stopped. We knew where we were, we had gps, we were hungry....and Vlad had his shotgun. Let's shoot!

After shooting, we decided it was time to head back to camp. As we took a different way back, we came over the mountains above the lake bed.

This should be in a dirt bike magazine!

We decided to wait for a while and just admire the view.

Back in camp, Sebastian introduced me to a neat new tea that is very popular in South America, and I think Argentina. I forget the name, so let me know!

Tea

Tea was followed by cruising out of camp with a few Jeep guys (Julio, Max, Sean and OGMudbutt) for some more shotgun shooting. Everyone was real nice and didn't laugh too hard as I was kicked backwards! Shooting was followed by ice cold fridge margaritas. Followed by ice cold rum and cokes. Followed by an excellent dinner provided by NAXJA with a donation! (Thanks everyone for cooking and good luck building the team race Jeep!)