Trod Bogs Sadly – Oddstray's Blog

So John emails us all, Howie, Bruce, Victor, Charlie and I to propose a group offroad motorcycle ride up Otay Mountain in South County. John says it’s an easy ride, and offers to lend his Yamaha TW200 to me and his Yamaha XT-250 to Charlie, as neither of us has a dual-sport capable bike. John and Howie have Kawasaki KLR650’s and Victor has a stable full of bikes, but it turns out that his Suzuki DR650 wouldn’t start so he brought the Suzuki 650 VStrom with road tires. Bruce brought his Suzuki DR400. Howie couldn’t make it.

Long story short. Loaded the KLR 650 and the XT250 on a rack on the back of John’s Jeep Liberty (boy, was it overloaded!), and the TW200 and DR400 in Bruce’s Tacoma. Victor just rode there as he lives around the corner.

John handed me the TW200, which I had ridden before, but that was a long time ago, and without any practice time, set off up this dirt road up the mountain. Triggering my ‘heights’ phobia. And some uncertainty as to where important things like the brake levers and gear change controls were.

Despite me being ‘slowpoke’ all the way up the mountain, the views were spectacular, even though it was cloudy:

Otay Lake

And up even higher at near the summit, a view to the East

So, then we headed down towards the East. By this time, I was feeling more confident, and not so much of a drag on proceedings.

We took a right turn at a T, and later found ourselves at a gated stop. Turning around, we headed back towards the T, knowing that direction led to Hwy 94 a little east of Dulzura.

But, disaster loomed. On the way, John hit an edge and his front wheel went out from underneath him and he went over the bars to the ground, hurting his wrist, big time.

I and Charlie happened to be first to the scene, and we helped John get the bike upright, and tried to get him to chill out for a while. But no, he had to get back on the bike, which he did, and so, off we went. Lunch at Rubio’s in Rancho San Diego and then back to John’s, unloading all the bikes, trying to make sure that John’s wrist wasn’t stressed.

It turns out that X-rays showed the injury to be a bruise, and that’s a huge relief.

What a great day 🙂