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EPILOGUE - WHAT HAPPENED TO VIC?
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| This is where Vic's XT was abandoned (and later found) ... |
Good question. After riding out down the trail, not surprisingly he quickly got lost and ended up in some nasty sand washes (which are hard enough to ride even when you have proper knobby tires and actually know what you're doing). So after crashing and picking up the three-hundred pound behemouth three times, he realized he’d probably make better progress walking…
So he abandoned the bike and did exactly that.
It turned out to be a good idea as after a short time he started to hear the sound of cars on a highway, and walked in that direction (it was dark by then). He was so ecstatic at the fact that he wasn’t going to die that he wasn’t bothered by having to crawl through a barbed-wire fence to reach the road. He wasn’t even that disheartened by the fact that nobody stopped to pick him up when he attempted to flag cars down on said highway (they probably thought that he’d just snuck across the border).
Finally a state trooper vehicle pulled over. After being frisked and heavily questioned, the officer realized he was legit, and proceeded to call the park rangers to organize a drop off. Interestingly, this was the same time that my border patrol guys had contacted the rangers.
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| ... and retrived! |
Shaken, and in a semi-state of shock, he rode in the back of the state trooper's 4x4, bouncing his head off the mesh grill that separated him from the officer, as the trooper bounded back down the trail to meet the rangers.
WHAT ABOUT THE BIKE?
We thought we’d lost the ’89 XT after he abandoned it, as he didn’t know what trail he was on. After several days of not hearing anything from the park rangers, he took matters into his own hands, bought a GPS and headed back to Octotillo Park.
What was most surprising is that after half a day of searching with his 4x4, he actually found it.
Will he ever ride in the desert again? He tells me he’s getting ready to give it another whirl ... just no short-cuts this time!
