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By Lynx, on September 21st, 2009 
Slinging mud, rocks, bikes, knobby tires and the smell of two strokes, I’ve never been to a hill climb competition before but it sounds like fun to watch. I was disappointed during the spring rally when there was a hill climb event scheduled at the Travel Center and it was canceled due to weather and that the course was never built. There was some issue with getting permission to cut down a tree.
This time had similar controversy. The tribe had agreed to the event long in advance and they were going to build the course. Then they backed out then agreed to do it again then backed out again. The course wasn’t actually built until Friday afternoon, the day before the event was scheduled. Up to a half hour before things got started a half dozen guys were still throwing the largest of the rocks off to the side.
Continue reading Ruidoso Hill Climb
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By Lynx, on September 20th, 2009 These are some of the pics of one of the groups of Mexican police at the Ruidoso Golden Aspen Rally over the weekend, I think there was about 25-30 of them. Former president Fox was also in the state, so they may have come up to the rally first and then went further north to escort him.
They were mostly all on very old Harleys, a few with some cool mods, with a few Goldwings, and Yamahas thrown in. It was a real hodgepodge of a fleet, it wouldn’t surprise me if these are the actual ones used in regular duty.
Continue reading Mexican Federale Police Bikes
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By Lynx, on September 19th, 2009 
Its that time again, another Ruidoso Rally. Just random pics I took over the weekend that I liked.
Continue reading Ruidoso Golden Aspen Rally 2009
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By Lynx, on September 12th, 2009 
Heres the reason for ditching the V Star at my parents house on the way back home last weekend. I needed something to tow a trailer so I could pick up a new bike!
Here she is a 1976 BMW R90/6. I found the owner on ADVrider.com from a thread where I only half jokingly said I was looking for an airhead to work on and he said he had one. He was in Kansas and I’m in New Mexico, so a month later and we met up in Walsenburg, CO to do the deal. I would have liked to have found an R90S model with the dual disks better carbs and lots of stock performance mods. But for me intending on eventually converting this to a cafe style bike down the road I think its better to start from a plain R90 so the BMW purists dont scream as yet another collectible S model disappears.
The bike came as you see it, in what appears to be good condition with mostly some cosmetic flaws and mostly sound mechanicals. There are a few issues here and there, and more that I’ll find as I go through a rebuild like any bike of this age is sure to have. It came with both fairings, the hard bags, passenger back rest and a big box of parts. I think I got a good deal.
Continue reading 1976 BMW R90/6
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By Lynx, on September 7th, 2009 
White Sands National Monument is another of those places that every New Mexican should come at least once. Its the only place in the world like it. The only gypsum sand dunes anywhere, an ever changing landscape with some very unique wildlife that have adapted to it. Its been used as a backdrop for numerous movies, most recently as Iraq in the Transformers movies and as a different planet in the upcoming Stargate Universe show.
The place is highly photogenic with spectacular sunsets and sunrises and amazing light and shadow effects in the mornings and evenings. White Sands is one of those must haves in your portfolio of any South West photographer, unfortunately we arrived at noon so I had to work a lot harder for my shots. I had to go a few notches lower on my exposure and my ISO sensitivity to not overexpose shooting white on a white background. I think I still got some good ones, what do you think?
Continue reading White Sands National Monument
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By Lynx, on September 6th, 2009 
We are thankful for our campground neighbors at Dog Canyon Campground for giving us the tip to check out the water falls on the way out. Sitting Bull Falls was spectacular, one of the highlights of our trip. If you are ever out on this side of the Guadalupe Mountains or spending some time in Carlsbad its not to be missed.
The way to the falls is a side branch off Highway 137 is just a narrow 9 mile long chip ‘n seal path with no painted road markings that runs down the bottom of some sheer rock canyons. We saw dozens of gigantic turkey vultures flying in and out of the caves along the cliff walls, I’ve never seen where they nested before. The road crosses back and forth over the dry creek bed at the bottom with no bridges over most so they’d probably get flooded quickly in the smallest rainstorm.
Its also open range for the most part. We passed by a steer grazing and the bike startled him. He jumped up and shook his head and stamped his front hooves and looked he was about to charge us. All I could see was sharp pointy horns and briefly think, “Uh-Oh, here we are on a bright red bike passing by. I sure hope they are right and bulls are really colorblind.” Luckily he only snorted and watched us cruise by.
Continue reading Sitting Bull Falls
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By Lynx, on September 6th, 2009 
Carlsbad Caverns National Park is one of three World Heritage Sites in New Mexico out of 21 in the USA. The countless rock formations formed drip by drip over eons are just spectacular but any attempt to describe the grand feelings of awe when viewing them in person is doing the caverns an injustice by limiting them. With the immensity of the Great Room and the beauty of all the small details, its no wonder that early explorers said that it was a product of the Devine Creators own hands.
Natural beauties and wonders are not all the park has to offer, however. One of the star attractions are the thousands of Mexican Freetailed Bats that spew out of the mouth of the cave at dusk like thick smoke. There are evening and dawn bat flight programs available to view them, not to be missed. Several other guided tours inside the caverns are also available and highly recommended, call for reservations they fill up quickly and some of the special tours for more advanced cavers have long waiting lists.
Of course we arrived during a holiday weekend so it was jam packed and we didnt have time to go on a tour, we had to get to Ruidoso before it got too dark and we were cutting it close as it was, maybe next time. Next time I’m going to have to remember to bring my monopod or get a good tripod ahead of time, taking long exposure shots in near total darkness freehand is virtually impossible. Out of the hundreds of shots I attempted only two came out good and the ones you see here are all of the not too blurry at small resolution ones hehe. Its was pretty much, relax.. one.. two.. three… deep breath.. time between heartbeats, click, dont budge a muscle, pray, damn I moved, try again.
Continue reading Carlsbad Caverns National Park
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By Lynx, on September 5th, 2009 
We totally blew past Highway 137 without seeing it the first time on our way to Dog Canyon Campground in the Guadalupe Mountains National Park. Its around 55 miles to the campground and theres no gas whatsoever so regardless I would have needed to have gone the extra 14 miles past the turn to Carlsbad to fill up and backtrack. However, I was still trying to keep an eye for it so I’d know where to turn. It ended up being across from Brantley Dam on the other side of the highway with nothing else but desert scrub land for miles and miles. I guess we were to distracted by the only thing of interest in ages and missed our turn.
Continue reading Guadalupe Mountains National Park
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By Lynx, on September 5th, 2009 
Three day weekend! You know what that means … Road Trip!
I know I’m still working on finishing up the posts from our epic trip back in July, and now I have another one to work on. We’ve got another trip this weekend back to Colorado and then another the weekend after that for the Ruidoso Rally. Just been too busy traveling to keep up with posting what all I’ve been doing heh. Dont worry, I’ll catch up.
We headed down to camp out in the Guadalupe Mountains and check out Carlsbad Caverns. On the return trip hopefully we can fit in White Sands and the tunnels on the way down from Cloudcroft too. We had intended on doing this trip earlier in the year as a last practice shakedown run before our epic July trip, but plans got put on hold with the bike down for a few months following the Close Encounter of the SUV kind.
Researching the Guadalupe Mountains for campgrounds I found Dog Canyon was pretty remote and isolated. Hopefully less crowded with tourists. I was a bit concerned that they didnt take reservations. With us traveling 400 miles first to get there on a holiday weekend and the few campsites they had being first come first serve only we might not get one.
So not a whole lot of pictures along the way, not that theres much to see. There are a lot of cool abandoned buildings in Vaughn and Encino that would make good photographic subjects sometime. There was even an abandoned garage with a 40’s era sedan still inside with the hood up covered with decades of dust, way cool. I’ll have to stop next time through.
Continue reading Labor Day – Roswell UFO Museum
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