. Dirty Moon Ride ..........................            

. Corral Canyon


We've done many full moon rides on our street bikes, but this was the first time on our dirtbikes. We had zero idea what to expect. Would it be much harder than in the daylight? We loaded the bikes and left San Diego at 9:00 pm. About an hour later we reached Corral Canyon with the moon in a good overhead position.

Night dirt riding is both harder and easier than day riding. It's harder because the dust cloud the lead rider creates makes it almost impossible to see the road. The light bounces off the dust particles and all you can see is a flat beige floor beneath you. Dropping back doesn't help since the dirt hangs in the air too long; what isn't apparent in the day is very apparent in a headlight beam at night. To escape the dirt plume, I rode immediately behind Chris, but just slightly offset. This also helped him since my headlight contributed to the forward illumination. The only adjustment we had to make was that we keep the speed down so if Chris had a mishap, I'd only run over him at a lowish speed.

The easier part about riding at night is that since you can't read as much of the terrain, you don't spend your time deciding which line you want to choose. You just go where it looks the least likely to cause you trouble. Fewer choices = less thinking. (This might not be an issue for experts, but we intermediate riders are all about second-guessing ourselves...)  

The funniest thing about night riding is that the other person's misfortune is your entertainment. There was a deeply rutted stretch that Chris was heading up. It was the type of terrain where when you make a mistake, you tend to get squirted from one side of the road to the other as the rocks spit out from under your wheel, steals your traction, and then randomizes your direction. Chris had a miscue and ended up ricocheting all over like a lit-up pinball. Headlight left! Down! Right! Up! Boing! Boing! Boing! Ironically, what is funny turns into concern. In the daylight, I wouldn't have noticed him spazzing. At night, I saw how the road bitch-slapped him through the bright eye of a headlight being jerked all over. Unfortunately, his funny little light show reminded me that I was the next victim, and I ended up doing an even worse job of negotiating that section.

If you can night ride to a body of water that's unpopulated by people, you should do it. We rode down to Lake Morena reservoir and it was really peaceful, except for what sounded like Yogi Bear and Boo Boo bathing on the shoreline...mysteriously loud and nicely creepy! The fish were also surfacing with unusually brute force, their fat ripples easy to see under the moonlight. 

Photos from left to right:
  1. The convenient rear-facing truck light makes unloading a more pleasant experience.
     
  2. Self-portrait where we try very hard to fit in the frame but boldy fail.

  3. The camera flash bouncing off the dirt particles do a great job of illustrating what the headlight picked up: bits and bits of bits everywhere. 

  4. The fire watch tower under the moonlight. There's a great view of the valley below, including neighboring Mexico.  
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