Playing in the Oregon Dunes…

The last couple weeks of October I was in Eugene, Oregon working with a customer. 2-week engagements can be boring because you spend a weekend in a strange town and you’re not too sure what you can do to keep busy. Well, I did not have that problem on this trip!

One of the guys I worked with, Matt, was big into off-roading… and often went on quad-riding trips into the mountains and to the dunes along the coast. He invited me to come out camping with friends and family and get my first taste of riding on all that sand!

It turns out he has a different definition of “camping” than I do: we had 2 RVs, both with generators, indoor plumbing, and stove/fridge/microwave and DVD players, plus trailers to bring 5 quads! A far cry from the backpack, tent, and canoe that I normally have when camping with the guys at work, but who am I to complain! 🙂

Matt picked me up with his son and daughter, and we were at the campsite by mid-afternoon. After getting the RVs sorted we took a quick ride around… then again after dinner… then all day Sunday. Wow! I had never driven on sand in anything larger than a sandpit – it was amazing! You could go almost anywhere!

I say “almost” because the first thing I learned was that the sand is anything but flat. It’s a rolling set of drifts with steep hills down the back… and when you’re driving around you can’t see those dropoffs until you’re almost on top of them… yikes! A dropoff can be anything from a couple feet to 10-50 feet… so if you’re driving along at a good pace and you don’t see any other tracks from others in front of you, SLOW DOWN!

Not only were we driving though the smaller waves of sand, there was also much larger features to keep you interested (and to use as landmarks: because to me it all looked the same out there). Like this little lake in the bottom of a bowl, hugged up against an island of trees. And “play” areas where tufts of grass managed to hang on and grow into obstacles to drive around. And you had to keep your eyes open for other people out on their ATV too!:

Matts friend Craig was with us as well. Not only was he driving his daughter around everywhere, but he was also the resident photographer. Here I am all dressed up and ready to go: you couldn’t miss me with the big white helmet, on Matts Polaris 700 loaner (thanks again for the quad Matt!):

Here Matt shows us that you really can jump utility ATVs! (who would have guessed?). I followed a bit slower, since I didn’t want to break anything on the machine. (then I did something stupid about 15 minutes after this was taken, but I’ll leave you in suspense for now):

We stopped for several short breaks, and to regroup. Matts son Garrett was driving a small 2wd quad that couldn’t climb the same hills as the rest of the ATVs, so sometimes he took another route around obstacles. Here’s some photos of the group:

Here’s some nice shots of Matts family at the top of a hill:

Not only did we roam around the inland dunes, we also made the short drive out to the coast, to play in the surf of the Pacific

There was a sea lion on the beach, with a few people watching it a ways away. It may have been sick, since they apparently don’t just come up on the beach alone like that, especially with all the people and ATVs buzzing by. (Jeff and his daughter Emily are in the second pic)

We mostly saw other quads out there (sport and utility)… but there were quite a few bikes too. Apparently they can be hard to ride in the sand… you’d see them fly by and the riders couldn’t really make crisp turns to where they wanted to go… they more had to gently lean the bike and let it float its way in the right direction.

I was almost a perfect weekend. Almost, because the very last time I had to make a 180 to head back to camp… right at the end of the day.. I rolled Matts quad right over until it was resting upside down on its handlebars (but strangely enough it kept running: the wonders of fuel injection!). I took a bit of a tumble in the sand, but didn’t have a scratch on me… still I felt horrible, and it was entirely my fault. All day I had been making the quad slide around… but the back end would never kick too far out: just enough to make it exciting. This time when I swung it around… it caught… and a split second later instead of sliding sideways across the sand I was flying horizontally across the top of it as the outside tires dug in and catapulted me off. I did this in front of the whole group too: boy did I feel like a retard!

The others all rushed over to see if I was all right, and after brushing off some sand we rolled the (still running) quad back up onto it tires. The damage? Lots of sand where it shouldn’t be… but other than that the only casualty was the orange whip flag on the back: I sheared it clean off!

Thanks again to Matt, Craig, Jeff and their families for making me feel at home and taking me out to the dunes!