Organized Event: Anza Borrego - Wheeling and shooting...

[Roberto Miranda]

some pics...

http://www.yopo4x4.com/index.php?mod...&id=23&eid=361

[mrchips]

Borrego Springs area is very cool. Have you run Lower Coyote Canyon, thru the water crossings,,,, that is fun.

[Roberto Miranda]

not this time... we stayed closed to town...

[Roberto Miranda]

Spring is here!!!
I never thought that a simple time change could make me so happy, but having an extra hour means that I have daylight time for the outdoor activities that I like so much. I was riding my mountain bike on Sunday with the SoCal TLCA guys, and I was invited by Chris and Nicole for a day trip to Anza Borrego on Tuesday. I double check my assignments at work on Monday, make sure that my agenda was empty and I was covered by someone else and that’s it, I was ready to roll. A bean counter job is not as bad as it looks, especially if you are not at month/quarter/year end.
We left OC @ 06:00, planning to arrive at Borrego Springs @08:30 and our plan works great.
We introduce ourselves to the group and few minutes later, the organizers give us some instructions, we signed the waivers for the event. People from 4WD Toyota Owners Magazine, working shoulder to shoulder with Bill Burke (4-wheeling America) and LWRD, the manufactures of the AR15 rifles organized the occasion.
We are going to have fun driving our rigs, share some knowledge, learn something new about guns, and back home with a smile. That is exactly what we did in few words.
The selected crowd includes some 40 series, 80 series, Tacomas, one 4 Runner and one Nissan Pathfinder. We were divided in two groups. One will be doing off-road, lunch and shooting and the other one, just the opposite. I was in the second one.
We received a safety speech, as well as detailed instructions of how the rifles work. For the ones that never handle those guns before, the guys from LWRD did a great job. They move us apart and explain in details all the components of the rifle, proper way to handle it and make sure that we understood the safety habits that we must follow. I was thinking in my sister all the time, which enrolls the Army recently, and she explains more or less the same that I was living in that moment.
We did a couple of circuits, shutting targets from different positions and that includes loading the gun as well, all that against time. I had hard time to release the safety pin, loading the magazine into the rifle, you name it, is not as easy as it looks.
We had a short break for lunch and then, our group was on hands of Bill, who explain some basic commands for the off-road part of the day and few minutes later we took off. In short distance, we covered tons of obstacles and tricky situations; we had the opportunity to watch and learn different approaches for short and long wheel base accordingly. Bill share knowledge with us, we practiced tips and had fun. The most common error was not rolling the windows down due to the hot weather of desert areas like Anza Borrego, people preferred the A/C Max instead of listening to the spotter, so sooner or later, they got stuck. The spotter not always can be reached by your eyes, sometimes you must listen what he told you to do. Turn right, your other right!!! It was another frequent mistake of the drivers. I personally prefer the driver side or passenger side command instead of left or right instruction. The Cherry on top of the ice cream was when Bill Burke mentioned that Chris was a "Natural" at vehicle control, we both laugh really hard.

We ended up having dinner at my place. In our way back, our conversation turns into meals, somehow connected with meat, and the best places to have a steak and I recommended an Argentina place that was closed by the time that we arrive, but they were gentile enough to allow me to buy some steaks at the grocery store located as a side business to the restaurant and grilled at home.


Roberto L. Miranda