CORRAL CANYON

    So the Dehesa gang decides to do Corral Canyon this year for the 4th of July.  It was a real blast!  Those in attendance were Aileen and I, along with the "Bink" (Raymond, our oldest grandson), Matt Osburn and Ms. Vicky and Cami, the bird chaser.  A few impromptu visits from their daughter, Lacy, and Major, the puppy.  Brad and Lori Kilby and their two sons, Brandon and Eric, and Malibu, the super pooch, to try out all Brad's new innovations on his way too cool TJ modified no end. Will Robinson on his new BMW bike, since his Jeep is in getting a new V-8 installed.  Two more fugitives from 207 in Orange, Tim and Bruce.  Maggie graced us with her presence for a day visit and a stroll on the lake.  Al, the Big Papa Jeep Bsharrah, came to test out his newly-made-over YJ with massive everything on it.
Mark Alligood came up for Saturday.  Jeremy and Robin (my daughter and son-in-law), came up for the day also w/ the new Jeeper Brandon.

    Let me just say that I wanted to go primarilly for the enjoyment of being there.  Those damned kids got me into the nastiest predicamints known to man, however. Almost rolled my dear sweet Pokey twice on the rocks heading to Bronco Hill where Matt swore there was not any brush to poke holes in my paint; he lied!  He left Greengo back in camp because it is experiencing difficulty in the juevos department due to puny axles.  They go on "the kids" YJ next month and Greengo goes into 4XDoctors for one week, or six months, next week to increase the staying power and reinforce anal Osburns thought pattern on what ya need to run nasty trails.  He says Pokey has spindly legs BTW.

    Anyway, Matt, riding with Al, and Mark, riding with me due to his front drive line mysteriously missing because of some bogus story.  Heh heh!  He whimpered profusely the last time he almost endo'ed it on this same trail.  He was a little apprehensive about riding with me too, it seemed.  Heh heh!  What could that silly chillen be thinking anyways, huh!  Anyway, there were only three Jeeps on this run; Al's, mine and Kilby's.  They lead and made me follow so's not to have to listen to too much guff over the heavy brush scrapes I was getting.  Damned kids!  Anyway, we finally get to a kind of large rock outcropping and Kilby manueveres over it with not much trouble.  It takes a little bit, but he manages to scoot right over it. Next, Al does a pretty good job of doing the same thing.  I take a good look at it and wish I'd stayed in camp with the girls. But, I didn't think I needed the harassment I'd have to take if indeed I could have turned around anyway.  Soooo! I mount old Pokester and head for these nasty looking rocks.  Mark grabs the camera to avoid the ride.  Heh heh!  Smart lad, as it turned out.  I get to far to the left and Pokey is clammering to tip to the right and go for the big cajones on his side.  I try to back out, but it just keeps pushing me farther to the left.  Hmmmm!  I'm already thinking that this is a big mistake.  Eventually, after much prodding from the peanut gallery to go left, veer right, and try OD I tell them dingdongs to hook my frieken winch up to Al's jeep and get some weight on the front end.  I knew there was no easy way out of that situation for this poor soul.  So, while a few dingdongs are telling me to go in six different directions and the cable hooked up, I'm dragging Al's YJ down the trail backwards and finally bring the whole show to a stop when the cable snaps tight and throws Matt three feet off the trail. That freaked me out!  Man!  I never make a mistake like that, but it sure can and did happen to me that day. Thank goodness, he only got a scrape on his shin over it.  Don't get me wrong, we were definitely not goofing off!  Pokey is laying so far over at this point that every move had to be calculated to avoid the inevitable. We finally did get the old boy over the obstacle and all were kinda relieved.  That would have been a real nasty spot to turn Pokey back upright.

    Just a side note here; Matt just ICQ'd me to tell me he got totally shitfaced.  I couldn't believe it until he explained.  As it turned out he was at the dumping station with a few MH's waiting behind him and for some reason when he popped the cap to the septic tank that baby blew up in his face!  Hahahahahahahaha!  I guess I better let him tell that one; as it is he'll be really miffed that I even mentioned it.  On the other hand, you know how we get our nicknames sometimes.  I'll leave that up to the Dehesa gang, though.  I'm still crying tears over it though, give me a minute.

    Ok!  I'm better now.  Back to the wheeling part.  Right after "disaster rock" we hit the bottom of Bronco Hill.  It's loose as a goose and has many pitfalls on it with very big loose boulders to contend with.  I can see it ain't gonna be pretty right off, so I air down to 10 lbs.  I was at 10 lbs at the bottom on the hills, but you know, air expands when rising and so I was running 17 lbs, like an idiot!  First, Kilby does a fine job getting to the last 20 ft, then the dreaded "your gonna hang up your rear end, no matter what" occurs. He does hang it up. He gives it about 20 minutes of hanging it up with all the camaras running.  He does manage to do the whole thing with a great amount of finesse, however. There's a lot of jockying to get the jeep in a particular spot so the rear end will clear.  He finally gets the job done and looks real good doing it. Then, Albert, the Mongoose, takes a ride up to the same spot thinking he might try a different line.  Yikes!  He has that baby sticking straight up in the air, but is still doing a fine job of retrieval on each and every try.  It was a ton of fun to watch except I knew me and Pokey were next.  Al finally gets that massive thing he built up and over on Kilby's line and makes it look pretty easy in the long run.  Here I am, standing at the bottom thinking about taking this nice-level-graded road but deciding that I would get toasted to the hilt if I did, heh heh!  They were crusifying me, I tell ya!!  Anyway, I take off at a leisurely pace.  Everything seems to go ok up to the rear end hang up spot.  Last time I was on that hill I sort of had to resort to some not too nice over exhuberant power of the go peddle to get the job done.  This time, I'm thinking I'm going to finesse right on over the top no problem and make 'em all look bad.  Well, after numerous attempts at that approach I figure out that theres only one way I'm getting that damned jeep over that spot.  Just like I did last time!  Only this time I was gonna give the boyz something to film.  Hahahaha!  I tell ya, the Pokester ripped right on over those boulders in a fine and outstanding tradition.  I think we actually hit the ground about three times and the rest of the time we were airborne.  By gauldoggie we made it though. The last thing I saw was Al holding my video camera up behind him whilst hauling ass up the road.  Hey!  I had a good line ok!!  Matt was piling rocks in front of me and I told him to get out of the way.  He did, I think!  Or, he's way tougher than I thought.  He didn't whimper about me almost running over him six ft in the air anyway soo!  The rest of the boys were scattering like flies off a week old racoon turd after a dinner of fine crawfish.  Ha!  Ya shoulda seen it from inside the jeep.  I loved it!  Of course everyone was soooo smothered in a fine dust cloud that all was forgiven on the almost mushing them all.  Matt came up to my window and flashed his purly whites big time.  Except they were absolutely totally covered with a fine brown powder.  I was a little nervous from the airborne fiasco, I guess but couldn't help myself from laughing so hard I almost upchucked.  Those guys looked pretty bitchen when the dust cleared; Looked like a Nam war zone is what it looked like!

    So, to carry on.  We all got a good laugh out of my driving style and then continued on to Bronco Rock.  The brewskies kept rolling around in the cooler and popping open.  Me, being of sound mind and a little afraid that some might get out of the jeep and ruin the trail for the next guy that got coerced into this God forsaken trail, grabbed them all up and instantly consumed all I could.  I'm pretty sure I didn't lose a drop, cuzz Mark was asking me if I thought I was ok to continue the trail.  Hahahaha!  What a misimformed young man he can be at times I swear!  We continued on without much misshap until Kilby being a wise guy radiod that there was a possibility that he may be stuck.  Ha!  He damned near got stuck right there too!  We laughed some more and went on.  Mark, who swears he never squealled like a little girl on the last run says----Hey!  Your wrong, this is the place I squealled, not on the hill.  I couldn't believe he said it and let it go for a possible camp fire tale later on that evening.  It did come up after he left too!  Hahahahaha!!

    Well, anyway all got to the road out safe and sound.  We got back to camp and lied like hell about how our exploits that day had to be heroic, to say the least.  Matt worked his ass off getting us through and I bet he wished he'd a brought his own jeep...hahahaha!!!!

    Kilby and Al were both trying out new stuff this trip.  I was way impressed by both Jeeps.  Al seemed to have covered all the bases pretty well with all the mod's he has done in the last few months with the little time he had to get them done.  That YJ turned out sweet and will be a big contender in the trails ahead for being an excellent rig.  Al's a very good and sensible driver, as I always suspected he would be when he got the YJ done.  The only real problem he had was when Matt took him down to the lake for a little light duty run and a rock tore the cover off the rear end and dumped all the oil out.  Back to camp to fix the "sheckled" rear end and it worked great the rest of the trip.  He left early, but proved the rig ready to rock!!  Kilby has concurred the imfamous TJ lifting of the left front tire almost to a tee.  I never saw it raise one time except for when he was performing an articulation excersize coming off the trail. Excellent rig!!

    We spent the next day sitting around camp and Maggie showed up so we could lie like hell about how bitchen we all are.  Then, we went down to the lake to let the kids swim and we just had a relaxing bitchen day all together. How did we do that you ask! Well, Aileen had to go home to make payrol and on the way back up picked up an immense amount of Margerita mix and fresh strawberrys. We used Vicky's blender and all got sloshed pretty good. And then there was the Cocolate cookies Vicky brought up and baked. And a few other goodies to make our taste budd's get all excited.  We had a professional musician with us to keep us in tunes to. Bruce did the honors. He's a great singer.

 Kilby decided to take the kids and Lori down to the lake and took the wront turn.  heh heh! We see the ranger hiding in the brush. He's going about 20 MPH and the guy pulls him over. This is a deserted lake bed mind you! Anyway. he's getting an ass chewing and doing his best to not tell the friek to pound sand. We are all watching from camp.  Hahahaha! Laughing our asses off as you could well imagine.He is just totally livid about the whole thing. The ranger told him he was not to be doing such a dastardly deed on his road. What an asshole he was.

    The next day Matt tells us to follow him up to this lookout tower and he'll get us in there to view the ranges we were traversing.  Greengo, Kilby's TJ and a Mazda with Bruce and Tim in it went on up and sure enough true to his word, the guy lets us up there.  Man!  What a view.  That was really interesting and worth the ride up there.  The rest of the time we sort of sat in camp and just relaxed.  As always, a few good friends and a couple of Jeeps and some Coronas made for a very sweet week.  Wish you all could have been there, for it was with out a doubt a total blast.
 
    PS! I almost forgot, those yahoos managed to get my right front fender dented and darned near took out my TJ flair.  Kids!  What are ya gonna do, huh!!

Bud Boren