Jessica My Little B...tch

[JoeLAW]

After swapping the tire out, the sun started coming down rather quickly so it was time to keep on trucking! I checked how far away I was from Bisbee on google maps, and it said 30mins, however I was on a dirt road that I had never been on before, and I wasn't sure about the conditions on it.

 

Like I said before, middle of nowhere...

 

As I was driving further down the rd, all of a sudden I spotted this couch just sitting there, as if people would go there and hang out, but there was nothing there to see or do.. So of course I stopped and snapped a couple of quick pics. But right after it was time to head on out of there because I wanted to get to Bisbee before sundown.

 

 

After that I kept on trucking towards Bisbee, but not before stopping by Lowell, AZ which was actually featured in the 1st episode of Roadkill. It was kind of funny that I was trying to replicate what they did in that 1st episode but backwards and from Tucson, AZ back home. Specially since I had just attended and event by then and had just met the guys.

 

 

Well I got to Lowell, AZ, and man is that town something else, all in all it's just one street really but I felt like I was in the "Back to the Future" movie when Marty goes back to the 50s era. The whole town is filled with a bunch of americana, old cars parked on both sides of the street restored and unrestored, and a bunch of shoppes decorated with period correct artifacts and motorcycles, an d even some vintage gas pumps set up on the sidewalk for a cool photo op.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Right next to Lowell, is the "Lavender Pit" which used to be one of the biggest open pit copper mines back in the day, in reality the whole reason why both Bisbee and Lowell exist. The pit on its own is quite impressive, very very big, with a bunch of water at the bottom. 

 

 

From there, it was on to Bisbee, which is a mere 5-10mins away.. Bisbee on its own is a very cool town, there's a whole lot of different types of architecture all through town, and since it's nestled within the hills and mountain sides theres the way the streets run through town is not as you would expect. I got to downtown Bisbee parked and then waled over to the local bar where I had some dinner and a beer then I took a little timelapse video of driving through the main street all the way to the end of it. And where it ended I took a nice pic of the full moon with Jessica in between.

 

 

 

 

I remember that there was gonna be a Lunar eclipse that day, so I drove back to the Lavender Pit since it was a very wide and open area to check it out. Afterwards I headed down to Douglas, AZ to spend the night at a hotel. Since all the rooms in Bisbee were booked, and I didn't really plan to spend the night there. I wanted to camp out since I had all my gear with me, but I wasn't sure where it would've been ok to camp at, without being in a private property or just somewhere I shouldn't be.

 

 

 

 

[JoeLAW]

Allrighty, on to the next and final day of this trek. I woke up early and took off from Douglas, AZ to Lowell, AZ to grab breakfast at the Bisbee Breakfast Club, and guys the breakfast was amazing, those pancakes fluffy and humongous! From there, I wanted to take a last stroll through town and then start heading east back home.

 

 Bisbee Breakfast Club, highly recommend it!

 

Once I was done with breakfast I started heading back up to Bisbee, and on this timelapse video you can see how close Lowell is from the Lavender pit, and from Bisbee. Lowel, AZ is actually known as "Erie St." still in Bisbee. I drove straight through town to get this video right, and halfway up the road a backhoe got in front of me, of course heading up slower than traffic, and Jessica's temp started climbing. Since it was January, I was running just 1 fan on the ignition switch but since the temp was rising, I stopped and re-installed the fuse por my other fan. 

 

 

 

After that, the temp got controlled and then started climbing again, so I turned my 3rd fan on and stopped on the side of the road to take a quick pic and let it cool off.

 

 

From there, I kept on climbing till I got on the top of the tunnel from when you head into Bisbee from Tombstone.

 

 

There you can varely see the HWY in front of the front bumper, then from there I saw a dirt road that kep on heading up, so of course I had to check it out!

 

 

 

This is the video of me driving to the top, it was a lot longer than this though, and again Jessicas temp started rising, so I stopped there and opened the hood to let it cool off. From there, it was time to head back down. And here's the video of that!

 

 

 

On this little video I got down from the Antennas and got all the way down to the major HWY to pass through the tunnel, and start heading back home. Once back on the HWY I started playing "East bound and down" and kept on trucking! It was a bit breezy and the tumbleweeds started tumbling! There was soo many, that thankfully I was able to snap a pic of them crossing the road in front of me

 

 

 

 

 

 

[JoeLAW]

I ended up taking HWY 9 heading back east towards home instead of I-10, and I stopped at a couple of interesting points, but nothing too exciting really. One of them was were Geronimo surrendered, and the other one was were Pancho Villa attacked the US, there's a museum there as well, but it was closed by the time I got there. 

 

 

 

I did however find another really short dirt road that got you out of the hwy then merged again a bit further east, and right by the Continental Divide, so.. without even thinking about it I took it 

 

 

 

 

"It's just a desert!" But it's beautiful country.. 

 

 

And this is where the Pancho Villa State Park and little museum are at in Columbus, NM, about 1-1.5hrs away from home. Bringing this trip to an end, It's kind of hard to believe how much stuff I squeezed and was able to do in a 4 day weekend, hopefully this inspires someone to head out there and explore, you never know what can be close by, or even happening close to your home town. Whatever it might be get out there and do it!

[JoeLAW]

Well, after that trip there was nothing really exciting happening with Jessica. She was just being a reliable daily driver taking me to and from work about a 60mile round trip, and getting me out to ride the dirtbike on the weekends. Until one Sunday afternoon I get a call from a real good friend of mine (the one that spotted me while crawling those islands at Elephant Butte, NM). That he had gone to the Dona Ana mtns/trail system with him and a buddy both on side x sides, and that they got lost and got to a point where they could not get out, and one of them was about to rollover.

 

They needed a winch to get them out from where they were and since I was the only one he knew that knew the area and had a winch he called me, so there I went. Hauling @$$ on the FWY to get to them ASAP . Once I get to the entrance of the trail system out there, I start taking the dirt roads and trails to get to them, since he had sent me approximate coordinates of where they were at. Since it was the afternoon the sun started to come down, which would make things harder fro everyone, so I didn't even stop to airdown my tires.

 

Eventually I get to the coordinates he had sent me, and it was a very very steep hill, but I couldn't see them anywhere. I called him and thankfully he had reception he picks up and tells me that they're on the other side of the mountain where I was at. And basically in order for me to get to that side I had to go almost all the way back and then take different routes in other to get to them..  Oh well, you gotta do what you gotta do right, as I'm walking back towards Jessica I see that it's leaking oil from the rear part of the bed, which I found rather funny. I touched it and it was warm, and red, so right away I knew it was ATF. I started looking around for a leak from the tranny or cooler lines, only to find out on of the cooler lines at the cooler in the front behind the grill was rubbing against it and did a pinhole on it, leaking a bunch of oil... and since the hil was so steep, it was running all the way down the pass side frame rail to the rear bumper then dropping right at the back. 

 

 

 

This was after getting down from that steep hill, I had to get up on the side, because there was another vehicle passing through.

 

Thankfully I always carry a small roll of tranny cooler rubber hose, along with a spare radiator hose and much other misc stuff.. So I called my friend back and told him what was happening, to be patient but now I had to fix it if not, then we were all gonna be stranded out there. Well I got back to his truck and trailer, and then I realized I had no ATF with me, I had gear oil, anti-freeze, motor oil, but no ATF. So I decided to head all the way back to the closest gas station (Which thankfully is not that far away from where he had his trailer) in hopes that they would have some ATF on hand. Thankfully they did have 2 quarts which I bought, and headed back to his truck and trailer in order to get the job done..

 

 

 

That was after I parked the truck on top. So now it was teardown time, I took off the grill and header panel all together in order to ease the access to it.

 

 

 

 

And here you can see how much it had actually leaked and splatered back along the whole underside of the truck.. yuck!

 

 

On this pic you can clearly see where the tranny cooler line was rubbing against the grill.. I've since routed the hoses differently to avoid this type of problems... 

 

As far as my buddy and his friend, eventually someone else ran into them and helped them get out with no major downs, nothing but scratches. So basically this little outing helped me in finding out this weakness in Jessica.. No worries we've al been there for each other before.

 

 

[JoeLAW]

Since that outing, another friend of mine had told me he wanted to take me out to a new spot, which I had never been on, so there we went! I liked the fact that it was really close to home, and the scenery there was just rad!

 

 

 

This was on the dirt road to get in, which was pretty smooth. I stopped here because I just liked the way the ground looked, nothing but dirt, not a single rock in 40ft or so. 

 

 

 

And this was pretty much on the ridgeline of the mountains. You can clearly see I-10 from there and a lot further west. these mountains are north of Anthony, NM. From there we descended on to the other side of the mountains and headed back home

 

 

 

Those were the 3 little rigs that got out that day... I wish I would've taken more pics of that outing, because the scenery was pretty bitchin. 

 

 

[JoeLAW]

Well, after that I noticed that my K&N air filter was leaving the slightest film of dust on the inside of the intake tube, so I decided to order a UNI foam style filter, just like the one I use on my dirtbike to get cleaner air into the engine. 

 

 

This is a foam filter that you saturate with oil, and it was 3 foams in it, the red external foam that slides on to the main filter, then the main filter which is a finer foam, and another layer of even finer foam that is just lined on the inside of it. After installing it, of course I had to go test it out and where else but the dustiest trail/spot we have close to home. Killbournes Hole. Nothing but silt all over the place. So I invited my buddy that took me on top of the mountain a couple of weeks prior since he had never been there before, and I picked up my older friend that helps me out with a lot of welding on most of my ideas and off we went!

 

 

There we are at the hole itself, from there we took the rim trail of the hole, which is pretty sandy 3/4 of the way through it, then it gets a little rocky and then just silty.

 

 

 

From there we went back to the entrance to crawl/climb a couple of small ledges and have a little bit of fun.

 

 

 

 

After playing around on those ledges me and my older friend took off towards the Aden Lava flow, which is pretty neat because you do not expect for it to be there at all.

 

 

 

 

There's a bunch of ranches close to the lava flow, that are still in use to this day. However I couldn't imagine how much of a pain it would be to try and herd the cattle in such rugged terrain. Eventually, we ended up crossing the railroad tracks from the one that goes all the way to California, and then we got out through Chamberino, NM just a little town/village in the valley in between El Paso and Las Cruces

 

 

I took off the filter afterwards, and after all that silty dust not a single spec came out after I wiped the inside of the intake tube with a kleenex. I really do recommend it, specially since it's lighter less bulky and flows a lot better.