Ride for Life (Make-a-Wish): Tooele, UT to Wendover, NV
As found on my blog at: UtahBruteForce
On Saturday at 0900, around 200 ATV's departed the Deseret Peak sports complex. Final destination, the Nugget Casino in Wendover, Nevada.
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Interesting things to note about the event. In the end, over $24,000 was raised by this group and well over 100 people participated in the ride, with several dozen additional in
support (trailering drinks, port-a-potties, extra trailers, etc). Ages ranged from late teens to folks in their 70's. Average speed for both days was easily 45-105mph
(depending on the vehicle driven). My average speed was 53mph along the salt flats with top speeds exceeding 64mph.
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Virtually 100% of the terrain was flat open desert and the vast expanse of salt flats adjacent to the Great Salt Lake. Nothing overly challening except maintaining full throttle.
Since the winds were excessive, we were able to avoid most of the clogging dust/dirt that usually accompanies 200+ machines going full throttle in the desert.
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While en route, we took a break at the Knolls offroad area. After a few moments, one of the Make-a-Wish children (there were two brothers suffering from the same ailment)
approached me in his wheel chair and said "you have the coolest and meanest looking machine out here, can you take me for a ride". We tossed an oversized helmet on his head
and I had him start the machine. As soon as the engine fired, Noah hit the accelerator to the point of blowing the motor. Fortunately, we were still in Neutral.. that launch could have been disastrous.
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On the last 40 mile stretch before reaching Wendover, we hit the salt flats. Even though some machines were easily 1/4 mile ahead, they threw so much mud/salt in the air,
it coated every inch of us. We had to stop to wipe our goggles every 2 or so miles, because it was impossible to see.
Reaching Wendover, we were escorted through town by several Tooele County search and rescue vehicles. Full lights and sirens. Tourists and passers-by stopped to gaze and
photograph the long procession of machines coming into town. It was quite a sight.
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We then spent Saturday night donating our remaining money to the Nugget Steakhouse, slot machines and roulette tables.
Sunday morning was spent raffling off a ton of items donated by local companies, to include ATV ramps, ATV tires, medical supplies, first aid kits, fire extinguishers and the only 12V auto vacuum cleaner (which I won).
We preceeded back to Tooele on the same route, fortunately most of the previous day's rain had dried up and we didn't get nearly as salt coated on Sunday.
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Total mileage was around 185 miles. Total for the past week is now over 800 miles on my Kawasaki. What an August!
