Family Fun Run & Good Time Event - Saturday, March 20th

[MagicMtnDan]

It would be great for a bunch of Raptors to show up to this event!

I'm planning on going up for the day - I hope you'll join us there.

Where: Hungry Valley SVRA in Gorman, CA (off the 5 freeway north of Valencia south of Tejon Pass)

When: Saturday, March 20, 2010 - Starts at 10:00 AM

No gate entry fee when you mention CORVA!

What: CORVA Family Fun (Poker) Run (5 cards per hand)

CORVA members: $10 per hand
Non-members: $20 per hand
BBQ Tri-Tip Dinner: $10
Event T-shirts: $10
Dog Show: Free
Raffle & 50/50 raffle: Tickets available

Best 5-Card hand wins:
1st place Grand Prize - FIVE (5) BG Goodrich Tires (your choice up to 37"Many donations from Industry Supporters!

Show your support of CORVA! (CORVA is a non-profit organization working to save our lands for offroaders' use)
Dont miss this "good time" fun event - great for the entire family!

You can join at the event if you haven't already joined and if you join there you'll receive the member discount for the poker run.

COME OUT AND SHOW YOUR SUPPORT! CORVA NEEDS YOUR HELP!

Links:

There's a thread about CORVA and why we need to join and support them (because they support us) - Click Here

Here's where Gorman is - Click Here - Google Maps

Printable event flyer - Click Here

 

[MagicMtnDan]

Attention: if you are on the "other forum" perhaps you can post this information over there and notify your fellow Raptor owners about this get-together. Just don't mention my name or this forum or Jason's name or stubby antennas or...

 

[bstoner59]

I just saw this!! I am going to try and make it out for the day on Saturday.

 

[MagicMtnDan]

Great! I may have to fly to Italy this Saturday and if I do then I obviously can't make it. But if the trip is off (should know more tomorrow) then I'll be there. XJRguy (aka Massive Candlepower) was planning on going as well. I'm hoping others go. Brian, I'll let you know if I can go and hopefully we can connect and make the drive up from our area to Gorman together.

Please be sure to join CORVA - it's a great cause for us because their mission is to keep the trails open for offroaders.

Take pics if you go!

 

[BigJ]

Dayum I'd love to hit this. Just not in the cards this time. Those who do go, have a great time!

 

[MagicMtnDan]

Dayum I'd love to hit this. Just not in the cards this time. Those who do go, have a great time!

As long as the two of you can come to RR4 next weekend that'll be GREAT!

And it's looking like the Italy trip isn't happening so I should be able to go to the CORVA event this weekend! Psyched!

 

[MagicMtnDan]

The CORVA Family Fun Run & Good Time Event was Saturday, March 20, 2010 at Hungry Valley SVRA in Gorman, CA (off the 5 freeway north of Valencia south of Tejon Pass).

Brian and his passenger Mark made the drive up from Orange County and Tim (CandlePower Guy) came over from LA Speed Garage as we met up and drove up the 5 freeway.

Brian and Mark said they'd been to Hungry Valley State Vehicular Recreation Area some years back while Tim and I had never been there. Given the area - foothills at relatively high elevation, the terrain is what you'd expect: hilly terrain with lots of brush.

We drove in and found the CORVA Event location.

The California Off Road Vehicle Association (CORVA) is a varied group of outdoor recreationists who are extremely active in promoting the positive aspects of vehicular access on public lands and protecting that right.

The group is composed of the owners of "Green Sticker" vehicles such as ATV's, motorcycles, 3-wheelers, trail bikes, and dune buggies, as well as "street legal" 4X4 vehicles, dual sport motorcycles, bajas, and desert racers.

CORVA's main purpose is to work with the land managers for responsible off-highway vehicular access and recreation opportunities. Secondarily, we educate our membership on the constantly changing rules and regulations and promote clean-up and trail maintenance projects.

We are very active in the political arena and contribute to a lobbyist in Sacramento. We work closely with the State Department of Parks and Recreation, providing input to the Off-Highway Motor Vehicle Recreation (OHMVR) Program from the user's standpoint. We provide a valuable resource to land managers in the form of dedicated OHV enthusiasts who believe in responsible vehicular access.

A portion of the budgets for California's national forests and the public lands administered by the BLM is funded by grants from the Green Sticker Program. We work with land managers to formulate the grants and give our input about the grants to the OHMVR Program which administers them. We also review how effectively our Green Sticker money was used in each program.

We are active at all levels of the land management public process with both the BLM and the USFS. We do this by commenting on environmental documents on as many issues as possible and maintaining close relationships with personnel in the field as well as the staff.

We coordinate with other multiple use organizations ranging from snowmobiles to horse enthusiasts to protect multiple use rights from the environmental extremists. We are "dedicated to protecting our lands for the people, not from the people."

If you would like to join the fight to protect our public lands for multiple-use recreation, fill in a membership application and send it in!

www.corva.org

 

[MagicMtnDan]

CORVA is a good organization working to keep California's lands open to offroad vehicles. I hope you'll consider joining even if you're out of state they do good work.

Tim and I joined at the event (Brian may have too). We paid to participate in the Poker Run where you drive to 5 locations out on the trail and get a card. You end up with a poker hand and the best hand would win 5 BFG tires!



We got our maps of the Poker Run and off we went, the 3 Raptor-teers driving Hungry Valley SVRA in search of good poker hands.

If only we had an orange Raptor we would have had all 4 colors represented.

 

[MagicMtnDan]

We stopped at all 5 stations to pick up our cards and they had a game at each station (stop). We found out that Tim is a former Ninja as he knows how to throw 2 balls tied together with string at a target accurately. Tim surprised all of us with his kids backyard birthday party skills



Here you see Tim waiting impatiently to get his turn to play yet another game. No one could believe how good his skills were. He scored over 16,000 points as I recall.



The CORVA people marked the trail well so it was easy to stay on the route they created among the many trails. Early on we came upon a sign on the trail that warned us that it was narrow and twisty. Just after the sign we had to drop down into a very small valley with steep embankments on either side. Going back up the drop down was not an option so we had to go forward.

It quickly got tight and twisty and I got out of my Raptor (I was in the lead, Tim was 2nd and Brian third) to scope out the trail ahead. It was narrower than the Raptor's width and very twisty. Navigating this was going to be tricky for our wide and long full-size pickups. But we had no choice but to push on.

Several times I got out of the Raptor to see if we could continue. It kept getting tighter and steeper/narrower. We were squeezing through but if it got any tighter or the turns got any shorter we'd have a real problem.

It was then I heard from Tim on the family radios we were using. He said he wasn't sure he could continue and I knew (1) he could since we were ahead of him and (2) we couldn't go back - that wasn't an option. I told him to wait and I ran back through several twists and turns to see his bright blue Raptor steeply pitched with its right (passenger side) tires high up on the embankment with his driver's side tires under the Raptor. He was quite close to tipping (flipping) over and his right rear wheel was, I believe, up in the air so the truck was light in the back.

Tim had turned his Raptor to navigate a particularly tight turn and it was easy for him to drive his wheels up too high on one side. He was making his Raptor "narrower" by doing that but he also wasn't keeping it level and, at his severe angle, it threated to flip his Raptor over in the ditch. I could see that his driver's side front wheel was angled under the truck and I told him to keep the wheel still and slowly back up. Brian told him to put one foot on the brake pedal and one on the gas.

Tim backed his truck up with his wheel as it was so he took the same line back down the way he drove up. Meanwhile, Mark was hanging onto the back passenger side/end keeping some weight down on it to help keep the truck stable. Once Tim got the Raptor down the embankment some I had him turn his wheel to the left and come forward which put his Raptor's tires on the both sides of the angled embankment. His Raptor now level, the risk of toppling had passed and he was now in a much more secure position with his tires on both sides of the steeply angled ditch.

We kept on going and thankfully it never got any worse than very tight and twisty. It clearly was a trail that Jeeps would navigate much easier due to their narrower and shorter wheelbase.

We were happy to get our Raptors out of the ditch and it was fun to talk about what we had been through. As you can imagine, Tim was quite psyched about going in and coming out without harming his new Raptor!

 

[MagicMtnDan]

Brian's white Raptor with its beefy wide mud tires:



We were having a good time going over hill and dale on the trail. We saw a number of people in other vehicles a number of times as they were participating in the poker run too. We spent some time talking to them especially after we had to stop on the trail to wait for a group on quads and a lady on a Rhino who had no idea how to drive it. Just because people can buy these things doesn't mean they know what they're doing nor does it mean they won't injure themselves or others.

About halfway through the trail run we came upon a guy next to a Rokon motorcycle. It's a large bike with wide all-terrain tires (sort of flotation tires) and both wheels are driven by chains from the gas powered motor. We stopped and asked him if he was OK (Rule #1 on the trail is to be safe; Rule #2 on the trail is to help out everyone who needs assistance because it's the right thing to do (and kharma is a bitch). He told us that he broke his frame and he removed his gas tank to show us that the main tube backbone had a severe fracture. He was lucky he didn't have a catastrophic frame failure while he was riding at speed.

I told him we'd help him. Don was his name and he was doing the poker run on his Rokon bike. I asked Brian if he would be kind enough to put Don's Rokon in the back of his Raptor since his bed doesn't have a cover, he has a rubber bed mat and, most importantly, he routinely carries his motorcycle in the back of his Raptor. We loaded Don's Rokon in the back of Brian's Raptor and Don rode with Brian and Mark the rest of the way to the end of the poker run trail.

He was very appreciative that we helped him and took him with us so he could finish playing his hand And we felt good knowing that we had helped a fellow offroader and we'd also put some kharma coins in our piggybanks for the future.

Here's Don with his broken Rokon with Tim and Mark looking on while Brian looks at the other vehicles that had to stop behind ours because we blocked the trail.



Here's the Rokon's broken back:



Don and his bike getting ready to load it into Brian's Raptor:



Another pic of man and beast: