Hello all. I’m new to your forum. I do the majority of my kicking around on motorcycles, so I’m a long time advrider.com junkie, but have just recently become more interested in doing some knocking around in my truck, a 95.5 Tacoma, which is my only four-wheeled conveyance. It serves as a work truck, junk hauler, night-on-the-town mobile, taxi/u-haul for friends and, hopefully from now on, a passable, if not necessarily aggressive, expedition rig. Congratulations on such a well-maintained site and a friendly and helpful group of participants: the portal appears to be an exceptional community. Rather than introduce myself with a series of bumbling questions (which I’m sure will come eventually), I thought I’d try to wade in proper with a trip report.
I spent two months over the winter on an unforgettable adventure through Mexico and Guatemala on my trusty DRZ 400 Suzuki dual-sport motorcycle. There are sixty typewritten pages of travel journal to accompany that voyage, but I’ll spare you guys that agony…at least until we know each other better.
Such a luxurious amount of vacation demanded that I trade in my fly-by-night freelancer’s hat on return to the States and settle into a more regular gig for a while. With a new full-time job starting in a couple weeks, I had little alternative but to pack up the truck, grab my friend Katherine, and head to Big Bend for a few days.
First, however, I was going to have to solve a couple of problems. I don’t have a topper and, especially as I just had to drop a bunch of money on new suspension components (an OME set-up that would be waiting for me on my return), I’d rather spend the cash on fuel and good eating. Still, I needed some secure gear stowage in the bed of the truck. I also needed a platform to lay out my truck sized paco pad for comfortable nights under the stars. A quick perusal of this site revealed that many members have solved these issues in ways far more elegant that I ever will, but stealing some basic ideas solved both problems for me. And, yeah, maybe the tiny stuffed animals and the gas can combine in some way for target practice and maybe not. I'll never tell.
A few years ago, when driving a vintage Chevy van back to New Mexico from Seattle with a friend, (It was red with black flames. Seriously.) we stopped at the Boeing Surplus Yard and, like greedy, over-sized apes with credit cards, bought all the kinds of things that a man needs to buy in a place like that: Oversized nuts and bolts, bizarre bearing assemblies, airplane windows, ridiculously proportioned specialty wrenches, spools of stainless wire and few hundred square feet of diamond plate aluminum. So I grabbed my remaining aluminum, a couple of 2 x 10s and a couple cheap tool boxes and put together a sleeping platform with some decent storage. Locking bin section up toward the cab, locking tailgate at the back and the two toolboxes all provide enough security to keep good men honest, as they say.
Schedules demanded that we leave around midday on a Friday, but that suited our circuitous route toward Big Bend just fine. We started by driving east past Albuquerque. At Casa Blanca, almost due south from Mt. Taylor, we turned toward Acoma Pueblo, sometimes called “Sky City” because of it’s prominent, mesa-top situation. *Not my photo of Mt. Taylor: Photo by D. Arnold.
Acoma is in a dramatic and beautiful valley, full of rocky outcroppings and tantalizing geological formations, but the tribe allows no photos, at least not without ponying up for a permit. Pardon me for being stingy.
I spent two months over the winter on an unforgettable adventure through Mexico and Guatemala on my trusty DRZ 400 Suzuki dual-sport motorcycle. There are sixty typewritten pages of travel journal to accompany that voyage, but I’ll spare you guys that agony…at least until we know each other better.
Such a luxurious amount of vacation demanded that I trade in my fly-by-night freelancer’s hat on return to the States and settle into a more regular gig for a while. With a new full-time job starting in a couple weeks, I had little alternative but to pack up the truck, grab my friend Katherine, and head to Big Bend for a few days.
First, however, I was going to have to solve a couple of problems. I don’t have a topper and, especially as I just had to drop a bunch of money on new suspension components (an OME set-up that would be waiting for me on my return), I’d rather spend the cash on fuel and good eating. Still, I needed some secure gear stowage in the bed of the truck. I also needed a platform to lay out my truck sized paco pad for comfortable nights under the stars. A quick perusal of this site revealed that many members have solved these issues in ways far more elegant that I ever will, but stealing some basic ideas solved both problems for me. And, yeah, maybe the tiny stuffed animals and the gas can combine in some way for target practice and maybe not. I'll never tell.
A few years ago, when driving a vintage Chevy van back to New Mexico from Seattle with a friend, (It was red with black flames. Seriously.) we stopped at the Boeing Surplus Yard and, like greedy, over-sized apes with credit cards, bought all the kinds of things that a man needs to buy in a place like that: Oversized nuts and bolts, bizarre bearing assemblies, airplane windows, ridiculously proportioned specialty wrenches, spools of stainless wire and few hundred square feet of diamond plate aluminum. So I grabbed my remaining aluminum, a couple of 2 x 10s and a couple cheap tool boxes and put together a sleeping platform with some decent storage. Locking bin section up toward the cab, locking tailgate at the back and the two toolboxes all provide enough security to keep good men honest, as they say.
Schedules demanded that we leave around midday on a Friday, but that suited our circuitous route toward Big Bend just fine. We started by driving east past Albuquerque. At Casa Blanca, almost due south from Mt. Taylor, we turned toward Acoma Pueblo, sometimes called “Sky City” because of it’s prominent, mesa-top situation. *Not my photo of Mt. Taylor: Photo by D. Arnold.
Acoma is in a dramatic and beautiful valley, full of rocky outcroppings and tantalizing geological formations, but the tribe allows no photos, at least not without ponying up for a permit. Pardon me for being stingy.
