Socal is increasingly becoming like an overcrowded hamster habitat. Stuff 50 hamsters in a ten gallon aquarium and you'll see some serious bloodshed happening in not too-short order. No wonder Los Angeles is on the top five list of a 'road rage' survey, according to the news this morning, but we all know that.Case in point: late yesterday, we're in Acton, getting ready to roll out in short order and I'm standing by the car. I hear the angry sound of a high-revving big rig off in the distance. We're on Aliso Cyn road, which is a small two laner going up into the San Gabes and hooking up with Angeles Crest Hwy. The sound gets louder and I look down the road. I can hear the gears winding out and I'm wondering WTF?
The truck explodes from behind the hill and he's hauling. Probably doing 60 mph or better and it's a big white Kenworth, towing a lowboy trailer. The cargo is a very undesirable looking 40 foot RV, with no headlights and all the glass missing. The RV looks like something from the 80's and the paint is heavily faded. He roars by us and the wind sluices past me as I follow his trajectory. Then the driver does something that really surprised all three of us.
He veers into the dirt mining road, that angles off, freeway offramp style (but flat) to the right, without hardly braking! Our jaws drop as he hits the wide curve on this 15 mph posted road and the trailer is nearly getting sideways. A huge cloud of dust billows into the air behind this beast and we can see the old RV bouncing and swaying crazily on the back as the truck disappears around the curve.
Two minutes. If we had started two minutes earlier, we would've been going up that very same dirt road, occupying that very space, Mr. Kenworth Madman was hellbent on. We know what he's doing. It's likely that he's going to dump that RV somewhere in the forest up there. It's late in the day, obviously he's done with his real job and now he's hustling to get the RV unloaded and the truck back to the yard. Wouldn't be surprised if he just unchained it and let it roll off in spectacular fashion somewhere out there. I see it often enough in the vast expanses of the desert up here. There's more than a few campers, trailers and discarded RV's laying about like so much shredded aluminum, insulation and wood. Too bad I didn't get the license plate as we never saw the truck again.
We start the ride and soon, we're off the mine road and descending down the gently inclined powerline road. Deb's out front and we're behind her, when suddenly a huge deer burst from the brush directly in front of Deb. It sailed out over the road and nearly cleared the ten foot width with ease. It had to weigh at least 700 to 800 pounds (Deb has an Arabian horse of similiar size) and she actually felt the wind, as the deer sailed past her. We stopped and watched in amazement as the deer bounded down the side of the hill. He was pretty fat. I looked around the brown hills and tried to figure out, just what the heck he ate to get that way. It was a surprising experience to say the least and I'm glad the deer didn't run into any of us! Gawd, the weird stuff you run into on a ride.
Posted by STP 
a 48 year old Racer riding a K2 Razorpiggie from P'Dale on 05/15/07
