Back in my yoot I was going to meet a friend at El Mirage dry lake bed over thanksgiving weekend to ride motorcycles.
He had a dodge van and his friend had a huge motorhome so I loaded up my old datsun pickemup with the motorcycle and headed off to meet them.
Traffic was a zoo and it took forever to get there and it was getting dark by the time i pulled up.
I parked the truck and took off on the bike to find my buddy.
It was so cold that my hands froze to the grips and I couldn't straighten out my fingers.
I finally gave up and curled up in the cab with an old army blanket and two jackets I brought. They had sleeping bags and everything else I would need, including a heater. Lot of good it did me.
It was freezing and every time I almost drifted off to sleep, some A-hole with uncorked headers went by and woke me up.
Turns out the a-hole was my buddy and he uncorked his headers (opened up the lake pipes) thinking I would recognize the sound of his engine.
By about 4 am I said to hell with this and threw some gas on a bush and lit it on fire to keep warm.
Musta gone through half a dozen bushes by sunrise.
I didn't have much antifreeze in that old datsun cause the water in the block froze and blew two freeze plugs out. Had to roll it over the coals of them bushes to thaw it out.
It tool til around 9 am for it to thaw so I hammered the plugs back in, filled it up with drinking water, and drove home.
I had never been that cold, so cold I wondered if I would make it through the night.
Since then I never set foot in the desert without plenty of stuff to keep warm just in case.
Even if I'm just driving to Arizona I load up a case of drinking water, food, sleeping bags, blankets and a tarp or similar.
Wife thinks I'm nuts.
