About 25 miles east of Fallon, Nevada is an area known as Sand Mountain.  It is about 5000 acres of sand dunes with a huge mountain of fine sand over 600 feet high right in the middle of it.  As you might expect, this area is popular with off road vehicles such as motorcycles, quads, sand rails, and anything else you can imagine.  Kevin and a couple of his firefighter friends organized a weekend trip and invited Linda and me to accompany them.  He said I could ride the 200 Kawasaki that he was in the process of trying to sell.  The others would be riding their motorcycles. The entire party consisted of Kevin, Debbie, Kyle, Linda, myself, and two firefighters – one accompanied by his girlfriend and the other by his 12-year-old daughter.  Kevin pulled a three-cycle trailer with his Nissan pickup; Linda and I took our Mazda pickup.  One of the firefighters drove a Ford Explorer and convoyed with Kevin and me - the other firefighter and his daughter came up later in the day.

About 15 miles from Sand Mountain, Kevin turned off the highway onto a local dirt road and we all followed.  He announced that he was going to ride cross-country to Sand Mountain, which he figured, was about 5 miles away.  I had never been to Sand Mountain and had no idea where it was.  I wasn’t too crazy about his plan since I didn’t think it was a particularly good idea to ride alone in rough country but, as a guest, I kept my reservations to myself.  Kevin unloaded his motorcycle and took off.  Debbie then led the way to Sand Mountain.  Come to find out it was more like 15 miles – the further we went the more concerned I became about Kevin.  We finally arrived, located a suitable site, and began to set up camp.  Soon it was a couple of hours since we had dropped Kevin off and we were all starting to get worried.  If Kevin didn’t arrive soon we were determined to go looking for him.  Just as we were discussing the situation, someone noticed a figure on the horizon.  As the figure came closer, it was obviously Kevin, however, he was holding his body funny and going much too slowly.  When he arrived, he was obviously hurt.  His right hand was swollen to twice its normal size and he looked like hell – he was pale and obviously exhausted.  His motorcycle didn’t look real good either.  His front wheel and the handlebars didn’t line up very well and some plastic was hanging off the front.  He reported that he’d been blasting across the prairie about 50 miles per hour having a ball – he encountered a few stream beds from 2 to 5 feet wide and a foot or so deep but had little trouble jumping them.  All of a sudden he ran into a streambed about 10 feet across and 3 feet deep. His front wheel hit the vertical bank on the opposite side and he went flying over the handlebars – he was knocked unconscious for an unknown period of time and when he attempted to get moving, he got dizzy.  He waited for the dizziness to pass then proceeded as best he could.

By then it was about 3:00 p.m.  Kevin was determined not to let this incident interfere with his weekend.  Against the advice of all of us, he rigged up a cast of sorts for his hand by wrapping it tightly many, many times with duct tape.  He then proceeded to fix his motorcycle and soon was ready to ride.  We spent several hours running around the dunes and getting used to riding in deep sand.  Kevin and his friend’s girl friend went exploring – there is a lot of open country around the dunes and several historical sites related to stage lines and the pony express.  The rest of us rode until we were hungry and started to prepare something to eat.  In the middle of our cooking, the girl came roaring up to our campsite – her helmet was missing and she looked excited as she exclaimed: “Kevin needs help – Hurry!”   We all piled onto our bikes and roared off after her.  Several miles away, out in the middle of a dry lakebed, there he was.  Up to his ass in mud, hanging onto the handlebars of his motorcycle which had sunk nearly out of sight.  The entire lakebed was a hundred acres or so and a layer of dry mud a foot or so thick covered the muck – in most places it would support a motorcycle.  Unfortunately, Kevin had run into an area where the dry mud was only a couple of inches thick.  We parked our bikes a safe distance away and tried to help Kevin extract his bike.  We tried many things but we couldn’t get it to budge.  Finally, we started digging with our hands until the entire bike was exposed.  Only then were we able to move it.  By then it was getting dark and we were all cold, wet, covered entirely with mud, and more than a little put out with Kevin.  He was properly apologetic, however, and soon we were all in a good mood as we pulled into camp with our story.

The next morning we got up early and rode till about noon before heading back home.  Unfortunately, we had one more adventure to endure.  About 10 miles west of Fallon, I heard a terrible screeching noise that seemed to be coming from Kevin’s vehicle in front of us.  Kevin heard it too, and pulled off the highway at the first wide spot.  We pulled in behind him and were followed by his friend in the Explorer.  We determined that one of the wheel bearings had seized on the trailer Kevin was pulling.  We were able to pull the wheel and somehow got the bearing out of its race.  It was a roller bearing and several of the rollers had come out and scarred things up.  We sent the explorer back to Fallon for grease and Kevin proceeded to rebuild the bearing and its races with a pair of pliers, side cutters and a file.  I was really impressed with his patience and resourcefulness.  I wasn’t too sure it would work, however.  More than 25% of the bearing’s original strength was gone – I hoped the original had been over designed. We started slowly, driving about 40 miles per hour.  After 25 or 30 miles, Kevin’s confidence increased and soon we were tooling along at 65.  I needn’t have worried – the repair proved to be more than adequate and we had no more trouble.

Epilogue:  Kevin's hand was broken.  For the next 6 weeks he wore a cast and was placed on light duty at work.  He often said he considered the light duty (translated - office work) the worst part of his injury.