SEMA/Hump N Bump 2008 Day 4

The groups plan for Sunday was to sleep in, enjoy the morning, then head out across the Arizona Strip to Tuweep...but mother nature had something else in mind!

(photo by Tibaal89)

I was enjoying my Sunday morning coming down, when I half woke up to "shit!", followed by "damn it!", followed by slamming truck doors. I was starting to wonder what was going on, but then silence came so I drifted off to sleep again. A few moments later I was again awakened to cussing, rustling, slamming truck doors, and people yelling "grab the tents and move them over here!"; "hurry and get stuff out of here!". My mind began wandering....was that storm predicted for the night finally moving in? Was there a fire? I peered out of my roof top tent fully expecting an alien invasion or some other major tragedy. The problem? The sprinklers on the grass where everyone had their tents decided to come on and hose everyone down. Good thing I was 10 feet up in the air, ha ha!
After the sprinkler crisis, it was a little hard going back to sleep so it was another 6am morning. We took our time and enjoyed some coffee and talked about plans for the day. Lance had lost is Spot the day before so he was going to re-run the trail and look for it before heading back to Phoenix. But remember that storm I mentioned? It finally decided to move in on us from all directions! First with the dust, then with the rain it was another scramble to pack up camp. We checked several weather reports for where we were headed and it was nothing but rain, snow and below 20 temps. We decided to throw in the towel and head back to Phoenix with Lance.

Robert, our friend in the 4 Runner, suggested we at least take the scenic route home and go through Lake Mead. We said goodbye to Hump N Bump and after a quick breakfast at the local sports bar we were finally on our way somewhere. As we entered the Lake Mead area, the sky finally cleared and and we got to see how beautiful the area was. We came across some roadies and swerved around, not thinking much of it but then there was another...and another...and a water station...and more bikers! Before we knew it we were in a video game of dodging road bikers and oncoming traffic!When I thought we were about home-free, Lance came over the radio and said "stopping for downed biker!" and out of the corner of my eye I saw a crumpled mass of something on the side of the road. We all pulled over and ran up to the guy. I have to say I was kind of excited as this was my first real-life EMT experience! I'm glad Lance was there though, being that he is a trauma nurse he had the goody bag and all the practice I didn't. The poor soul we encountered was Bob Beretta who had the misfortune of swerving to avoid someone in the road and ended up going off and smashing into a mile marker sign, flying about 30 feet beyond that and landing on a rock....ouch.

(photos by Tibaal89)

He had short-term memory loss and was pretty cut up, but considering he smashed into a pole at about 20 mph he looked good! We checked him out, got all the info out of him we could and waited for the ambulance to come and take over until the med-vac chopper could arrive and get him out of there. By the time the ambulance got there the chopper was right behind so it was a quick transfer and Bob was off to the hospital in Henderson. Hopefully he is now doing ok and will be racing his next triathlon soon!

(photos by Tibaal89)

After that, it was a long journey home, playing tag with the rainstorm, harassing the rent-a-cops at the Hoover Dam who wanted to inspect my truck again (he didn't like it much when I asked him who he worked for), eating random pasta dinner in Kingman and running into this guy who was on his way to South America on a dual-sport....in the rain....yeesh.