I was going to avoid this thread--responding to it, that is--but I'm jumping in to agree about the Spot Tracker thing, and with Sam about the idea of ratcheting up the safety consciousness as evening approaches. When we found ourselves on that crummy forest service road so late in the day, I was not comfortable for all the reasons you named, but at that point, it was pretty much a no-choice situation. I OWN a Spot Tracker, too, which is why I feel especially like an idiot. The subscription lapsed a few months ago and I didn't renew it, but I should have, and I will. I'll also think about a better mounting situation than under the plastic on my tank bag map compartment.
Just to try to clarify
a little of the confusion and misunderstanding about what happened on this ride, I did tell Sam to go ahead of me, and I would have had about a half mile to make up, but I saw AJ at the pump of the Chevron station across the street from me, and pulled up to ride with him. He was having some trouble getting the earplugs he'd just opened set up and getting the wires routed through his suit. I think he was a little confused about which plug went into which ear.
Anyway, we were a few miles behind the group when we took off, although we did a hell of a job catching up.
And we WOULD have caught up, too, except I blew the turnoff from 70 to 89, staying on 70 for at least three or four miles. AJ finally passed me and signaled a U-turn after checking his GPS. (More technology I don't use much.)
I want to say this to you, Sam. Despite statements on this thread to the contrary, you bet your ass we thought to ask the question "Where is Sam". And we DID think to retrace the road we'd just come down--carefully and more than once. And yes, we DID wonder why you didn't show up at the hotel. When we couldn't find you, we certainly didn't forget about you. When we finally decided that you must have somehow continued on your own, finding your way to the hotel, we had planned to find your Spotwalla link if you weren't there, and proceed from there. When it seemed to show you still in the area where we lost touch, we were definitely not going to just let it go. Whether we'd have left there to mount an independent search in the dark or not I can't say--probably not. But we'd absolutely have notified emergency services with the information we had, and accompanied them back if required, and probably if not required too.
Right then, within a very few minutes after we got to the hotel, and while everybody was talking about this and trying to figure out what to do next, we were all informed that Tyler had received a call from you with the basic information of what had happened, including that your friends were there to help you out, so rousting rescue teams was off the table.
Believe me, I still feel badly that we didn't send one or two riders south on the main road we'd come up, but you literally did pass that turnoff in the time it took us to ride maybe one mile, stop for maybe one minute, and turn around and get back there. And we really didn't think you'd have gone back that way anyway--that was the ONE direction we all knew didn't go where we wanted to go. Since Russ and I eventually headed to Klamath Falls via that dirt road we'd turned back to avoid, we thought it was possible--maybe likely--that you'd taken that route after you lost contact with the rest of us.
Anyway, I'm glad you're reading this, and sorry we weren't the ones to find you. I'll just close with this. At breakfast on Sunday morning, with several of us in riding gear and about 30 FJRs parked outside of the hotel in LaPine, a lady approached us and asked if we knew an FJR rider named Samir. Well yes, why are you asking. It was Nancy Koerner and her husband John, the BMW riders who first found you. They'd been very concerned about you ever since and were very relieved to hear you had been seen at the hospital and released. Nice folks.
I understand Brian R's frustration and upset when the "story" on this first broke, but I've got to say, Brian, you made some incendiary and inaccurate comments that I wish you'd held off on until you had more information. We didn't handle this perfectly, but we sure as hell tried.
