MLK weekend 2016 – where were you? If you weren’t in the Anza- Borrego desert at the Buzzard Bait Family Fun Ride you missed out. This annual event to benefit LAFRA’s Widows, Orphans and Disabled Fireman’s Fund was a good one this year.
Started nineteen years ago by Mike Reitmayer (CII @ 29-C) and Doug Weber (C1 @ 17-C) as an off road trip with six families, it has blossomed over the years to include more than 100 LAFD families and friends. Mike and Doug have done a great job overcoming the ever changing bureaucratic hurdles necessary to access our state and federal “open” areas.
This year Mother Nature provided us with a dust free playground as recent rains had passed through the area. But when you have rain, you have mud, and two days prior to the event the course was almost impassable in places. But a day or two of wind and sunshine, dried the course out enough to make it an epic event.
The 23 mile long course was laid out over fast sand washes, a fun mud section, very few whoops, and a twisty, hilly, slot canyon section. Along the way we found sites where rockets had landed or crashed. If you looked hard enough you could find tiny, little aliens buried in the sand. Each site had raffle tickets which were brought back to camp and dropped in the box for the raffle. This year the raffle included stays in a Colorado condo, a Mammoth condo and a fire axe with scabbard.
We want to thank all our friends and sponsors for donating items for the raffle to make this year another successful one. In addition, the new President of LAFRA, Bob Steinbacher, and his flunky Tim Larson, showed up and spent the weekend supporting the event. Tim posted some nice pictures on Facebook as well.
A big THANK YOU to all the participants who come out to support Widows and Orphans and make this a successful event!
By Bruce Galien
Photos by Tim Larson and Bruce Galien