I am sorry, I have been slacking on my blogging lately. Consider this entry me getting caught up, so it will be a mixture of the last month or so of riding, which honestly hasn’t been a whole lot, maybe once a week or so with the ever-changing weather. I’ll just start most recently and work my way back.

Last week I got to ride the Tiger twice, once on Monday when I rode to work (something I rarely do since I work night shift and am sometimes sleepy when I get off work), and again on Saturday. Both of those were relatively short rides, considering most of my day trips are 150+ miles, but I really wanted to capture some of the fall foliage colors before the leaves were all gone.

There really isn’t much else to say about those rides, other than it was 38 degrees Tuesday morning when I got off work so I bundled up in my new REV’IT! base and mid-layers under my Neptune suit, and I stayed nice and warm for my 22 mile ride home. It is amazing what good gear will do to make riding more enjoyable in weather that is not ideal.

On Tuesday last week I rode the WR250R in a womens only dirtbike class offered by Nathan Smith of The Complete Racer and Brianna Mahon, who is a former womens pro rider. It was technically geared towards racers, but my friend Shannon and I brought our dual sports and had a good time anyways. We learned a lot about proper body positioning, and then they let us loose on their practice turn-track to try to implement what we had learned. Of course, all of this was completely new to Shannon and I, as that isn’t the type of riding we generally do, but it was so fun to get out of our comfort zone and push ourselves.

I will say that I have a lot of practicing to do before I get anywhere near comfortable doing that type of riding, but I always enjoy a challenge. The class was supposed to be 2-days, but the second day got rained out, so I’m hoping they will offer another class in the spring and I will go again.

A couple of weeks ago Dwayne and I took the Tigers out for a ride up to Brown County, Indiana. We ride up there pretty frequently, and I thought I had hit most of the good stuff by now, but I heard about two more creek crossings we had never hit before, so we went in search of those that day.

The first was just a shallow crossing, but it was still fun and made for some cool pictures…

The second crossing turned out to be the deepest crossing I’ve done up to this point. Honestly, I probably wouldn’t want to do anything much deeper because it was nearly up to my exhaust at one point. The pictures from this one really make me laugh, because in the first one I will post, you can see the look of surprise on my face as the front wheel dropped off a ledge unexpectedly, diving even deeper into the water, and the second picture I am visibly laughing at how much fun that was and how glad I am that I didn’t give Tora an unwanted bath, lol!

Unfortunately the weather is getting cool quick, and there is a chance of snow next week, but thankfully with all of the new winter gear REV’IT! has supplied me with, I am hopeful that I will get to ride occasionally throughout the winter, instead of parking the bike for months. My thoughts are now starting to turn to next year and what trips we will take and which events I will attend. There are so many good ones to choose from, but only so much vacation time to use. As amazing as this year has been, I’m hoping it was only the beginning and that there will be much more to look forward to in the future.