Tora is still away at Triumph of Knoxville getting all serviced up. They called today and said that I was correct, it is definitely a failing cam chain tensioner, so they are replacing that, overhauling her forks, and they already checked her valves and they were still good after over 30k miles. She should be done sometime next week they said, as they are still waiting on parts for the cam chain tensioner.

Meanwhile, it was absolutely beautiful here the last two days, so I did some bonding with my WR250R. Sadly, up until now I had only put 300 miles on it. I just always seem to take the Tiger, and since Dwayne doesn’t have a small bike yet, I really don’t get to ride it the way I intended to when I bought it. Hopefully that will change at some point and he will have one too. I really enjoyed riding it the last two days though. I doubled the mileage on it and it had its first oil change after our ride today.

Yesterday we set off, no destination in mind, just a general direction. We ended up at a creek crossing I’d been wanting to hit on the Tiger, and I instead got to take the WR for it’s first water crossing. We didn’t think to snap a picture at the time, but I can assure you, there was a big smile on my face, just as there always is when I’m 2 feet deep in a creek on a bike!

We continued exploring the backroads, just as we usually do, turning down any new road we come across that we haven’t been down before, until we ended up in Vevay, IN at a little diner we’ve been to in the past. We had a couple of burgers and some fries to satisfy our hunger, and back on the road we went, looking for more new roads.

Eventually we came across this long, concrete creek crossing, with a pretty decent current. We were a little concerned it might be slick, but it looked okay, so we took our chances. It turned out to be fine, so we stopped for some pictures.

So that’s two new creek crossings down in one day, no problems, just a lot of fun. So imagine my surprise when we roll up on a short, shallow, concrete bottom crossing that we’ve been across multiple times in the past without issue, and it ends up like this…

Clearly, we could see that there was some moss, but like I said, we’ve been across this same crossing before and never had an issue. So when Dwayne started across it, I followed him right in, expecting us to roll through it and keep on going, but that’s not how it happened.

I saw Dwayne go down, his bike sliding to the left, him sliding to the right, and since I was already committed, I knew I only had two options: Run him over, or hit the brakes, and subsequently the ground. Since I still had to go home with him later, and I’m really kind of fond of him, I chose option number 2, which resulted in me and the WR sliding through the water right behind him.

I realized as I struggled to stand up just how slippery that moss can be, and I was thankful that I was on the WR and not Tora as my feet slid while I picked the bike up out of the water. That would have been a whole other level of difficult with that extra 200 pounds. Luckily Dwayne’s Tiger had slid far enough that it was in a less mossy spot and we were able to get it up no problem, too.

Once we realized we were both okay and the bikes were undamaged, we had a good laugh and Dwayne tried to pick the moss off of me. As my luck would have it, I had decided to take the Goretex liner out of my Neptune suit before we left that morning because I wasn’t expecting to get wet and it was warm enough I didn’t need the wind protection, so I ended up nice and wet for the ride home, which wasn’t horrible since it was sunny and warm, but I felt pretty gross.

After we stopped for gas, I told Dwayne I wouldn’t mind heading back to the first creek crossing to get some good pics to go with our “fail” pics, so we detoured back to it before heading home, and I went through it two more times.

Today, we set off in the opposite direction, again with no destination in mind. I wore my Tornado 2 mesh suit because I felt like my Neptune suit needed a wash after sliding through the mossy water yesterday. It was overcast, so I was a bit cool the first half of the day, but not cold, and it gradually warmed up, so I was fairly comfortable.

We mostly just cruised around, but we did hit some roads we hadn’t been down before, including one that we’ve passed a bunch of times that had a sign saying it dead ended at a lake. We assumed it would go a short distance and we would see a lake, but we were surprised to find that it was further back than we had expected, and it turned into a dirt road with a couple of tiny creek crossings that wound down the hillside to the lake. I couldn’t believe that people pulled boats down there, but once we made it to the lake there were probably 10 trucks with boat trailers parked in the tiny lot!

Later on our ride we stopped to get a new oil filter for the WR, and when we got home we performed the first oil change. I’m embarrassed it took me 8 months to put 600 miles on that bike, but I expect I’ll be racking them up a bit quicker in the future.

That’s pretty much it for now, my brother is getting married this weekend, so we won’t be riding anymore until at least next week. We are less than a month out from Red River Scramble, and I’m getting really excited for that!