To start with, I have a couple of exciting things to share. I did an interview a while back with James Ball from the Triumph “For The Ride” website and it went live last week. If anyone wants to check that out, it can be found here: For The Ride

Also, today we were finally able to announce who our two new REV’IT! Women’s ADV Team members are! So if you want to follow two more incredible ladies, then give Kris Fant and Katelyn Barnecut a follow. You can also check out the official team announcement here: 2019 REV’IT! Women’s ADV Team Announcement

In other news, I am still without my Tiger due to a setback at the dealership, but hopefully I will have her back next week. In the meantime, the WR has went from 300 miles on the odometer to over 800 miles in the last few weeks. Yesterday was a shorter ride at only 88 miles, but it included an interesting find.

We were out aimlessly cruising the back roads like we do when we don’t have a destination in mind, and we were in an area about 10 miles from the house that we were just in a couple of weeks ago, when Dwayne decided to turn down a road we had passed on the previous trip.

It started out as a paved road with a few homes lining it, then unexpectedly turned to gravel and entered into the woods, much to our approval. Shortly after turning to gravel, it narrowed a bit and turned to mostly dirt. At this point, my lips were curled up into a mischievous grin, wondering what exactly we had just stumbled upon. Dwayne asked if I thought we were still on a road or if we were going down someone’s driveway, but I noted that there hadn’t been any private property signs or indications that we weren’t supposed to be there, so we decided to see where it ended up.

As we went around a curve, the road ahead showed signs of all of the heavy rains we’ve had the last few months as the left side was rutted up and significantly lower than the right side of the road (pictures don’t show this well or how steep it was).

I parked my bike and walked around the bend to see what was ahead before going any further. After confirming that if we stayed on the right side of the road it should be easily passable, we continued on. The road dipped down a bit around that curve and then leveled out, but it was becoming increasingly rutted out and muddy in spots. Then we started over a hill and saw this…

Again, the pictures don’t show how deep those ruts actually were, how steep it was, or how soft the ground was from all the rain. Had Dwayne not been on the Tiger with a bare rear tire, we would have probably continued on, but there is absolutely no way that heavy bike would have made it back up that with no knobs left to give traction.

I was curious to see what was on down around the next bend, because I had no idea if this road continued on or not, so I decided to hike down and take a look. In hindsight, I should have just ridden the WR on down, it would have handled it fine, but I couldn’t be sure what I would find and didn’t want to end up in a predicament, so I played it safe and walked it.

It turns out it got increasingly more and more rutted up, and at the bottom you could tell where all of the dirt and rocks from those ruts had ended up (not pictured). From there it continued on into the woods, but I didn’t need to walk any further to know that I will for sure be going back to find out what else that road holds in the near future, after Dwayne has his new rear tire and it dries out from all the rain we are getting over the next few days (seriously Mother Nature, you can stop with the rain anytime now).

Hiking back up the hill with all my gear on was a workout, let me tell you!! You don’t realize just how steep something is until you’re going up it instead of down! I was sweating and breathing a bit heavier by the time I got back to the top, and I’m in pretty good shape!

That’s Dwayne at the top, laughing at me huffing and puffing my way back up the hill. We will just pretend I didn’t stop to take that picture just to get a short break!

Once I got back to the top, I helped Dwayne get the Tiger turned around and then turned the WR around and we headed back out to the paved roads. I can’t wait to go back and explore that road more soon, though. I looked it up on Google Maps when I got home, and it is listed as a road, but it does end up dead ending eventually on the back side of a private property that is accessed from the other side of the road. It looks like it was probably a county road at some point that connected two roads, but over the years they stopped maintaining it and let it go to the land owner. You can still see the tracks on the aerial view that follow alongside their field and passed their house, connecting with the other side, which has the same road name.

The rest of our ride was just pavement, and we wont be getting to ride anymore this week due to weather, but we did take Dwayne’s rear wheel to have his new tire installed today, so he should be ready to go for next week, hopefully, pending an issue our mechanic noticed with the wheel bearing.

We are now just two weeks out from Red River Scramble, and I’m starting to get a bit nervous since I still don’t have my Tiger back. Hopefully there wont be any more setbacks and she will be ready to go and back home before then. If not, I guess the WR will be getting even more use!