My name is Jenna, I am a 31 year old motorcyclist from Southern Indiana, and a member of the REV’IT! Women’s Adventure Team.

I started riding motorcycles in the spring of 2013 after spending the previous fall as a pillion on the back of my (then) boyfriend’s bike. One day we were out for a ride and I told him I wanted a bike of my own, which was of no surprise to him.

I started out on a 2013 Kawasaki Ninja 300. It was a perfect bike to learn on as it was small and easy to maneuver, but had enough power to easily keep up at non-interstate cruising speeds. My first lesson was at a church parking lot less than a mile from our home, which lasted all of 20 minutes before I was begging to go somewhere I could run through the gears; I was hooked! Another 30 minutes of practice at a nearby cul-de-sac, and I was ready to hit the open road. I took to riding like a fish takes to water, it just came naturally, as if that were what I were born to do all along.

Fast forward 6 months and 7,500 miles, and I was ready to move up to something bigger and more capable of long trips and interstate riding. After some research and a test ride, I traded my little Ninja in for a Yamaha FZ6R, which I fitted with a full set up of touring accessories. This girl wanted to see the world (or at least the country) and she wanted to do it on two wheels!

Our first big trip was a 6,300 mile tour from our home in Indiana, out to Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, and back. We saw so many incredibly beautiful places on that trip, rode some amazing roads, and visited over 10 National Parks and Monuments. That was the trip that made us fall head over heels in love with the Western half of the US, as well as traveling by motorcycle.

Every year since then we have taken a large trip across the US. The 2nd trip on the FZ6R was to the Northeast to Maine and back. That was the trip that made me reconsider what I wanted out of a motorcycle. The frost heaves and potholes nearly beat us to death on those Yamaha’s (my now fiance, Dwayne, had an FJR1300 at the time), and the trip was less than enjoyable because of this.

I started looking at Adventure bikes. I had started to follow more adventure riders on Instagram, and all of their pictures and the places they were riding just looked like so much fun. I was intrigued. We took a trip down to Nashville, Tennessee on the Yamaha’s so we could test ride a BMW R1200GS. I just didn’t love it, it didn’t speak to me, I didn’t get that “This is the One” feeling you should get from a motorcycle that costs 5 digits (or any motorcycle for that matter).

Next up was the Triumph Tiger 800 XRt. Our local dealer in Louisville, KY didn’t have any Triumphs at the time, and the Lexington, KY dealership wouldn’t allow me a test ride, so I ended up going all the way to Knoxville, TN to the dealership there who was more than happy to allow me to take their brand new bike out for a spin. From the very first mile, I knew, “This is it!” Dwayne agreed, he had loved it too, so after a couple of weeks of working out our trades and waiting for them to get another Tiger in so we would both have one, Dwayne ended up with the orange/red bike we had test ridden, and I ended up with a white one.

We instantly fell in love with the Tiger’s. We started riding on roads we would have never dreamed of taking the Yamaha’s down, and we saw things even close to our home that we’d never seen before because we never had a reason to. These bikes changed our entire riding style, and we were having more fun than we’d ever had on 2 wheels, which is saying a lot.

Our first big trip on the Tigers was a 7,200 mile tour to California, up the coast to Washington, back down and across Oregon, Utah, and Colorado and back home. That trip was the first time I really got serious about keeping up with this blog, so you can read it in its entirety by going to “Past Trips” and hovering over “2016 West Coast Trip” and clicking each day.

In 2017 we took a 5,200 mile trip to Glacier National Park and up into Canada to the Banff area and back. That trip is also detailed in this blog under “Past Trips”.

2018 was another exciting year in which we took the Tigers out to Montana and Idaho for a few days of off-road riding, and I took a couple of solo trips with my REV’IT! team to Pennsylvania and Utah.

2019 is just getting started, but I’m hopeful it will be another great year for us, and I’m looking forward to more trips both with Dwayne and with my REV’IT! teammates.

But if none of these things are exciting to you, perhaps you’re here because you share in my passion for vintage motorcycles? Any posts I make that belong in that category will be found under the “Vintage Bikes” tab, and they will detail the maintenance and restorations of my handful of vintage Honda motorcycles, as well as pictures from any vintage bike festivals or shows I go to throughout the year.

Hopefully if you’ve made it this far, you’ve enjoyed what you’ve read and you’ll become a follower, if not, that’s okay, fun tales of adventure bike riding and the occasional headaches of owning temperamental vintage bikes perhaps aren’t for everyone 😉