There are a surprisingly number of ex-pat GTAM riders out here on the west coast. I haven't met all of them, but I last saw @rorider at the beginning of the riding season, when we did a street ride with his Triumph Scrambler.
I noticed on Facebook that he just traded in his Scrambler for a 2022 KTM 890 ADVenture R.
Well, since he's now got an ADVenture bike, the obvious thing to do is to go ADVenture riding then!
We're in the midst of an Indian summer in the Okanagan. Temps are up in the low 20s in the afternoon, but it's still single digits in the morning. We plan to meet up around 1PM to go for a quick scoot around the trails in the area. rorider says he's downloaded a nice 100 km route that goes up to Lumby and then we can just slab it home after that to be back in time for dinner. Nice short boot to take ADVantage of this unseasonally warm weather.
These are the two heroes of the story, a couple of Austrian dirt-lovers:
rorider told me that he found a gpx file on the Internet that some unknown guy uploaded and it was supposedly ADVertised as a good trail to ride. Okay. What could go wrong with that?
We hit the trails with him in the lead. We're in an exploratory mood so we went down every single side trail we could find.
Typical conversation:
rorider: Where do you think this goes?
lightcycle: Dunno.
rorider: Let's find out!
lightcycle: Full Send!
Most of the trails just petered off as the rocks got gnarly and the brush got too dense to continue. On one of the trails, one of the big rocks deflected my rear wheel and down I went:
I have developed this really bad habit of hanging onto the clutch when I go down. You know how some MotoGP racers hang on to the clutch when they lowside so they don't have to wait for the marshals to bump start their bike again? For some strange reason, I have this irrational fear of stalling the bike, so I pull the clutch in and hold it in even when I should be letting go. This isn't a MotoGP bike. It has a starter motor and I don't have to bump start it.
This is the consequence of the bad habit I have:
Hand got trapped under the handlebar and dragged me for a while. Looks worse than it felt. Just lost a bit of skin on the inside of my pinkie and bruised my index finger. Probably gonna lose that nail.
Fugg, this was at the beginning of our ride, too. Not good.
I really need to let go of things I can't control...
I normally carry a first-aid kit, but I came totally unprepared for this ride. Left it at home. Thankfully rorider had one in his backpack. A little bandaid on the pinkie and we're off again.
Little did I realize this lack of preparation was a harbinger of bad things to come.
We're heading generally north-east from Lake Country, taking every side-trail that runs off the graded gravel Beaver Lake Road.
rorider sees a little sandy patch so we go play in the sandbox like we're in Grade 4 all over again!
When you're screwing around, things tend to go sideways. Sometimes quite literally... rorider was telling me how light the 890 feels because of how low the centre of gravity is with the gas tank under the engine. Well, let me tell you, it doesn't feel that light when that gas tank is at the same level of the engine and rest of the bike!
We originally wanted to find this High Rim Trail that goes up to Oyama Lake, but couldn't find it despite having two GPSes with us. Even with the ADVent of all this modern technology, it's still possible to get completely lost. The trail system here is so convoluted and not very well marked.
At Swalwell Lake, Beaver Lake Road turns north and becomes Dee Lake Road so we generally follow that FSR, ducking in and out of trails that eventually meet up with Dee Lake Road again. There's a whole lake system that we're riding past, we stop in front of Loon Lake, which is so small, it isn't even on the map.
It hasn't rained for quite a while, but there's still some mud on the side trails:
Further down Dee Lake Road, we pass some kind of law enforcement vehicle and he flashed his lights at us and motioned for us to pull over.
Uh oh. As I pass the truck, I read on the side, "Conservation Officer Services". Oh, it's the Forest Police!
The officer was very cordial as he just wanted to make sure our vehicles were plated, since this is a public road. Lots of illegal ATVs and dirt bikes running up and down the FSRs around the Okanagan, it's so tempting to ride dirty (literally and figuratively) when you have such an amazing system of dirt and gravel roads so close to the city.
"Sir, your plate appears to be blurred out"
"Yeah, well so's your face!"
The Forest Police also watch for hunters who are hunting out of season game, and he warned us to be careful of stray bullets. LOL Whut?
We thanked him for his friendly ADVice and continued on.
We take another side trail off Dee Lake, this one is not even marked on my map. Much smaller and more fun than the FSR.
We pass by a herd of cows who watch us unimpressed, they don't even Moooove over as we braaap past them.
We're working hard on this trail, and the weather has warmed up quite a bit and we're both sweating in our gear. So we stop to cool down and grab a snack. Looking at the map, we're about 2/3rd of the way through the trail, probably less than an hour before we hit the slab and head home.
The trail has some pretty gnarly features. Here's a little ditch that rorider killed with his big bike:
I like riding with rorider as we're both Toronto kids who moved to the Okanagan. At our last stop, we chatted about how we don't get as dramatic fall colours here in the Okanagan as we did back in Ontario. Most of the trees here are evergreens, and what little deciduous foliage we have turns straight from green to yellow to brown, skipping the fiery reds and oranges that the maples in Northern Ontario are so well-known for.
We're now re-following the gpx trail that rorider downloaded and some spots are fairly tight. We both remark that whoever rode this trail did not do this on a R1200GS! We're guessing some kind of 300cc 2-stroke probably...
rorider is handling this route very well on his big trailie. Whenever we stop to check the GPS to make sure we're still on the trail, he says he's pretty confident that we're on the right path because this path seems to be fairly well maintained. Someone's been out here with a saw doing some trail maintenance.
Yep, fair point.
We head down this long, narrow, rocky path. It's steep and strewn with rocks, with a severe drop off to one side. And worse of all, there are several tight turns and bends. It's totally sketch-city. In my helmet, I mutter to myself, "thank god, we're just going down. I'd hate to be riding this trail uphill!"
We must have skidded our way about half a km downhill, tires straining to find traction. When we got to level ground, we both did a skidmark check. In our underwear. So gnarly!
The trail starts to close in around us. Suddenly, there are no cut logs and we have to duck fallen trees above us and hop over logs on the ground. It feels like I'm playing a video game. Space bar to jump. X-key to duck. Space bar. X-key. Space bar. X-key.
This is cray-cray!
I check my GPS, thank god we're nearly at the end of the trail, the highway is not too far away.
rorider stops and gets off the bike to check out the trail ahead to make sure its passable.
Sketchy, but what other option is there? We're so close to the end, might as well just grin and bear it and push on.
LOL. Famous last words, right?
We keep on ducking and jumping, pass a mud bog, and then this:
What. The. Hell.
We both stare dumbfounded at the rocky, dry creek bed in front of us. On the other side of the creek bed, there is... no trail. Nothing. Even if we made it across all those boulders, it wasn't possible to ADVance any further.
I check my GPS.
Are you f-n kidding me?!?! We are *LITERALLY* 5 kms away from the highway.
We've just ridden for four hours, we're like 95% of the way done and now the only option is to turn back.
FAAAAAAHK.... I check the time. It's 5:30PM. Unless we can find a bail-out point to another FSR along our route back south we're going to be riding this dirt trail all the way back to the beginning in the dark.
Not. Good.
There's no time to panic or complain, so we turn our bikes around and start heading back the way we came. Suddenly, all the obstacles we passed along the way flooded my memory once again. Mud bog. Duck and Jump Logs. Oh sh!t... that long-*** rocky uphill climb that I was so thankful I didn't have to ride up... I have to ride up it now.
There are no more pictures from this point in. My camera's batteries died and we were too in a rush to get back to stop and change out the batteries. Plus it's too dark to film or take pictures anyway.
We both recall horror stories of people trapped in the BC woods after dark. We're on a deserted dead-end trail that nobody is going to travel down at this time of day. Time was of the essence now, and we needed to at least get to an FSR before dark.
We successfully tackle the mud bog and the trees, but halfway up the rocky hill, my bike stalls and I come to a complete stop. Up ahead, rorider is continually checking up on me in his mirror and he also comes to a stop in front of me in case I need help.
Well, because of me, he forked himself. Turns out, my 250-lb enduro has no problem scrabbling up a hill from a dead stop. The opposite is true for his 450-lb monster. He's spinning that rear wheel in futility, trying to gain traction but the hill is too steep and there's just too many rocks on the ground. After much wheel-spinning, he finally makes the decision to turn the bike around, head down and get another running start at the hill from the bottom. So I climb back on my bike, spin the wheel a bit but manage to make it to level ground about 250m up the hill.
I turn off the bike and wait for rorider to join me.
I wait. And wait. And wait.
Nothing. Oh no.
So I start walking down the hill to see if he's okay.
He's gone down at exactly the same spot we stopped at before, the bike is sideways on the hill. I help him get the bike upright and we reposition his moto so that the rear wheel is off the rocks, and on some dirt instead. I steady the bike and he shifts backwards on the seat to get some traction on the rear. As he gooses the throttle, I get monstered with flying dirt and rocks, while I'm behind the bike trying to push it forward. There's some squirrely fish-tail action as the big KTM threatens to careen off the edge of the trail but rorider manages to right the ship and he leaves me behind in a cloud of dust.
I make the long and arduous uphill trek back to my bike. I readily confess to being waaaay out-of-shape and that super-steep hike just about murdered me. Two wheels + engine > two legs + beer belly.
rorider is waiting there beside my bike and I know I don't have any time to catch my breath. We've just burned through the last 45 minutes of daylight trying to fumble our way up this f-n pile of rocks. It's almost 6:30 now and although there's still a bit of residual daylight from over the horizon, it's officially sunset. I have to let Neda know that we're okay. Out here we have no internet service, but there's a faint cell signal, so I send her a text to let her know the situation and not to worry.
As we continue our uphill scrabble up over the rocky terrain, in the back of my head, I'm wondering maybe I should have included lat/long coordinates in my text? No time to stop and do that, we need to get back to some kind of main road.
That uphill climb seemed to last forever, but finally we reach the top. The dense foliage all around us obscures the sky and makes everything darker and now I'm riding with only the bright LED lights of rorider's 890 in front of me to illuminate the way. The light on my EXC totally sucks and I can't really see what's in front of me, so I have to memorize whatever is in front of roriders bike so if there's anything to avoid, I know to steer around it when I get to that same spot.
I'm panicking a bit, because this is when accidents happen: when you're in a rush and your judgement gets a bit clouded due to fatigue. And hunger. Oh no. We haven't eaten anything but snacks in the last 6 hours or so. I've run out of Cliffs Bars and rorider has no food either. We hadn't planned on an all-day trip. Even my water has run out. I normally fill my 3L camelback to the brim, but I thought "I don't want to carry all this water on my back that I won't even drink since I'll only be out a few hours".
Back when we were staring dumb-founded at the abrupt end of the trail, I checked my fuel situation. I was at half-tank at that point, expecting to fuel up at a gas station just 5kms away. Big Nope now. So now I'm also suffering from acute range anxiety. Wanna hear something funny? Last week, my 15L Acerbis tank came in and I was too lazy to install it. Hilarious, right?
Also... I left my Spot locator at home. It's just a short ride, right?
Goddamn. I've done *EVERYTHING* wrong on this ride. I felt like such a f-n newb rider.
The only correct decision I've made is to pack some warm clothing, and that was only because it was so cold this morning. We got so warm this afternoon; I did not even think I'd be needing to pull out the windbreaker and winter gloves that I stashed in my backpack.
The minute the sun sets around here, the temperature plummets. The thermometer on rorider's 890 TFT display reads 5°C. We stop to put on my windbreaker and warm gloves. The light of our smartphones illuminates both of our helmet's face shields as we send another "Don't worry!" text to our wives.
We eventually reach the first bail-out point on our GPS. We turned off onto it and to our horror, within the first 200m, there's a huge fallen log over the trail and an unmaintained hill climb past it. No go this way.
Check the GPS again, and the next bail-out point is about half-distance the way we came. It's full-on dark now, and when you're this far from the light pollution of any city or town, the stars above us begin to twinkle and shine quite early in the evening.
It's pretty, but the reality of the remoteness we're in is a little bit disconcerting as well... We need to get a move on.
I follow roriders beam of light in front of me. In a moment of absurdity, I think to myself, "I'm riding dirt trails pretty good in the complete dark!"
They say that the worst thing in the world is to stare directly in front of your front tire in the dirt. But now I wasn't staring at *anything* at all! I was just reacting to whatever direction the bike was moving underneath me. Bike gets pushed right, automatically I lean left. Vice versa. It felt very fluid and loose and I got a pretty good zen-like feeling happening. Isn't that weird?
Just to break up this absolute wall of text I'm typing out, if I had taken a picture of where we were, this is what it would look like:
Whenever rorider turns a corner up ahead, his light disappears and I'm completely in the dark, so I flick on my highbeam to see better.
AAAND all of a sudden, my headlight turns on and I can see again!
What the heck? Have my light's been off the entire time?
So it turns out that on the EXC, my headlight is off until you flick the highbeam switch and then it turns on. I've owned this bike for two and a half years but because we never ride in the dark, I've never needed to use the headlights.
I'm having *the* strangest thoughts and revelations while riding blind in the inky blackness of the BC Interior, where people who get lost at night die of exposure all the time.
We round one of the corners and roriders headlights suddenly illuminate the cows we had passed earlier in the day. They were standing right in the middle of trail. Brake lights flash angrily in front of me as rorider skids to a stop in front of a large bovine, who takes a half-step back in surprise.
And then the cow charges at rorider!!!!
Holy Hell. What the Fuggggg??!?!
Thankfuly it was a mock charge and rorider is able to ride away with me right on his tail.
Almost got head-butted by a cow! What other ADVersities are we going to face tonight?!?!
Another hour of riding and we reach the next bail-out point, which finally takes us to an FSR. Ahhhh... off the trail. No more dodging logs and boulders in the dark. Back to graded gravel once again. We're both very relieved. We stop to text our respective wives to let them know not to worry. But there's still another hour or so of FSR riding to take us back to the Hwy. Towards the end, we squint at the headlights of a few oncoming cars which again made us feel a lot safer should anything happen to either of us at this point.
The FSR spits us out on the highway around 9PM. I left home at noon, thinking I'd be back by 6 and now I'm still an hour away from home. However, we're both exhausted, thirsty and hungry. We've been working pretty hard on the bikes despite not having eaten or drunk anything for hours. So we decide to head to a Timmy's about 15 kms away in Vernon. Turns out my bike is also thirsty. My fuel reserve light comes on on the highway. Wow, that was cutting it close!
So happy to be back on the tarmac, headed towards civilization and a large cup of hot chocolate.
Oh My God. What an ADVenture!
I noticed on Facebook that he just traded in his Scrambler for a 2022 KTM 890 ADVenture R.
Well, since he's now got an ADVenture bike, the obvious thing to do is to go ADVenture riding then!
We're in the midst of an Indian summer in the Okanagan. Temps are up in the low 20s in the afternoon, but it's still single digits in the morning. We plan to meet up around 1PM to go for a quick scoot around the trails in the area. rorider says he's downloaded a nice 100 km route that goes up to Lumby and then we can just slab it home after that to be back in time for dinner. Nice short boot to take ADVantage of this unseasonally warm weather.
These are the two heroes of the story, a couple of Austrian dirt-lovers:
rorider told me that he found a gpx file on the Internet that some unknown guy uploaded and it was supposedly ADVertised as a good trail to ride. Okay. What could go wrong with that?
We hit the trails with him in the lead. We're in an exploratory mood so we went down every single side trail we could find.
Typical conversation:
rorider: Where do you think this goes?
lightcycle: Dunno.
rorider: Let's find out!
lightcycle: Full Send!
Most of the trails just petered off as the rocks got gnarly and the brush got too dense to continue. On one of the trails, one of the big rocks deflected my rear wheel and down I went:
I have developed this really bad habit of hanging onto the clutch when I go down. You know how some MotoGP racers hang on to the clutch when they lowside so they don't have to wait for the marshals to bump start their bike again? For some strange reason, I have this irrational fear of stalling the bike, so I pull the clutch in and hold it in even when I should be letting go. This isn't a MotoGP bike. It has a starter motor and I don't have to bump start it.
This is the consequence of the bad habit I have:
Hand got trapped under the handlebar and dragged me for a while. Looks worse than it felt. Just lost a bit of skin on the inside of my pinkie and bruised my index finger. Probably gonna lose that nail.
Fugg, this was at the beginning of our ride, too. Not good.
I really need to let go of things I can't control...
I normally carry a first-aid kit, but I came totally unprepared for this ride. Left it at home. Thankfully rorider had one in his backpack. A little bandaid on the pinkie and we're off again.
Little did I realize this lack of preparation was a harbinger of bad things to come.
We're heading generally north-east from Lake Country, taking every side-trail that runs off the graded gravel Beaver Lake Road.
rorider sees a little sandy patch so we go play in the sandbox like we're in Grade 4 all over again!
When you're screwing around, things tend to go sideways. Sometimes quite literally... rorider was telling me how light the 890 feels because of how low the centre of gravity is with the gas tank under the engine. Well, let me tell you, it doesn't feel that light when that gas tank is at the same level of the engine and rest of the bike!
We originally wanted to find this High Rim Trail that goes up to Oyama Lake, but couldn't find it despite having two GPSes with us. Even with the ADVent of all this modern technology, it's still possible to get completely lost. The trail system here is so convoluted and not very well marked.
At Swalwell Lake, Beaver Lake Road turns north and becomes Dee Lake Road so we generally follow that FSR, ducking in and out of trails that eventually meet up with Dee Lake Road again. There's a whole lake system that we're riding past, we stop in front of Loon Lake, which is so small, it isn't even on the map.
It hasn't rained for quite a while, but there's still some mud on the side trails:
Further down Dee Lake Road, we pass some kind of law enforcement vehicle and he flashed his lights at us and motioned for us to pull over.
Uh oh. As I pass the truck, I read on the side, "Conservation Officer Services". Oh, it's the Forest Police!
The officer was very cordial as he just wanted to make sure our vehicles were plated, since this is a public road. Lots of illegal ATVs and dirt bikes running up and down the FSRs around the Okanagan, it's so tempting to ride dirty (literally and figuratively) when you have such an amazing system of dirt and gravel roads so close to the city.
"Sir, your plate appears to be blurred out"
"Yeah, well so's your face!"
The Forest Police also watch for hunters who are hunting out of season game, and he warned us to be careful of stray bullets. LOL Whut?
We thanked him for his friendly ADVice and continued on.
We take another side trail off Dee Lake, this one is not even marked on my map. Much smaller and more fun than the FSR.
We pass by a herd of cows who watch us unimpressed, they don't even Moooove over as we braaap past them.
We're working hard on this trail, and the weather has warmed up quite a bit and we're both sweating in our gear. So we stop to cool down and grab a snack. Looking at the map, we're about 2/3rd of the way through the trail, probably less than an hour before we hit the slab and head home.
The trail has some pretty gnarly features. Here's a little ditch that rorider killed with his big bike:
I like riding with rorider as we're both Toronto kids who moved to the Okanagan. At our last stop, we chatted about how we don't get as dramatic fall colours here in the Okanagan as we did back in Ontario. Most of the trees here are evergreens, and what little deciduous foliage we have turns straight from green to yellow to brown, skipping the fiery reds and oranges that the maples in Northern Ontario are so well-known for.
We're now re-following the gpx trail that rorider downloaded and some spots are fairly tight. We both remark that whoever rode this trail did not do this on a R1200GS! We're guessing some kind of 300cc 2-stroke probably...
rorider is handling this route very well on his big trailie. Whenever we stop to check the GPS to make sure we're still on the trail, he says he's pretty confident that we're on the right path because this path seems to be fairly well maintained. Someone's been out here with a saw doing some trail maintenance.
Yep, fair point.
We head down this long, narrow, rocky path. It's steep and strewn with rocks, with a severe drop off to one side. And worse of all, there are several tight turns and bends. It's totally sketch-city. In my helmet, I mutter to myself, "thank god, we're just going down. I'd hate to be riding this trail uphill!"
We must have skidded our way about half a km downhill, tires straining to find traction. When we got to level ground, we both did a skidmark check. In our underwear. So gnarly!
The trail starts to close in around us. Suddenly, there are no cut logs and we have to duck fallen trees above us and hop over logs on the ground. It feels like I'm playing a video game. Space bar to jump. X-key to duck. Space bar. X-key. Space bar. X-key.
This is cray-cray!
I check my GPS, thank god we're nearly at the end of the trail, the highway is not too far away.
rorider stops and gets off the bike to check out the trail ahead to make sure its passable.
Sketchy, but what other option is there? We're so close to the end, might as well just grin and bear it and push on.
LOL. Famous last words, right?
We keep on ducking and jumping, pass a mud bog, and then this:
What. The. Hell.
We both stare dumbfounded at the rocky, dry creek bed in front of us. On the other side of the creek bed, there is... no trail. Nothing. Even if we made it across all those boulders, it wasn't possible to ADVance any further.
I check my GPS.
Are you f-n kidding me?!?! We are *LITERALLY* 5 kms away from the highway.
We've just ridden for four hours, we're like 95% of the way done and now the only option is to turn back.
FAAAAAAHK.... I check the time. It's 5:30PM. Unless we can find a bail-out point to another FSR along our route back south we're going to be riding this dirt trail all the way back to the beginning in the dark.
Not. Good.
There's no time to panic or complain, so we turn our bikes around and start heading back the way we came. Suddenly, all the obstacles we passed along the way flooded my memory once again. Mud bog. Duck and Jump Logs. Oh sh!t... that long-*** rocky uphill climb that I was so thankful I didn't have to ride up... I have to ride up it now.
There are no more pictures from this point in. My camera's batteries died and we were too in a rush to get back to stop and change out the batteries. Plus it's too dark to film or take pictures anyway.
We both recall horror stories of people trapped in the BC woods after dark. We're on a deserted dead-end trail that nobody is going to travel down at this time of day. Time was of the essence now, and we needed to at least get to an FSR before dark.
We successfully tackle the mud bog and the trees, but halfway up the rocky hill, my bike stalls and I come to a complete stop. Up ahead, rorider is continually checking up on me in his mirror and he also comes to a stop in front of me in case I need help.
Well, because of me, he forked himself. Turns out, my 250-lb enduro has no problem scrabbling up a hill from a dead stop. The opposite is true for his 450-lb monster. He's spinning that rear wheel in futility, trying to gain traction but the hill is too steep and there's just too many rocks on the ground. After much wheel-spinning, he finally makes the decision to turn the bike around, head down and get another running start at the hill from the bottom. So I climb back on my bike, spin the wheel a bit but manage to make it to level ground about 250m up the hill.
I turn off the bike and wait for rorider to join me.
I wait. And wait. And wait.
Nothing. Oh no.
So I start walking down the hill to see if he's okay.
He's gone down at exactly the same spot we stopped at before, the bike is sideways on the hill. I help him get the bike upright and we reposition his moto so that the rear wheel is off the rocks, and on some dirt instead. I steady the bike and he shifts backwards on the seat to get some traction on the rear. As he gooses the throttle, I get monstered with flying dirt and rocks, while I'm behind the bike trying to push it forward. There's some squirrely fish-tail action as the big KTM threatens to careen off the edge of the trail but rorider manages to right the ship and he leaves me behind in a cloud of dust.
I make the long and arduous uphill trek back to my bike. I readily confess to being waaaay out-of-shape and that super-steep hike just about murdered me. Two wheels + engine > two legs + beer belly.
rorider is waiting there beside my bike and I know I don't have any time to catch my breath. We've just burned through the last 45 minutes of daylight trying to fumble our way up this f-n pile of rocks. It's almost 6:30 now and although there's still a bit of residual daylight from over the horizon, it's officially sunset. I have to let Neda know that we're okay. Out here we have no internet service, but there's a faint cell signal, so I send her a text to let her know the situation and not to worry.
As we continue our uphill scrabble up over the rocky terrain, in the back of my head, I'm wondering maybe I should have included lat/long coordinates in my text? No time to stop and do that, we need to get back to some kind of main road.
That uphill climb seemed to last forever, but finally we reach the top. The dense foliage all around us obscures the sky and makes everything darker and now I'm riding with only the bright LED lights of rorider's 890 in front of me to illuminate the way. The light on my EXC totally sucks and I can't really see what's in front of me, so I have to memorize whatever is in front of roriders bike so if there's anything to avoid, I know to steer around it when I get to that same spot.
I'm panicking a bit, because this is when accidents happen: when you're in a rush and your judgement gets a bit clouded due to fatigue. And hunger. Oh no. We haven't eaten anything but snacks in the last 6 hours or so. I've run out of Cliffs Bars and rorider has no food either. We hadn't planned on an all-day trip. Even my water has run out. I normally fill my 3L camelback to the brim, but I thought "I don't want to carry all this water on my back that I won't even drink since I'll only be out a few hours".
Back when we were staring dumb-founded at the abrupt end of the trail, I checked my fuel situation. I was at half-tank at that point, expecting to fuel up at a gas station just 5kms away. Big Nope now. So now I'm also suffering from acute range anxiety. Wanna hear something funny? Last week, my 15L Acerbis tank came in and I was too lazy to install it. Hilarious, right?
Also... I left my Spot locator at home. It's just a short ride, right?
Goddamn. I've done *EVERYTHING* wrong on this ride. I felt like such a f-n newb rider.
The only correct decision I've made is to pack some warm clothing, and that was only because it was so cold this morning. We got so warm this afternoon; I did not even think I'd be needing to pull out the windbreaker and winter gloves that I stashed in my backpack.
The minute the sun sets around here, the temperature plummets. The thermometer on rorider's 890 TFT display reads 5°C. We stop to put on my windbreaker and warm gloves. The light of our smartphones illuminates both of our helmet's face shields as we send another "Don't worry!" text to our wives.
We eventually reach the first bail-out point on our GPS. We turned off onto it and to our horror, within the first 200m, there's a huge fallen log over the trail and an unmaintained hill climb past it. No go this way.
Check the GPS again, and the next bail-out point is about half-distance the way we came. It's full-on dark now, and when you're this far from the light pollution of any city or town, the stars above us begin to twinkle and shine quite early in the evening.
It's pretty, but the reality of the remoteness we're in is a little bit disconcerting as well... We need to get a move on.
I follow roriders beam of light in front of me. In a moment of absurdity, I think to myself, "I'm riding dirt trails pretty good in the complete dark!"
They say that the worst thing in the world is to stare directly in front of your front tire in the dirt. But now I wasn't staring at *anything* at all! I was just reacting to whatever direction the bike was moving underneath me. Bike gets pushed right, automatically I lean left. Vice versa. It felt very fluid and loose and I got a pretty good zen-like feeling happening. Isn't that weird?
Just to break up this absolute wall of text I'm typing out, if I had taken a picture of where we were, this is what it would look like:
Whenever rorider turns a corner up ahead, his light disappears and I'm completely in the dark, so I flick on my highbeam to see better.
AAAND all of a sudden, my headlight turns on and I can see again!
What the heck? Have my light's been off the entire time?
So it turns out that on the EXC, my headlight is off until you flick the highbeam switch and then it turns on. I've owned this bike for two and a half years but because we never ride in the dark, I've never needed to use the headlights.
I'm having *the* strangest thoughts and revelations while riding blind in the inky blackness of the BC Interior, where people who get lost at night die of exposure all the time.
We round one of the corners and roriders headlights suddenly illuminate the cows we had passed earlier in the day. They were standing right in the middle of trail. Brake lights flash angrily in front of me as rorider skids to a stop in front of a large bovine, who takes a half-step back in surprise.
And then the cow charges at rorider!!!!
Holy Hell. What the Fuggggg??!?!
Thankfuly it was a mock charge and rorider is able to ride away with me right on his tail.
Almost got head-butted by a cow! What other ADVersities are we going to face tonight?!?!
Another hour of riding and we reach the next bail-out point, which finally takes us to an FSR. Ahhhh... off the trail. No more dodging logs and boulders in the dark. Back to graded gravel once again. We're both very relieved. We stop to text our respective wives to let them know not to worry. But there's still another hour or so of FSR riding to take us back to the Hwy. Towards the end, we squint at the headlights of a few oncoming cars which again made us feel a lot safer should anything happen to either of us at this point.
The FSR spits us out on the highway around 9PM. I left home at noon, thinking I'd be back by 6 and now I'm still an hour away from home. However, we're both exhausted, thirsty and hungry. We've been working pretty hard on the bikes despite not having eaten or drunk anything for hours. So we decide to head to a Timmy's about 15 kms away in Vernon. Turns out my bike is also thirsty. My fuel reserve light comes on on the highway. Wow, that was cutting it close!
So happy to be back on the tarmac, headed towards civilization and a large cup of hot chocolate.
Oh My God. What an ADVenture!
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