Dirt Roads and Mountain Air

My first experience on the off Road

I would like to start off by saying me and dirt roads have never gotten along overly well. Somehow, I always seem to end up with the rubber not where it belongs, but like most things in my life if it causes me fear or anxiety I run straight toward it. So naturally I purchased an Africa Twin, a bike made for the off road. What I didn’t purchase though was a set of off road tires, so you get some of the things you need like suspension and breaking power, but not max traction that you would want on a one land road covered in boulders.

Now to most adventure riders this road would seem rather basic but for me it was my first test of trust with amazing machine. At first the road was what I remembered it being, which was a gravel road leading to some hiking trails near Eldora, CO. It’s started getting rocky with some tight corners and what you would expect from a mountain road which was drop off on one side, hill on the other. There were several vehicles coming down so it got pretty tight trying to get around each other. Well I was chugging along strong keeping up to Charlie, Andrew, and Louise until it happened. I was coming up a steep inclineh into a blind corner. I wasn’t concerned, I picked my line wide because of some giant rocks tight in the corner, but then a Jeep came hauling around the corner and I had 3 options. First -option fly off the cliff to my eminent doom; Second - barrel into the front of the Jeep the ideal path I was headed on the bike; or Third go over the large rocks I was trying to avoid on my road tires. Well I did what I was taught “when in doubt throttle out”, I hammered down and about half way over the large boulder I went down. The bike fell in quite an awkward position, as they always do, and I couldnt get on the side of the bike I needed to in order to pick it up by myself. It took 2 random people helping me to pick up the bike up and be on my way.


I road around a could more bends before I parked the bike to take a breather. Pickup up a bike in that condition is pretty exhausting. I sat for a few minutes when Charlie came barreling around the corner, checking to see what was taking me so long. He parked his BMW and pulled it out the kickstand to turn it around but being on the hill posed problematic and in a flash of an eye his GS1200 was now on its side. I was laughing till I realized I would have to help him pick his up. Shit I had just regained my strength. Well we got both bikes standing an oriented in the right direction and we were off with the words “there’s a pretty burley hill coming into camp so watch out”. Echoing in my head. When we got to camp Charlie anticipated I would Park it and have him ride it over, but I decided fuck it. Yolo. So I hammered it out and this time I made it over the obstacle to my objective!