In a fortunate turn of events, I had the opportunity to participate in the DRE as well as the Ducati Adventure Tour last week. While it certainly was quite hot in Italy during the days (35-40 degrees C), it was still a couple of very enjoyable days.
The initial training (DRE) happened in the fields around Castle of Nipozzano. The tour took us a couple of hundred miles through Tuscany. Every day had nice double and single track routes, beautiful scenery, and some fun road riding.
This year I went up to the Fundy Adventure Rally in NB. Heading up I decided to use a truck, which ended up being a good thing ;) More on that further down. It was scary driving her up into the truck ;) We had a tremendously fun time exploring the area around Adair’s Wildernis Lodge. deep in the woods exhausting ride in deep sand along the beach but really nice company Marc in the background: Wait, picture first!
Ready to go Once again it was time for a week of banging the bike through dense forests and fun dirt trails in NY. Following a slightly different route compared to last year, it took me about the same time, but at least I wasn’t riding in the rain: (https://www.myrouteapp.com/en/social/route/1014456?mode=share) Done setting up my new tent First night's campfire As a nice surprise @Steve_kamrad brought the two wheel drive REV’IT (check out a video here) adventure bike: two wheel drive bike!
This was the weekend of the Berkshire Big Adventure event. So I got together with a bunch of my meetup friends and we drove down there.
Unfortunately my gopro batteries got very wet and consequently also very dead. So I don’t have a whole ton of footage, but here are some of the highlights:
Venturing into off road territory was a little bit of an adventure for me. Battling the elements with 200 miles of riding in heavy rain, only to be followed by a couple of days in hot sun and dusty trails. Both physically and mentally challenging days make for a good sleep, even in a small tent.
[Nerdy intro, skip if you want: 1.8in (4.67cm) That’s the distance between the knobs on my new off road tires (scorpion rally II).