22 Aug S.M.A.R.T. Ride 2014
Sunday, August 17
You could cut the humidity with a knife! It was thick and much hotter today… we’d been blessed to not experience this heat until the middle of August.. I’ll take it!
Luckily, the humidity would lift and the temps seemed to cool off a bit. Today it would be just three of us in our group…
BigDog given us a big DingWeed’s “WAAaaHhoooo!”
RoadDad… ready to ride..
And ride we did…
The riding was good.. and the dust would rear it’s ugly head, so we’d spread out.. I kept riding and just couldn’t see BigDog’s dust tail, he must be hauling… Then I came up to this really neat display of old, authentic farm equipment, this was such a cool place..
I began looking around when I hear a bike coming.. it was BigDog! He must of stopped to smell the roses or something.. but he was back with us..
RoadDad knew what a lot of this equipment was… and he’d share how some of this stuff was used back in the day.
Let’s take a look around..
I saw BigDog eye balling this for his new rear sprocket… haha!
Back on the trail.. man the riding was good. A lot of awesome riding.. great stretches of rugged ATV type trails, some that just went on and on, back through conservation areas… it was great! Several miles later, I stop and tell RoadDad that I haven’t seen BigDog in a looong while, and thought it was odd he hasn’t stopped after some of these sections. RoadDad agreed. We came up to a gas station and looked around.. no BigDog. We sat there for a while and decided maybe he was just up the way waiting for us.. we said that a few times and he never was. Finally we said, lets wait for a bit, eat a snack and see if he shows up… man that BigDog can hunt! He tracked us down….
He had gotten off route for a bit.. then stopped to top off, luckily he was able to catch us pretty quick. In hindsight, we should of waited a bit longer for him the first time we stopped.. he would of backtracked to find us or came up behind. Lesson learned!
All of us stopped and ate some Trail Mix.. then decided to skip lunch and eat a late one back at Bixby General Store… so we put some miles in!
Ending our day back at Bixby, we all ordered the daily special.. chicken, mash tatoes, gravy & corn.. funny thing was, Bridget had forgotten to give RoadDad his chicken.. he thought it was hidden under the tatoes and gravy.. but it wasn’t!! We laughed and she brought him his chicken. apologizing of course!
RoadDad has some 75,xxx miles on his 2008 WR250R.. said he hasn’t had to do any major maintenance to the bike at all.. just the normal wear-and-tear items and the well-known fuel pump issue. He’s been to the west coast, east coast, up to Boston and pretty much every planned ride he can get to..
What a great time it was.. I really enjoy riding with my buddy BigDog.. and got to know RoadDad a bit more. As a side note, I really enjoy riding with the “older” guys, I love hearing all the stories, try to gain some wisdom from them and see how they treat others, ride their bikes, tips and tricks on adventure riding.. there’s no attitudes, no one tries to one-up the other, just enjoy hanging out and riding. Same goes for DingWeed, theres so much I learned from him riding the UTBDR last year.. I’m grateful to have friends like these guys! I’m just hoping they will still be riding when I retire!!
We made it back to basecamp…
BigDog was heading out west to ride in Montana with DingWeed.. so he asked if I’d take his KTM 690 back to my house since he didn’t want to haul two bikes out there. He’d ride his trusty, proven WR250R.. what he always calls his “good bike” haha! So we loaded her up in my MotoVan…
All nice and snug.. don’t worry BigDog.. she made it back..
And as part of the deal he said I could ride it as much as I wanted as long as I wash her and do some chain maintenance.. NO PROBLEM!! I cleaned it up real nice.. and took it for a little ride!
The ride was a blast.. and I think Sieg said look for it again next year.. and I will!
My video trailer of the ride is coming soon! Enjoy.
Side Note: This was my first ride with a new camera. Photos and video shot with a Nikon CoolPix P7800. I’ve gone on a camera diet, downsizing to as little gear needed to get the job done without giving up too much in quality. Thus far I really like the camera for my adventure trips! As a test, no post-production editing was done on the photos or video. I’ll have a review of the camera at a later date.
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