Dual Sport Ride

Saturday, July 23, I rode a dual sport ride organized by Northwest Adventure Riders and sponsored by the Portland KTM dealer:  http://mysite.ncnetwork.net/nwadvriders/default.html.  I trucked my dual sport bike over to a friends house and then we loaded his bike and went to the start of the ride at the KTM dealer.  Here is a picture of my Kawasaki KLX 250s:

After a free hot breakfast, we got started about 0830 and headed towards Mt Hood national forest.  Of the 15 bikes on the ride, mine had the smallest engine by almost half.  There was one 450 cc KTM, and the rest were mostly "adventure" bikes.  These are large displacement bikes designed to travel anywhere in the world over any kind of road, paved or not.  They often have around 100 horsepower and can make great time on paved roads.  However, off road they are tall and heavy and not very agile.  So, in the first part of the ride heading towards the forest on paved roads I had to wring the neck of my little KLX to keep up with the big guys, especially since they were far exceeding the speed limits.  Once we got to the off road sections my bike and my many years of dirt riding experience made me feel right at home.  Here is a picture at one of the lakes we went by.  The bike in the foreground is one of those adventure bikes......a KTM 990.  Mt Hood is in the background.  There is still plenty of snow up in the high country and, in fact, our route had to be modified at one point because the road was still buried under snow.

A large part of the off road section was the historic Barlow Road.  This is the original part of the Oregon Trail that got the immigrants around the falls that were keeping them from floating all the way down the Columbia River to the Willamette Valley.  In fact, we came upon a group reenacting the Mormon Handcart expedition.  This was a group of Mormons who, in the 1800's tried to push and pull handcarts across the prairies to the promised land, which I think was in Utah, not Oregon.  Anyway, these modern "pioneers" were probably Mormons also, who were doing their part to keep their traditions alive.  The original handcart party had a terrible time of it and got stuck over the winter and almost starved to death.  Maybe some did.  Even the modern reenactors didn't look like they were having much fun.  They were hauling handcarts over what was a barely passable jeep road.  But it was a great road for us off-road motorcyclists.

I ended up getting back to the KTM dealership around 5:30 after a total of 238 miles.  This was what dual sport riding is all about and I had a great ride.  I should be able to post more pictures as the NW adventure riders website gets them up.

Here's one of me:

The Mormons

Unfortunately, no handcarts in this picture.



The snow blocking our route