A GREAT Divide Pandemic Adventure

[wheel_muse]

Thanks, Josh, for the extended-play ride report. Lots of riding, lots to enjoy vicariously. Your ride inspires us.

Thanks for making the effort and sharing a most excellent adventure!!

 

[berth]

Yes, indeed, thanks for letting us tag along.

And, also, a belated welcome home. Glad you're home safe.

 

[Spitfire44]

What a great adventure. Thanks for taking the time to post. Thoroughly enjoyed the write up. This one is on my bucket list.

 

[GreenHornet]

I'm glad to share it, and thanks for the props. I guess there's one more post to go.

I was ready for the final push and in good spirits, but the day was young. I got rolling by around 5:30 and while it was still dark, rode past the site of an overturned semi. Then the wind started picking up and the rain came. Eventually, I was getting blown sideways and it was raining so hard I could barely see the road in front of me. I didn't get the full days tracks from my inReach mini. Not sure if it shut down on it's own because of the rain or if I shut it off by accident. But it shouldn't have run out of battery because it seemed to last more than a day. At least at the lower tier plan interval. I think one marker every 10 minutes. For the trip I had upped my plan to the highest one and was marking every 2 minutes.

Eventually the rain thinned out and I kept seeing signs for Hwy 20 closure. For some reason, I thought it was just in the other direction not both. Eventually, I ended up here

Although I was done with adventure, adventure wasn't done with me. I saw this forest service road and asked if it bypassed the closure. The guy was pretty cool and he said something like: I've heard if you follow this road number to that road number eventually in 5 or 7 miles I've heard it comes back out on the other side of the closure.
I figured after all my adventure experience, I could handle a logging road.
Then it got foggy

Really foggy

Eventually, I made it back to hwy 20 where there was no traffic and the roads were nice and twisty.
By midday I found myself near the 5 and for a few reasons I decided to just take the 5 the rest of the way. The first reason is that this part of Hwy 20 didn't come out near Clear Lake but in Oregon and would drop me onto the 101 which would be a better ride but take much longer. The second is that the weather wasn't very nice so it took some of the pleasure out of the riding and the last was I'd been on the road 3 weeks and was just trying to race home.

So after the crappiest meal of my trip I headed for the freeway

Near Shasta

Total miles traveled were almost 6500

I think the Dunlop Tralmax Mission tires were the right choice. They saw all sorts of terrain, and for sure in a few sections I'd have had it a bit easier with a more dirt aggressive tire, for the majority of the time they were just fine. Also, they are much nicer on pavement than even the Motoz Tractionator Adventures.
I ended up with about 81% left on the front and 56% left on the rear

Thanks for riding along if you made it this far. It's been fun reliving the adventure now that I'm back to the old pandemic grind

 

[SFMCjohn]

thanks for one of the best BARF Adventure Riding ride reports, ever!

so psyched to maybe do the CO section, someday, myself, now ...

 

[berth]

Although I was done with adventure, adventure wasn't done with me. I saw this forest service road and asked if it bypassed the closure. The guy was pretty cool and he said something like: I've heard if you follow this road number to that road number eventually in 5 or 7 miles I've heard it comes back out on the other side of the closure.
I figured after all my adventure experience, I could handle a logging road.

And he 'splained it all to us how we was supposed to get to Telluride, which is fifty miles away by way of the regular highway, however, there was a shortcut but unless we had drove the Black Bear Road before, we'd better be off to stay, stay in bed and sleep late. (Pay no attention to the gitar there.)

That tennis ball has seen some lovin'.

 

[GreenHornet]

Somthing like this available at any hardware store should fix that one
And prevent the other one from braking later..

I went to the Home Despot with my new bracket to try and get an L bracket for fortification. The issue is that the AltRider bracket isn't a right angle so the steel L bracket won't line up. This requires some kind of fabrication to fortify the corners.