Off Roading

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.

We had a tremendously fun time exploring the area around Adair’s Wildernis Lodge.

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). At least on the front wheel. In the rear it’s slightly more. Incidentally this is leads to a whistle of a bout 440hz around 45 mph (~72 km/h). Since the rear wheel is slightly different, you end up with a dissonant whistle of slightly different frequencies when riding. So while I am making my way up to DirtDaze at Lake Luzerne, my bike is trying to summon Shadowfax (Gandalf uses a whistle like that to get his attention).]