Taste of Adventure Touring - reduex

Ah, finally, a chance to try out adventure touring on a 'big boy'. After picking up the bike at the shipper and getting it home I knew I had to hit the dirt ASAP and assess my skills and the capabilities of the bike.

Having enjoyed a set of local roads on the DR250 just a couple days ago ( ) I wanted to hit those same roads again but it was pretty late in the day and running the full loop takes about 3 hours, time I did not really have to spare. But if I could find a short-cut street-route to the dirty sections I'd give it a whirl.

Digging around in the tourist brochures we keep handy for visitors I found one from last year that had a decent map of the south county and viola.. it DID show a paved shortcut! The ride was ON! Fired up the GC and headed for the fuel depot. I'm not one for pushing 500 lb. bikes around on dirt roads because I simply ran out of gas... nooo.. not me.

I road out across town into Gorst (trying to keep on the back roads as much as possible considering the bike has no license plate!!! -- plan to fix that today). From Gorst I picked up the Old Belfair Highway (it's on the map heading out of the intersection of State Routes 3 & 16) and headed southwest. It was a pretty quick run out to the turnoff onto Dewatto-Belfair highway that heads East straight past a couple of lakes and into the boonies of Tuhuya State Forest. The last 1/2 of this road I'd never been on before and it turned out to be a one wonderful curve after another! And the best part was the big GC was railing them with ease! It was intoxicating! I should have stopped for a picture or two but the curves (some of them 10 MPH hair-pins) were so excellently spaced and I did not want to disrupt my rythem.

After about 45 min. I had reached the trailhead (so to speak, it's a county road just a primitive one) of North Shore Drive and started to test out the bike. Wow.. talk about squirly!!! The Metzler TOURTEC tires are hardly knobbies and even the DR's tires where skittering around on this road last time out here so it's not a slam on the bike.. it's just a somewhat technical road for a very rusty off-roader.

The sun was getting lower and closer to sinking below the mountains and I had to flip up my tinted visor to see properly. It was not like I was going very fast though and only seldom would get out of first gear (the decent is sort of steep and more than once I accidentaly applied too much rear brake and found the ends trying to swap).

It was a shorter run than the trip on the DR this past Saturday but excellent none the less. It also taught me some lessons about throttle control on a 500 lb dirt machine with lots of power and gobs of torque. Going uphill it was very easy to get the rear end squirming around and spitting rocks like the convery at a quary. All the more fun I thought! Tried out some Ham-hoc (planting your foot and turing around it) cornering and it was easier than I thought it might be although I did more boot sliding than planting (I need to work back upto that regardless of the bike).


As the sun set over the mountains I stopped one last time to snap a picture of my new pal and take in the beauty that is the Pacific Norhtwest, and thankful to have the opportunity to experience joys such as this.

I've definitaly found another hobby!!!!