Sorry for being late to the thread I started, but I had some work to catch up on after this ride!
Epic routes and fun people always make for an awesome weekend on two wheels!
On day one, I got into with a rather large mud puddle about two thirds of the way through Buckeye Rd. I was out in front on the 950 ADV clipping along at a decent pace. I tried to go around the edge of the puddle which had about 10" of width above water, but ran out of talent and lost the front end when a fallen tree branch cut the 10" to about the width of my front tire near the end of the puddle (more of a pond actually
. I made the mistake of deciding to wear "street gear" which consisted of work boots, shorts, t-shirt all under my stich. I've never crashed the 950 before and somehow my left foot got smashed under the left side passenger peg. I thought I may have broken my foot at first and it took me several minutes to even get up. The group caught up by that time but I was miserable enough that no one seems to have taken a picture of the crash scene unfortunately. After 20 minutes or so I was feeling ok enough to continue on but I took it down a notch as I couldn't put much weight on that foot the rest of the day. Note to self, if riding the 950 off road, wear motocross boots.
We got to our fabulous "resort" as the sun was going down. The place was great. Its called Sierra Pines Resort in fabulous Sierra City. They've got a restaurant, bar, outside seating with a fish pond and "rustic" accommodations that I thought were all great. Its also right on a small river that you can walk down to and you can hear it from the rooms which was nice.
Derek had twisted his ankle the week before so we were both hobbling around by the time we got to the "resort".
The trout pond
My bike after its first crash. Could have been much worse and I technically made it past the puddle before "I had to lay her down" so its not that muddy.
View across the road from the "resort".
The next day we did another great route that was about 1.5 hours too long for my foot. We went from Sierra City over towards Graeagle, and then to some other small towns that I forget and ultimately to Oroville and then back up the hill toward Quincy and back to the hotel. I think the consensus was to cut Oroville out of the ride next year and stay in the mountains. But it was another great day of riding. It was all pavement as I remember and several folks switched bikes. I got a turn on the fz1 which after riding the 950 felt like riding a scalpel. Windsor was the man for taking that thing offroad! I didn't get any pics this day.
Day 3 was scheduled to be a "day by a lake" with an optional hike. My foot was not going for a hike. It looked like this on day 3
