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Hi there, I just got back form the KTM rally in Crested Butte, CO. Definitely was a great time. A few shameless plugs for XLADV around the campfire helped me remember what I should do when I get home! I hope to have some more adventures with some of you in the future. For now, here's some nice scenery from CB this weekend.

My front rim, I know its not bad, been that way since I bought the bike couple yrs ago, found a new pre owned Excell 1.85 with stainless spokes somebody bought from Woodys and never used, they are selling their bike so I got the rim at a good price, first thing was to take the old rim off the hub kind of looks like a mechanical spider with a few legs missing Next was to install the new spokes and lace the new rim, pretty straight forward after I realized which spoke goes on top, then installed the wheel back on the bike to snug up the spokes Actually got the new rim trued better buy sight than the old one was, now I just have to wait for my favorite white truck to deliver my new truing stand, torque wrench, tire, tubes, chain, chain tool and I'm going to try the glass beads for balancing, will continue post when my goodies arrive, and will do a review on my choice of new tools, Happy Trails Gary

I'm in PDX and always riding. I love the Olympic Peninsula and Gifford Pinchot up there and I love Mount Hood down here.

Hey Ross, It was great meeting and riding with you at the High Sierra. Another training opption is October 16th-17th BlackSwanMoto.com is doing it's full 2 day class at SongDog ranch CA. check it out I think it cost $595 includes all your meals for the weekend. Mike Lust Phx,AZ

Are the pieces over the ears pretty thin? Only thing I am annoyed about with my new MSR helmet is that my Oakleys won't sit on my nose with the helmet on.

Got this great compliment from a guy I met this weekend, he said something to the effect: "I wouldn't have made you out for a BMW dude..." He rides a BMW F800GS and I'd told him I have a GSA.

I have a LOT of great video! I mentioned there's footage of my little "off." That should be fun to watch again and again; maybe even in slo-mo! I have to say what an AMAZING bunch of people those KTM folks are. This is my first time at a KTM rally and not to bash my BMW friends too much, but they are clearly a different breed of people altogether. I'd say the distribution of age was younger and the off-road ability was much higher, but I think that's simply explained by the style of bikes each mfg makes. I saw a LOT of friends and familiar faces there too. It was great to catch up and network, etc... The KTM folks, particular Jammi Robertson, were truly exceptional. They were very committed, VERY interested in being there and all of them had huge smiles on their faces the whole time. You could tell they were very proud! I did what I would call an advanced big bike route or an intermediate small bike route. This is how KTM described it: This is a moderate difficulty route with mix of pavement and easy two track. The from Taylor Park to Pitkin over Cumberland Pass is a wide gravel road, expect car traffic. Food and Gas is available in Pitkin. The route after Pitkin follows mellow two track through Pine and Aspen forests. There are no particularly hard sections but the navigation can be tricky with lots of ranching roads criss crossing. Uh huh. Dude, this was hard! Fun-hard though and not bad-hard. There were quite a few technical sections and long steep loose hills. I did have some trouble on the steepest hill but made it up with a bit of help from a racing legend, Mike Lafferty. He said "c'mon man! you gotta sit down to keep the rear wheel planted!" He was a hero when he took his rear brake lever off his 1190 R for another ride who broke his. Big sacrifice, but for a pro like Mike it was no sweat. I could not get the XLADV project 990 out there for the event (sadly) but did do the route on Woody's "franken-GS" he loaned me. It has 21/18" wheels and no racks so it's relatively light. I had a full knob on the front (D606?) and a Karoo 3 on the back. My only complaint was that the GS is already geared taller than my GSA and the rear 18 makes that even taller, so the steep uphill climbs required a lot more momentum to get over. I did get in quite a few good water bar jumps though. I did end up camping (because I'm a man ) and that was very cool (Brian Englund was in a hotel ). It was a half mile or so up the road though, but a fantastic view as you can see from the pics. Woody and I found some free wood scraps near where we ate dinner Thu night, so we put that in a big plastic tub and that was our campfire Sat night. Temps were about 36 the first night (not too bad) and then closer to freezing the second night with LOTS of frost. Woody insisted on sleeping in the open truck bed instead of pitching a tent and he regretted that, as he ended up inside the cab in the wee hours. Vendor-wise you'll see from the vid (to come) everyone who was there. My favorite booth was the Rottweiler Performance booth because all their goodies that make the bike go faster, give more power and make it sound so cool. They had their new Endurocell fuel system solution there that got a lot of attention. The food was really good too, especially Friday's dinner. I wish I could have stayed for Saturday's dinner but we had to get back to Denver. I'd say at $165 for the average Joe, it was a very good value. I wish BMW Motorrad would do their own event like this. That's it for a quick re-cap. I'll post more as it materializes, along with a video...