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Just put together a quick video from my ride. I rented a brand new Triumph Tiger XCA 800 form Maverick Motorsports in Missoula, MT. The price is really far, the customer service is above any motorcycle shop I have ever been to. I rode the bike to Blue Mountain just outside of Missoula. What a great riding area the trails are well marked and clean. I'm a So Cal local so to see trail signs that aren't tagged up and trash every where, was amazing to me. In order to keep this pristine don't tell anyone about this place. Here is a link to the video on my site http://sirsquarters.com/ride-around-blue-mt-on-a-triumph-xca/ Let me know what you guys think.

Man, you're not kidding about practice! If I'm off for more than a week I start forgetting and needing to practice.

The Swedes just put together their video...

Adventure training never stops! It's why we ride. You can learn something new every time.You can push yourselves as far as you want. Each class or Instructor can teach you something new every time. I've taken a mix of street and dirt classes all in the same summer and learned a ton. It's all what you want to get out of it. Obviously a little time in the gym working on strength and core training helps out. Just ask Eric Hall on Flex Fridays[emoji3][emoji123]

any school will have good and bad points, the real trick is to put the concepts to use in practice and develop them into what works for you. Just like in school not everyone learns the same way and takes the same things away from a lesson, moto schools are the same way. So any school you choose will probably be good, just keep up the practice after, or it'll be like the spanish I learned in high school....

Yep. Spot and Comfortable shoes! But my intention was to demonstrate that with the right training you will increase your chances for a positive outcome. Rote and repetition they're good for something.

The problem with schools is that they are just that: schools. For a first time or novice dirt rider they are an excellent introduction, learning in a class setting with other riders at the same pace is great at first. The problem for me at any rate was the classes I've been to tend to repeat one another or overlap if you will. I've recovered a stalled adv on the side of a hill at least 3 times and I expect to do it at any basic class that I attend anymore. That's where some of the major players such as Jimmy Lewis begin to really shine. Many of them offer a group rate if you and a few buddies go in together and generally you can get tailored lessons to suit you and your buddies' abilities so you aren't spending so much time on the basics. It also depends on how you actually "learn" something, a lot of training tends to focus on what we call "muscle memory" where we will practice a certain skill over and over until it becomes second nature. This can and WILL help you in time of need as you will not have to THINK, you will ACT thereby saving your miserable hide and possibly preventing injury, damages or death. My problem, which I believe is more common than not is the time I actually have to ride. I generally get Thursday or Fridays to ride so almost no one is available to practice with and my weekends are filled with all the usual mundanities such as running our business, shopping for same or some other non-motorcycle related activity since my Wife does not ride nor does she seem to desire to. As a consequence I can only ride lone wolf so self sufficiency and responsibility are probably my watchwords. Having ran out of both in addition to common sense last December I got to put theory into practice and hike out 12+ miles in hard Moto boots in the cold to where I could finally get service and call my Wife to come get me. We ended up using the famous Samoan Brother-In-Law from the islands retrieval method on the bike the next day and I learned a few lessons. But the point was because of training and repetition I had given myself the best chance for success in spite of my lack of judgement in getting myself stuck in the first place and I managed to get myself out (and the bike turned around at least) because of the muscle memory training that I had done beforehand. Not as optimal as not being there in the first place but since I had managed the basics of training I wasn't a casualty.

May 23 Day 25 The hammock was great and slept like a baby all night. Packed up and left Don Pedro lake headed east on 120 towards the Tioga pass. https://vimeo.com/167839951 Tioga pass was awesome but got down to 45 degrees for a while but just a beautiful ride the whole way. 120 ends at 395 and I hooked it north towards Bridgeport in search of travertine hot springs, and after a little searching and asking I finally found it. Travertine Hot Springs is a very cool place. Hot water just bubbles out of the ground flows through tiny rivers 2-10 inches wide and fills up these steaming pools. I found that spring in the middle of a field a ways away from the other people in the park and had a nice soak. After a bit I dried off suited back up and headed north on 395 again going to make my way west over one of the passes, which ever is open and closest Tioga, Monarch or Luther pass. It's raining pretty hard here in Walker where I've got a room for the night, so I'm sure it's snowing on the passes. If they are all closed I'm sure I can make it north around Tahoe to 80 and West towards Santa Rosa worst case. Oh yeah and in either Bridgeport or Lee Vining I saw this wild Adventure machine I hung around for a little bit and tried to see if the owner would turn up and talk but no luck and after 10 or so minutes I moved on. That Honda had stickers on it from all over North and South America. I was pretty bummed I did not get a chance to meet the owner.

May 18 Day 20 I packed up at the KOA and headed north on mountain highway 99 which is just incredible twisties most of the way. Unfortunately we had the first casualty of the journey... The little guy just ran out before I could react and that was that. Within 2 miles of mounting back up I passed my first cattle on the road. I was surprised that cows were allowed to walk on a road with such a steep drop off into the raging river below. A little after the cattle I passed a pretty cool little waterfall I entered southern sequoia and found an awesome little alpine road 23S16 and turned down it and just kept going because the riding was incredible. Boulders all over the road which was thick with a mat of pine needles. The surface beneath wasn't asphalt but something else nice and grippy. It made for an extremely fun ride at a good clip through some pretty cool places I've got more pics of this little jaunt but the camera is charging right now so I can't wifi them over to my phone. After a while I backtracked my way out realizing I had killed at least an hour in the wrong direction though it was great riding I still had not seen any truly gigantic trees yet. So I got back on mountain highway 99 and headed north got turned around for a bit near jonsondale but pulled out the trusty butler map and figured it out. From mountain highway 99 I headed north again on the m90 which becomes 190 after a good bit of twisties. 190 turned west and is awesome up to Portervill then it's still nice but not as scenic, north again on 65 which is long and straight with traffic lights but there's all sorts of local fruit for sale along the roadside and I picked up five of the best blood oranges I've ever had for $1.03 with a giant bucket of cherries for $5.00. I don't have a pic of the cherries because I literally put them between my belly and tank bag and ate them on the rest of 65 and beginning part of 198 up to Kaweah lake area. Damn good snack for the road if you ask me. I've got a video of that Somewhere I'll post later on. Somewhere along the way I stopped at the trail of 100 giants, which was closed but as soon as I cut my engine I heard a 45 second long thunderous cracking crashing sound that ended with an actual earth shaking crash. The park ranger stationed at the trail head to prevent people from sneaking on explained that was a full sized sequoia being felled because it had died and was a risk to other trees around it. The sound had been the tree tipping crashing through the canopy shattering and cascading downhill. I found it sad to realize I had just heard the end of a multi thousand year old giant sequoia, but also glad that there are people who protect the remaining trees and lucky to have heard such a rare event... A fully grown sequoia falling in the forest. I wonder how rare an event that actually is. The ranger was cool after I told him where all I had been and let me cross the road and run just a couple yards into the forest and snap a pic. 198 turned into twisties just a little after Kaweah lake and took me into central Sequoia to the hospital flats campground which is small secluded and right down by the river. It had clean bathrooms and a big outdoors slop sink to wash your pots out in. I set up camp, ate my blood oranges talked to some nice people around the camp ground and a bunch of teenage boys who liked the jawbone beak ornament on Furiosa. An older guy who was also from NJ and here to do one of the big hikes through the giant forest. And a guy from Texas came over to take a picture of Furiosa and I to send to his buddy back home who also rides a bimmer. Still one of the best aspects of traveling is the people you meet. May 19 Day 21 I had wanted to sleep in just a little bit this day but was woken up by an arguing couple at the site next to mine. It was pretty much the first bad morning I have had on the trip, but the good side is I just wanted to get away from that bs so I packed up and headed towards the giant forest 17 miles north of my camp site. The bad side was I had forgotten to turn on my spot tracker for the first time. I entered the giant forest and was awestruck by the size of the trees. Unfortunately the camera just can't do justice to the enormity of the sequoias when your up close to them. I spent some time relaxing under one of the largest ones and pulled out my map to pick a route towards the coast. I pulled out my butler map and decided San Simeon would be a good spot on the coast to shoot for then work my way north up the 1 for a day or two. So I headed west on 198 to 180 to 41 south to 46 east to the 1. At 3:54 pacific standard time, after 21 consecutive days on the road I had reached the coast and officially crossed the United States of America traveling solo by way of motorcycle. What an epic moment to see that incredible Pacific blue expanse. I felt suddenly exhausted as if the cumulative fatigue of the journey had finally hit me. I pulled off at the first campground along the 1 and set up camp, cooked up some beefaroni + ravioli and decided to actually sleep in for a change in the morning. Just before bed I met an older guy named Larry who is from Carmel. He called me a modern day cowboy and wished me safe travels and told me Big Sur would be crowded and that I would probably have more luck in Monterey or Carmel. He also warned me of the construction on the Bixby bridge which I had badly wanted to photograph. I wanted to text some friends and family and tell them I had reached the coast but had no service, so I updated my journal and called it an early night. May 20 Day 22 Finally I got to sleep in until 930! I packed up my camp relaxed in my Hammock in the morning sunshine until 11 or so then headed out north on the 1. About 20 minutes north I pulled over at the elephant seal viewing area, parked in the bike section, and was pretty shocked to see hundreds maybe thousands of elephant seals resting on the beach, honking at each other sporadically. Seeing he seals was an unexpected gem of the journey. I had no idea I would see those incredible creatures and so close in such huge numbers just sunning lazily. It was a great start to the day. Then on my way back to the bike I met a French guy about my age who was on his way from KC to Argentina on his Super Tenere. He had already mounted up and was about to pull out so we only talked for maybe 3-5 minutes but he seemed like an interesting guy and spoke great English. I just wish I had gotten his social media information to follow his journey. I mounted back up and headed north again towards Big Sur had some traffic through the twisties which was a little frustrating but not horrible. Big Sur was cool but crowded, no campgrounds had open tent sites and everything was no vacancy, a gas station I stopped at was even out of gas! Another 30-40 miles north into Carmel I decided to get a room, shower up, get some diner and take advantage of some wifi. Nice little cabin for 160 at the Carmel resort inn between first and second street. I called up and scheduled the 18k mile service and new tires at Santa Rosa BMW on the 25th giving me time to head inland to see Yosemite and maybe check out travertine hot springs which Madelinn had recommended to me back in Joshua Tree. I spent an hour waking around downtown Carmel looking for food everything here is either way to fancy or like weird crystals, wine tasting, art galleries, hand crafted Himalayan silver yuppy places and I didn't meet any nice people in the entire hour of walking around. Don't get me wrong I'm all about being who you are but this was the first time I felt like an outsider during the entire trip. Finally I found a burger place. 400 degree burgers I believe it was called. Turned out this too was some sort of ultra cultured burger place. I got a bison burger fries and a coke for 21 bucks! Seemed a little steep to me. It was damn good though. Headed back to my room to update you guys and check out the map to plan out the next few days.