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More video from Taste of Dakar 2017 of friends! Enjoy! https://youtu.be/rHoT4BE1DQE

Had the chance to ride some Northern California Single tracks up in Mendocino National Forest Upper Lake. Loved it up there! Challenged by single tracks, forest roads and some technical sections. Came across some good decents and climbs! This one in particular was a good one. At this point in the ride your are abit tired. My fitness is good at best, judgment (well not all of the time!) But for this weekend warrior I love when it all comes together. When I approached the hill I stopped and thought about all the "training" and coaching from friends. In particular Jimmy Lewis and Heather's points a few years back. This muscle memory is important. Insert word cloud here (on the pegs, stay in control, light on the bars, light on the levers, look well ahead, slow is fast, dont't wreck the bike you need to ride it home )Know your bike, know your abilities and one day you will have the "aha" moment. I probably over think things too much! During the ride the Sena and Gopro did not pickup what I was actually thinking in my head. I was chasing a 250 and 450 down this single track. Probably my first mistake or was it? anyone else have "calculated downhills to share? https://youtu.be/5vWwAvShvIE

A little link to the article and video I made of AltRider's Taste of Dakar. A seriously good time.

I wanted to share with our members a bit of a progress report on how far we've come in just two years. It was our objective to create an online community that was all about big adventure bikes that had a user experience unique to anything else out there and I'm extremely proud that many of you have found that to be the case and have chosen to make your ADV home here with us. Facebook is fun but it's still a mile wide and an inch deep and isn't the best place to ensure your adventures persist beyond a day or two or even get the kind of in-depth commentary and sharing that only can happen here at a forum. I felt that due to the fact that big adventure bikes are built for different purposes that it deserved its own forum. I made the choice on day one of my adventure motorcycling experience to ride "beyond Starbucks" but as funny as that sounds and as popular as it became, it still attracted a lot of flack from riders who just didn't "get it." I just realized the other day that in two years of our community, we have yet to have a single member (aside from spam bots) booted, let alone even given a single infraction! The reason why is people here simply respect each other because we're coming from a similar experience. That kind of quality is what we set out to accomplish and I thank you for showing up to provide so much of that. I also want to share some measures of our performance and put that up against other industry media for comparison. A few months ago I got what was probably the highest compliment I've ever heard and that was from an industry insider who said "I've been in this industry about 25 years and I've never seen any brand go as far and as fast as XLADV has in such a short time." By the way, "domain authority" is a score from 1-100 that sort of rates a site's stature online. Google and Facebook are 100. Instagram is 98. This type of success will continue to drive a lot of new opportunities for us in terms of gear to test, press launch participation and hopefully paying ad clients! You may notice we run these ads from Google AdSense but those only get us pennies a day and aren't really enough to even keep the lights on. We're at the point now, however, that it does pay to advertise with XLADV given the extended reach we now have with our social media (#1 on Instagram). I think our community is strong and will continue to grow. I am proud of the "cred" we have achieved calling things like we see them as well as knowing a good thing when we see it. I'm also proud to have helped numerous round-the-world travelers acquire critical gear, helped out of jams & found a place to stay on their journeys. So if you like what you see then please invite a friend to join our community. Post some photos of your recent trip. Ask a question. Show us how you set up your bike. Then share it on Facebook. Thank you!