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Touratech Rally 2015 Plain Washington June 25th to 28th


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This will be my first attempt at a ride report so if my ramble doesn't make any sense or I can't hold a story line for any length of time, that would be entirely accurate of my personality....Squirrel!

 

First let me give you a little background about myself. I have been riding motorcycles my whole life. I started in a dirt at four years old on an Indian 50cc. 

 

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I have ridden street bikes, atv's side by sides but I keep coming back to dirt bikes. When I bought my 2008 Husky Te450 I was excited to be back on a dirt bike but I was a little disappointed by how horrible is was on the road. Over the last few years my dirt biking has mostly consisted of chasing my kids around on their dirt bikes. I figured that I should try an adventure bike as I surely could keep up with them on it and it should be better on road. About three months ago I purchased a 2015 KTM 1190 Adventure R. My first few miles off road scared the crap out of me. I quickly overcame this fear and found that I forgot that I was on a 500lb bike. 

 

I found out about the Tourtech rally on another forum, I tried to find people to travel with but it seemed like everything fell through. I chose to trailer my bike down as i hadn't gotten around to figuring out luggage for my bike and i had plans the following week and I wasn't going home in between. 

 

 

 

The rally was in Plain Washington which for me coming from Canada is an hour south and about two hours east through Stevens Pass. Stevens Pass is a very scenic drive through the Cascade mountains if I'm not mistaken it reaches altitudes of about 6000 ft. A very nice drive on a motorcycle. Plain Washington is a tiny little town about 15 miles from Leavenworth.

 

The Rally it self was really quite impressive and Touratech did a great job of organizing the whole thing. The weather forecast was ridiculously hot(for us Canadian folk). Tourtech gave out water, Gatorade and drove around camp to make sure everyone was hydrated. They had over 500 motorcycle rides in addition to the overland people, I would estimate there were over 800 people in attendance. There were 88 vendors, a mixture of motorcycle and truck people.

 

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 Touratech sent out all the GPS routes a few days ahead so everyone would have the opportunity to load them before attending the event. I Thought I would meet up with others from XLADV and i kept a sharp lookout for Rainer runner's 1190 but there were so many people there it was impossible. Since I'm a big baby when it comes to the heat i quickly befriended a local KTM 990 rider who brought his air conditioned trailer. Touratech did a great job of arranging clinics and providing great visuals so that riders could talk to ride leaders about the terrain they would be facing when they signed up for the organized rides. Since I mentioned before that I am a big baby when it comes to the heat my new found friend, his wife and i came up with the plan that we were going to get up extra early and follow some of the GPS tracks to get a head start on the rides before the heat and the dust. It didn't also hurt that they were loacl and had ridden the area many times.

 

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Did I mention it was HOT!

 

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The first day we polished off three of the rides, I was not positive of the route numbers as I color coded them in my GPS when I loaded them and I didn't know the route numbers would be so important.

We found that we had little difficulty riding the intermediate and advanced trails. There were so many people out riding that it was virtually impossible to get lost but it wasn't overcrowded. This event is definitely Big Bike friendly as i would estimate 60 percent of the bikes were 1200cc. But there were also a few DRZ400 and XT250's. 

 

The campfire was an impressive sight to see up to 300 people sitting around the pit.

 

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On Friday night they had an obstacle course which proved challenging and entertaining but it didn't stop people from trying it two up and even two hacks rode the teeter todder!

 

We found some fellow Canadians and retired to our camp and mixed up some Belini's to combat the heat but it wrote off the night!

 

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I will be going back next year as it was a great event with some great sights and it was impossible to fit it all in.

Edited by zeddy
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I didn't get too many pictures as I was busy hiding from the heat. It was hot enough that we decided to go rafting on the river Saturday rather than ride.

 

 

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My first sighting of the RX3 Cyclone 250cc ADV bike; pretty cool actually.

 

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Toyota Landcruiser FJ55 aka "The Iron Pig"
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On Friday we rode route 11 lead by Eric from Touratech. It was dry and dusty with temps near 110F. Anytime we weren't moving we were looking for shade. Credit for a bunch of these photos goes to Chad Yoshitomi.

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