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KTM Rally - 2015


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This should be a blast!  I'm headed out today for the KTM Rally.  I won't have the project bike with me (long story) but I will be there on a borrowed "frankenbike" from Woody's Wheel Works.  I will post up photos soon...

 

Get video! You know the saying, "Let me show you what I can do on YOUR bike!" ;)

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Great night here in Crested Butte. Woody and I set up camp then went and got dinner catching part of the Bronco game. Met Kevin Muggleton, two time Dakar racer and inventor of the Redverz motorcycle tent. Saw Quinn Cody and a few other greats.

This is me as I snuggle into my warm bag at 9500' under the Milky Way of stars. Near freezing tonight.

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Btw, I'm winking not farting :)

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Chris and Mariel from Rottweiler are here

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Raiden of course

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The new Tractionator Adventure tire from Motoz! You saw it here first!

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These KTM riders are a cut above I tell you. Mike Lafferty led our group today on what Id call an intermediate small bike or advanced big bike trail. It was a lot of fun but kind of kicked my butt on Woody's 1200.

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Get video! You know the saying, "Let me show you what I can do on YOUR bike!" ;)

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!"   :lol:  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  B) ) and that was very cool (Brian Englund was in a hotel :o ).  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...

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Eric, it was good meeting you at the KTM Rally and despite that fact it was me picking up my bike, I'm privileged to have made the cut! Epic ride Friday and it definitely put my Vee to the test!

Great to see you signed up!   You handled that thing quite amazingly.  I saw you in the vendor area getting ready and I was like "I'm going to be behind that guy to capture the carnage" but you were the one who schooled me.  I wasn't able to quite keep pace with you most of the time.  That was quite a challenging bike bike ride but was a ton of fun.  Sorry I wasn't quick enough off the bike to help you lift your Weestrom.  

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I saw you in the vendor area getting ready and I was like "I'm going to be behind that guy to capture the carnage"....

Funny, I had the same thought!

Actually, I was a bit nervous as it was the first time I had taken the bike off-road so I was exactly sure how it would handle. I registered for the rally in January because my brother wanted me to get into adventure riding (he owns a 990), but I didn't actually have a bike. That was an awesome conversation with the wife!

Anyways, the I re-worked the suspension and the rest of the mods came with the bike. I put 300 road miles on it prior to the rally. Let's just say I was happy it and I survived the weekend!

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Looks like a great rally! Mountains!

 

Interesting comment "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 had a similar thought on BMW folks as compared to HD types at the 13 RA Rally at the Biltmore.  How can you have a few thousand Motorcyclists at the same spot and not hear an engine running!

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