Shoutout to my favourite dirt bike travel crazy friends, be the bikes big or small as long as our hearts are huge!

Slow dirt bike travel traveling is what I aim for, maybe 150km (90 miles) per day on average. Time enough to enjoy nature and landscapes, for photos (and this time maybe even video), to eat and drink, to jump into a lake, to talk and (maybe, no obligations) cuddle,  to have strangers become new friends. Time enough to ride a bit of challenging terrain and mend the bikes and ourselves before and afterwards.

 

I’m explicitly asking everyone who gets this link directly from me. A few have already said: Let’s do it! So … let’s REALLY DO IT !!! I’m ready to ride alone again, it’s been a big adventure, but this time and for this special trip I want you for company. On your bike. Or, if you can’t bring your bike, how about bringing your truck to be our magical support truck and partake in the adventure that way?

As most of you know, I guess, my two 950s are currently strewn over two continents and none of them in my own country. (I need a third bike?)

Trans Euro Trail

The small plan for spring is a two or three weeks trip around Easter. My 950 Adventure is in Andalucia (southern Spain) and I intend to approach the TET, the Trans Euro Trail, inspired by the TAT but with a focus on the very diverse European landscapes. The Iberian part of the route leads from Gibraltar to Portugal, heads north through Portugal to Falicia and then leads to and through and over the Pyrennaes,which seperate and connect Spain fron and to France. Let’s see how far and deep into the mountains and the woods we can go, me trying two-up with Johanna. Quite a challenge ahead, even more so as I’ve not been riding much in the past year.

Ride the Rockies!

The big plan for summer is: Ride the Rockies! The Continental Divide! To be precice: The Continental Divide Trail and the Continental Divide Single Trail.

Timeframe: Hop over to Canada early in June, visit Chris and Steve who have graciously allowed me to store my 950SE and my stuff and been pretty awesome for hardly knowing me, prepare my bike after two years of absence and the abuse I gave it in Utah, talk them into coming along, find a starting point in the Canadian Rockies and then trickle south to Mexico. The one fixed date I need to comply to: Get the bike out of Canada before my already extended temporary import permit (or whatever it is called) expires on June 30th. Three months maybe … can I do it again, can we do it?

There are several pre-made routes to choose from and in my experience just following any road named Skyline or Highline or Rim Road is a good lead. We may have to stay away from the hikers trails to avoid mutual misunderstandings (Mouse might have some insight into this?) but I assume our options are plenty, so this doesn’t worry me.

• Sam Correro’s (the inventor of the TAT) Shadow of the rockies trail
• The Continental Divide Trail in its various forms
• The Continental Divide Single Trail (I hear it’s gnarly. Not made for travel bikes. Might be fun nonetheless to unload the bikes and play once in a while.)

Disclamer

None of these plans are fixed yet. There is no fixed route, the route will be made up on the fly according to situation, suggestions from strangers, weather, a whim. Furthermore there are still risk factors which may delay or shorten my ideas. Mainly two: My customer may not play along and my mother’s health is dwindling. Or we might break a bone.

I know, most cannot or dare not to take as much time off as I do … and even for me it’s not as easy this time as it was before. I’m happy if you decide to join for a week or two or even only a weekend. Please comment below.