Nate and Art's Most Excellent TATventure

Hey ho! Great adventure guys! I'm in CO taking care of some business before I continue on my "modified TAT" ride. Wish I had managed to catch up with some folks... my crew ditched earlier than planned and I am motoring, carefully, solo now.

Question: Pardon my stupidity, but I can just ship to myself care of a Post Office and pick it up, yes? No special anything needed?

Keep up the awesome RR and ride safe.
Gentri

IN! Late, but IN!

I haven't had rear breaks since UT. I rode all through NV without them. Did, OK. Put it down a lot. The guys at KTM Twins hooked me up and got the parts out to me. Just a unknown piston swap.

Yup, most Post Offices will accept general delivery, just call ahead bro!

Well we flashed this pic of you to our bar tender in The Denio Junction bar.

Seems she remembers you to quite well

You might want to check your credit card bill for the cleanup fee

She tells of you drinking all her Jack, all her Tequila, and all her Captain Morgan.

Epic.

Update: the other bar tender asked us if we were with you guys...

Update2: He also said you need to post some other photos that you found on you camera from that night...

This sounds like the TAT version of the hangover. haha

OK heres some more photos form that night.

The funny thing is, these guys had no idea we did the same thing to the AR state sign. What a coincidence!!

Theres the beach!! With some Elk too!!

Thanks everyone for following!

Stayed tuned for a full length video. I took waayyyyy more video than I did pictures so a TAT movie will be coming out so stay subscribed!!

Nice to meet you Nate and Art in Lake City, We made it out safe... saw your in the morning in Teluride ... looked for you but no where to be found...

It was great meeting you guys as well, we were probably drinking double bloodys at the Sheridan. Weird to be back home, doesn't feel like the trip should be over at all!

Well, I've been home for about 2 weeks now. What a trip to look back through all the pictures! I'm going to do my best and put up some of my favorites that we didn't get a chance to include in the report. As anyone that's tried to write a live ride report knows, it's friggin work! The last thing I wanted to do in the evenings was sit around, tied to a computer, uploading pictures and jotting down notes. We did the trip our way, and we had a blast doing it. Just ask Dean (mootsuno) LOL! I broke my laptop early on in the trip, outside of Long Pool, Arkansas. I decided against replacing the computer, deemed it dead weight and shipped that sucker home. So most of these pictures will be from Arkansas and out. Drum roll please.

Okay I lied, I should give a little back drop to the first mechanical hurdle we came across on the trail. This is the creek outside of Minor Hill, Tennessee that gave me some heartache. The sun was setting on us as we were keeping our eyes wide for someplace to pitch our tents, when I noticed a small access area down into a creek that we had just crossed. I honked at Nate and we turned around to investigate. We rode down the small hill, crossed what you're looking at in this picture, off the road, out of sight, this is perfect! We set up camp, had some dinner, had a few drinks, and passed out. The next morning Nate wanted to get a few videos of us coming in and out of this stealth campsite. Sure, I went first, crossed over fine, turned around on the road, and then rode back through the creek complacently. I didn't bother to scan the creek bed and I aimed my front wheel perfectly at this bigger, hidden rock and went down. The water wasn't deep, but it was deep enough to fill my exhaust completely full of water. I quickly turned off the engine then noticed my tank bag was taking in water. Shit, no! My camera, my phone! I got those out and then tried to pick up the bike, but I just couldn't do it. All the while, Nate's filming this and he's yelling at me to lift with my legs. That's the last thing you want to hear when you're in a situation like this. Nate comes over and we get the bike up and I stupidly try to start her for a while. She's not starting. So we push her up a small hill so that the front tire is above the rear and we lay the bike down. I watch a good amount of that creek pour out of my exhaust. We get her back up and she eventually starts up, sputtering water out of the exhaust and running "rough". Haha. I'm thinking Nate might need to go get a couple quarts of oil, I don't think I should ride her like this. But we figure out that theirs a gas station 5 miles away, I decide to baby her there instead of hanging out uselessly. After a quick oil change, (I had some white foam under my oil cap, a little emulsified oil was to be seen in the sight glass) She started up fine and ran as if nothing had happened. Whew! Lucked out there, I made a mental note to change the oil and filter at the first available opportunity and we rode on. Crisis averted. The iPhone though, would need replacing.

Here's something that was a running joke with me and Nate, but you don't see a lot of posts about. Every evening we'd take our boots off and joke about our grey, Walking Dead looking feet. Especially if we came across water crossings, that was the worst. We'd take our boots and gear off and just sing Parliament, Who got the funk? We got the funk! Bowwwwww...and so on. It got to the point where we'd take off our boots while we were eating lunch, just to give the boots and socks some time to dry, and our feet some time to breathe. Gotta have the funk! Bowwww!



Looking through the Arkansas pics this one had me cracking up. This is in Damascus. We diverted off the trail so that I could replace my iPhone at the Apple store in Little Rock. Nate ended up buying a new camera and Mac so he had things to ship home, so as we're riding into Damascus looking for a place to stay we see a post office. Hmm, why don't we just camp behind it, save a trip in the morning. Sounds good, I guess...haha. Damascus doesn't exactly have a lot going for itself. A couple out of towners on shiny bikes loaded with goodies would seem like a logical opportunity for someone in a bind. But nothing came of my inner-city suspicion. We awoke to the Post Master asking us to move our bikes away from the loading area. Lmao! He was super cool about it though, he was excited to learn about the TAT and how it crosses just north of the town. He figured the dual sports he'd been seeing loaded with gear had to do with the natural gas industry. No sir, we're just passing through.

Outside of Oark, AR. This was somebody's front yard. Would have loved to spend some time walking through and checking out all the cool stuff they had rusting away in their yard.



Long Pool was a sweet swim call. We got some great GoPro footage jumping off one of the boulders. We planned on camping here that night but made it way too early to call it a day. So we pushed on for Devils Den National Forest. The Ozarks were such a surprise for me! Coming from California, nobody in my circles ever mentioned the Ozarks. People talk about and visit the Sierras, the Cascades, the Rockies...if it weren't for the trail I would have probably never discovered this gem of a location in the States! Such awesome riding, I wish they were closer.



White Rock Mountain, just off the trail, so glad we made the detour up that hill! One of the most memorable sunsets I've ever had and one of my favorite days on the trail for sure! We couldn't stop taking pictures, and that would mean that we were going to be doing some night riding to make Devils Den. So worth it though!





Seriously, if you're riding through here, check out White Rock Mountain. It's worth it.

When you enjoy a beautiful sunset on the TAT and your destination is still 60 some odd miles ahead of you, this is what happens. We got stuck riding down Warloop road in the dark. Nate says it wasn't a big deal, I'm going to have to disagree on that one. In broad day light, coming down that road would have gotten me all puckered up. At night, it was damn right dangerous. We got through it unscathed, surprisingly neither of us went down, but we still had a lot of miles to cover. We decided to jump on a freeway and slab it up there because it was nearing 10pm by this point and we were both beat. Nate's girlfriend was meeting us to camp out for the night, so we needed to make up some lost time.



We've posted this picture before, but I just wanted to mention a few things about the camp. The campsites were all booked up, there wasn't a single tent spot available for us so the friendly Ranger pointed us towards the National Forest which had free camping without amenities. That sounds great sir! We head towards the forest and find an open "Day use only" staging area for horseback riders. This'll work. Eventually Lisa, Nate's girlfriend finds us. She asked the ranger if he'd seen any motorcycle riders and he pointed her over our way. There were a lot of bikes out there, how he pointed her towards the right bikers I have no idea. I'm laying in my tent trying to fall asleep that night and I hear something big moving through the bushes. Branches and twigs are snapping all over the place, I'm thinking, whatever you are, please will you go away!? :eek1 I'm cowering under my sheet when I hear Lisa say to Nate, What was that noise? Oh, that's just Art. And in a terrified little girls voice I reply, No it wasn't. Lmao. Nate get's out of his tent and starts yelling, "Hey, Bear!!" at the top of his lungs and making all kinds of crazy noises. That doesn't seem to scare it away. Needles to say, I had trouble falling asleep that night, and the sleep I did manage to get wasn't enough. Over our breakfast beers the following morning we laughed about how quickly grown ass men become scarred little girls when they hear noises coming from dark woods.

Here we are, lost in Oklahoma, the GPS coordinates we had weren't lining up with the roll charts, and on top of this craziness the actual street signs were different then both at times. We met Rick at the campground and he joined us for the ride to Throttlemeister's house along with Ian, Nate's buddy from Missouri. We've got a freaking crew now! Ready to throw down!



We had a phenomenal swim call at the Illinois River crossing outside of Pryor. I forget the name of the place, but there was a lot of eye candy out there! We kept thinking, why the hell wasn't this place noted on the TAT maps!? We would have totally been down to pitch a tent and party with the river folk floating down stream. God only knows what trouble we would have found in that crowd Anyways, we soaked our Walking TAT feet, took a nice long dip, had a couple beers with some friendly people that offered a couple cold ones and we moved on. Nothing like that could ever happen in California. At least not that openly while floating down a fairly congested water way. Oklahoma, you're alright in my book.

Hopefully Nate has some better footage of the river, I left my camera in my backpack after this shot.

Oh yes, Throttlemeister's RV! Loved hearing John's stories, can't wait for your next ride report!



And how did we not include a picture of Oklahoma's Pan Handle Sand!? This stuff was nasty! Oklahoma was almost 700 miles of high speed dirt riding, we're talking 50-60 mph usually, with the occasional patch of thick, heavy, unforgiving sand that you either saw coming, or you didn't.

Here was another interesting situation. We veered off course some how and we needed to reconnect with the trail which had somehow become much further north of where we were. So we're taking roads headed in the right direction but we had no idea what we were riding through. We come up to a truck and a couple guys that are working on something, Nate's ahead of me and he just blows right by them, I see one of them walk up and wave me down. So of course, I slow down, turn off the engine and ask the man what I could do for him. The man was clearly upset, he asks me what the hell we're doing out here, so I explain that we're riding the Trans American Trail, we've veered of course and this road seems to lead right back onto the trail. He's confused, what trail? I ask him if this road that we're on would lead to a main dirt road that we could take west. He replies, only if you plan on riding through my property and opening up my gates. This is my property son. This man is becoming more upset as we're speaking. So I back off a bit. Sir, we don't mean any harm, we saw this road on our GPS and it was connecting us back on the route that we need to take. He looks at me and with a stone cold straight face tells me that he's prepared for trouble if that's what we're bringing. He tells me to go and find my friend and get off of his property. Yikes. :eek1 I ride down this guys property for a while and have no idea where Nate is. I ended up turning back around and telling the man that I couldn't find Nate. As I was telling him this I see Nate pop up out of the wood work. He's coming my way, so I apologize to the man and start riding away. Nate pulls up to me and had no idea what just happened. He tells me that we couldn't get through that way. I go, no shit! That was his property back there, he was pissed as hell! We ride off and probably 10 miles later we come to this section here with posted warnings of explosions when Nate realizes that one of his boxes was missing. What!? Where is it? It's gotta be back on that guys property. I want nothing to do with that man, so I tell Nate that I'd rather hang out in this blasting zone than go back and deal with that guy again. Nate come's back a while later and says he was cool about it and let him go find his box. He must have took a deep breath after we left and realized we were just two lost idiots. Oklahoma gents!!!

Alright that's it for tonight. I'll post up some more tomorrow.

This evening was quite interesting. We rode into Silver Cliff, CO pretty hungry. I'd gotten a flat while making the trek from Trinidad, so when we came across R's Pizza place we said what they hey and stopped in for some beer and pizza. 2 or 3 beers in we were politely handed our check from the waiting staff, me and Nate were both surprised. We hadn't asked for the check, we actually planned on having a few more beers while we were figuring out where to stay the night. Closed our tab, and left peacefully, we'll spend our money elsewhere. We ended up somewhere in Westcliff and met Sam, a climber from Kansas who was kind enough to offer us a place to stay. We had a few beers and asked Sam and the bartenders about The Dome, a local bar that peaked our interest as we were riding through town. Oh, you don't want to go there, the locals there don't like out of towners, you'll end up getting into a fight. Nate and I aren't exactly the angry drinking, fighting type, so we decide to check it out. That place was interesting!!! We had nothing but good vibes from the locals and enjoyed watching the drunk dancers swaying to the rhythm of the house band. We stepped outside to find this drunken horseman putting on a show for the smoker's crowd. He was wasted, three sheets to the wind, whatever you want to call it! How he managed to mount that horse, I have no idea. Someone handed him an American flag, or maybe he brought that along to the bar, I don't know. But he was making that horse spin, side step to the left (the horse would go right), side step to the right (the horse would go left)! Hahaha, it was so awesome. The drunken American horseman waving those stars and stripes around will be something that I'll never forget. Quite the image to take away from Silver Cliff, CO.



Sam our kind host and drunken horseman guide.