Lessons Learned on the MABDR
August of 2020, while most the of world was hunkered down in the safety of their homes, I took to the road. I live on the road much of the time, so this was not a weird thing for me to do. I have a self-contained living space on the back of my F150 and an enclosed trailer with my bikes. I am often exploring the country while I am traveling from one training gig to another. 2020 was a little different because all but one event was cancelled due to Covid. The one event that was able to safely carry on was the Touratech Dirt Daze in Haverhill, NH. Since everything else on my calendar got cancelled, I had time on my hands, so I drove across country for the event.
My plan was to attend Dirt Daze and then ride both the MABDR and NEBDRs. I rode the MABDR solo, with exception to a few days where a friend was able to join me. I’m always encouraging other ADV riders to ride with a buddy, but I couldn’t get anyone to join me for the entire route, so I made the decision to adventure on with it in mind that I was out there alone. This meant that I would make good decisions, keep the speeds low due to wildlife and to not ride any part of the route that I didn’t think I could pass safely. That meant, I was willing to go on the route knowing I very well may have to turn around if the route was too sketchy. I also went into it knowing that the MABDR is a very mellow route and carried a Garmin EnReach just in case.
Let’s get into the reason for this blog post. A few days into being on the MABDR, I had to abandon the route due to heavy thunderstorms and took cover at my friend Marjorie’s place in Finksburg, MD. Marjorie was planning on joining me for 3-4 days, but due to the storms we were delayed a day. When it storms on the east coast, the skies open up and you better take cover because it does not mess around. It finally cleared up and we set out on the route. The second day on the route, the rains came back and at some point, we stopped for lunch, and we made the discussion to find a hotel and hunker down for the remaining of the day. We had about 30 miles to ride where we could do just that. Back on route, we were having a ball. We stopped to checked in with each other and we were both good with the rainy conditions and because we were having so much fun, we decided to continue the route. That decision proved to be a bad one. Roughly 30 miles from Brandywine, WV, I hit a snotty patch and off the road I went! And just like that, with the bat of an eye, I was on my back leaning against a tree after taking flight like Wonder Woman and landing headfirst into the “softish” bank. Max, my BMW GS flipped flopped her way like a gymnast and come to rest next to a tree as well. I just laid there assessing what I was feeling and saw that Marjorie had gotten stopped and was heading my way. I yelled out, “Stop, I’m ok, but we need to get this on camera.” Lol. So, she went back and captured the scene. Yes, that is how I roll. Now, I feel you all can learn from another hard, expensive lesson of mine. Thankfully, I was uninjured, but Max was another story.
I could go into great detail on how the heck we got out of this situation and how Marjorie had to ride me 2up, which she had never ridden 2up before, especially off road with very snotty, wet conditions, rocks with switchbacks as we climbed up and over Heavener Mountain, but I want to get into the part where there is something to learn from all this mess. One thing I did tell Marjorie that might help one of you is the fact that I told her, “I am just luggage, and I wouldn’t move at all.” She said, “I can do that,” and off we went. The short of it was we got into town, waved down a Sheriff, who rounded us up a tow truck and the 4 of us went back to retrieve my bike.
Now, let’s look into why I flow through the air like Wonder Woman in the first place. I mentioned it had been raining all day long and we were off road, right? Even though we were keeping our speeds down so we could manage traction, it just didn’t take much to have the front tire slide out as I was approaching a corner. The front slid out a bit and unfortunately, I failed to remove my Crampbuster. When the front tire slid out, my reflex was to tightened up my grip in response and hit the Crampbuster. And just like that, I was transported into Wonder Women’s horse Pegasus, who promptly bucked me off. It happened so fast there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.
LESSONS LEARNED
Lesson #1, do not ride with anything on your throttle while riding off road and know that if you choose to ride with it on the street, there could still be consequences.
Lesson #2, it doesn’t matter how careful you are being, if you are riding in wet, slippery conditions, you are increasing the likely hood of crashing. Wet conditions on pavement, nice gravel roads where there is no mud, is much different then riding on a road that has variable conditions that includes patches of snotty mud.
This takes me to a more recent trip where I was leading a group of riders through the Montezuma Canyon after it had snowed a lot and was now melting and making the roads very unpredictable with snotty mud patches. So, knowing what I know about how traction can change in the blink of the eye, I kept our speeds WAY down. It was painfully slow! When I could see very clearly that traction was better, I sped up a bit. If I was unsure or it was clear that traction wasn’t so good, I slowed down, WAY down. This part of the route took us about 1 hour longer than expected due to the conditions, but no one went down and that was my goal, to get everyone back uninjured and no damage to any of the bikes. Well, at the end of the day, one of the riders came up to me and said something like, “Wow, you had a lot of courage to continue on that road because it was very clear that you were afraid.” I said, “No, I wasn’t afraid, I was managing the risk of any of us going down.” He said, “Well, there were times we had good traction.” And I said, “And that’s when I sped up.” What riders don’t realize is that they should slow to speeds that allow them to see that conditions have changed and to be able to get to the appropriate speed prior to getting into such a snotty condition. Riders are crashing all the time because they just don’t realize the need to slow down at times, especially off-road. All it takes is a millisecond and you are down. I know, had I not been there, that rider would have definitely gone down at some point that day. He proved that the following week when he was off by himself and crashed hard in some solid ruts, where he bruised his ribs pretty good and had to take a day or so off from his riding vacation. Afterwards, I asked him how fast was he going? He said that he was going really slow, only 35 MPH. 35 MPH in solid, deep ruts is WAY TOO FAST! So, of course he crashed. When you are riding in deep, hard ruts you should be going just fast enough to have some momentum to get through the ruts. This could mean 5 MPH depending on conditions. The speeds I go, are the speeds I’m willing to crash. Think about this, when you double your speeds, you not only double the impact force, you actually quadruple the impact forces. Now, would you rather crash at 5 MPH or 35 MPH? Had he been going much slower; he may not have crashed, and he probably won’t have gotten as hurt as he did.
Back to the MABDR scene… the tow truck driver wanted to just hook onto the front tire and drag the bike up on its side. “What the heck?!” “Ah, no, we will stand the bike upright and then pull it up.” The drive said, “Why, that bike is totaled.” And I said, “No, it’s not, it’s a BMW!” Yes, I’m confident with the BMWs! So, we righted the bike and pulled it up to the road.
Lesson #3, don’t pull on the front end where the tire can’t rotate. This action might be the reason I started having trouble with my front forks. Not sure about that, but there was no reason to do it this way. Instead, use a tow strap and go to the pegs and pull from there. This will allow the bike to roll easily and not create a lot of tension to the front forks. My front fork issue could also be from the 65,000 miles on the bike and the forks not being properly serviced, unbeknownst to me.
Now, I always encourage riders to ride with a buddy because you just never know, and I was definitely grateful to have Marjorie with me that day. Had I been out there by myself, it was going to be a loooooong recovery situation, especially if I didn’t have an Enreach, which by the way I do carry one for this very reason. However, had I still been on the route by myself, I would not have continued on the route with the conditions the way they were. Absolutely not! But, with a buddy… ok, why not?
Lesson #4, with or without a buddy, when the conditions are sketchy, as in wet mixed with snotty mud, choose to either park it or take to the pavement. Why chance it? This mistake cost me $2,700 worth of damage to the bike (basically totaled the bike because it wasn’t worth fixing, but I mixed her anyways), I had to replace my helmet, (another $400), a night in a hotel, the tow truck bill ($200), gas money for a friend to drive several hours to come get us and worse, it ended our trip. Was it worth it? Is it ever worth it? It almost always comes down to choices and consequences. We left Brandywine and headed straight to Bob’s BMW in Jessup, MD to drop off Max. The cost doesn’t stop there. I was supposed to meet up north to pre-ride the NEBDR and now I had no bike. So, what do we ADVers do? We have friends who will loan out their bikes so we can venture on. Marjorie’s very good friend, Lisa, who is now my friend, was very generous and loaned me her BMW 800GS and I rode north as planned on the borrowed bike.
So, I’m headed north to go ride the NEBDR on a borrowed bike and in route, it’s pouring cats and dogs on the Interstate, and I see I can get some cover from an overpass where I can wait out the downpour as I was finding it very hard to see with the hard rains on top of the water that the other vehicles, especially the semis were throwing my way. As it often goes in the NE, it pours and then it will let up enough to get back out there, so off I go. Or so I thought… the bike won’t start! Battery was dead. (No, I did not leave the key on). Good thing I always carry a battery jumper and a tool bag. Still not a quick and easy thing to deal with. It takes a bit to remove the cover to the battery and then replace the cover, especially if you have to keep jumping the bike every time you turn it off.
Lesson #5, make sure the bike is in excellent working order. My friend said the bike was “just serviced.” Well, after looking at her paperwork, she found out “just serviced” really meant 2 years ago. Lol! Life flies when you’re having fun and Lisa has been having fun! After getting the bike going and spending a very long day in rainy conditions, I stopped for a good night’s sleep at a hotel along the way. While trying to park the bike and getting the very tall kickstand down (I call the side stand a kickstand because I always kick it forward to ensure that it’s fully extended), I managed to gently drop the bike. Yes, gently. Good grief, great ending to a challenging day! Not!
The next morning, I was loaded and ready to go, or so I thought… As I rode across the parking lot, there was something wrong with the steering. After investigating, I found that the bar risers were lose and had shifted after me gently dropping the bike. This is going to take a minute, so I found some shade because now it’s super-hot and humid out. I dig out my CruzTools and got to work. The bolts were very difficult to get to for me to ensure they got tightened down properly, so I removed the bar risers all together. After some time, I was back on the road.
Lesson #6, do your own pre-ride maintenance check. I’m not sure that I would have detected the lose bolts on the bars, but at least look the bike over well, especially if it’s an unfamiliar bike and when there is an added items like bar risers, why not double check that they are indeed tight. I took it for granted that the bike had “just been serviced.”
Once I got to the start of the NEBDR, I rode the route on another borrowed bike because I didn’t want to chance going down on the 800GS, so I rode a 411c Himalayan instead. Remember, choices and consequences, I was already up to my neck in financials. After a week on the NEBDR, I made my way back to get my bike where it was being repaired at Bob’s BMW in Jessup, MD. This took additional time and gas money and got added to the pocketbook. Well, Covid is still going, I really didn’t have anywhere else to be and I got my bike back, so I chose to finish off the MABDR. Why not!? Yes, solo, but conditions were much improved and the MABDR is a super easy route for anyone who has some riding and survival skills for the “what ifs.” Adventure is in my blood and unless my body just won’t allow for it, I will carry on. Please, just remember, if you choose to ride solo and have any type of recovery situation, it is going to get real interesting if you are ill prepared. There could be serious consequences. I would not even consider doing such a ride off-road without the backcountry and medical experience that I was acquired over the past 30+ years. Get yourself an EnReach or something like it so you can communicate to your loved ones and in the event, you have a life-threatening experience, you can send out for a rescue. Please learn what a life-threatening experience is so you don’t waste resources on something like a broken leg. Know when a broken leg is life threatening and when it is not. Knowledge is power and the more we learn, the better and more responsible we will be as adventure riders.
All and all, it was a great trip and even though there were challenges along the way, I’m so grateful for the opportunities to ride the BDRs, to learn along the way and the great people I encountered and who helped me get through it all. Thank you to Marjorie and her husband for opening up their home in a time like Covid. Thank you to Lisa who was extremely trusting and loaned out a very expensive bike for 2 weeks. Thank you to Sue of Dirty for Good, who loaned me the Himalayan and a thank you to Bob’s BMW who got right onto my bike knowing I was traveling and needing my bike ASAP and of course, thanks to the universe who always seems to offer a hand when needed, like the shelter that I camped under during a thunderstorm.
Until the next adventure… Stay safe and make good choices!