This is a story about failure. Oh, it will have elements of adventure, comradery, and overcoming obstacles - everything that Hollywood says should surround failure, but it's important to understand that this story is, first and foremost, about failure. And in order to fail at something spectacularly, you have to first commit wholeheartedly. About a year and a half ago, my riding buddy, Tony suggested that we attempt to ride a set of tracks known as the "Tour of Idaho". I was skeptical, especially given the description on the tour page:

"[The Tour of Idaho] is very likely one of the most committing and difficult long dirt bike rides in the United States. It is NOT a dual sport ride - plated dirt bikes with lights are required."

For this mission we would be onboard our 2015 KTM 690's. Relative to our larger F800GS's these feel a lot like dirt bikes. And over the years we've piloted them through some pretty gnarly terrain. However, they are firmly in the "dual sport" category, weighing in at a little over 300 lbs (or roughly 75-100 lbs heavier than an average dirt bike). They're very capable machines with an excess of power, but they can be a handful on extremely technical trails.

Despite my skepticism, I showed up to a camping trip last summer with the Tour maps and description in hand to announce my decision - I was committed. Tony was excited. In the oppressive heat of that camping site, we began to stencil together a plan. We had a number of things to take care of: Understanding the route, preparing our gear, training our bodies physically, and of course, improving our dirt bike skills.

Gear

The Tour of Idaho is known for being technical, steep, and with high exposure (risk of falling off a cliff) and we were already on bikes that were too heavy. This means that packed weight has to be kept to an absolute minimum. However, because we were attempting a set of tracks far from our home base, with altitudes sometimes exceeding 10,000 feet and with unknown weather conditions, we decided it would be irresponsible to leave out the camping gear. Whether injured, exhausted, or just plain out of daylight, having camping gear on board gives you an ultimate "bail-out" of simply hunkering down for the night. Although our usual tents would prove too cumbersome for the trip, we each picked up a Nemo Gogo Bivy Sack - not the most comfortable, they would keep the elements off of us if we got caught out in the cold. Highly compressible down sleeping bags and an air based sleeping pad would round out the camping requirements.

Even moreso than camping gear, a basic set of tools is required when you're deep in the wilderness. Bolts come loose, bikes get dropped in water crossings, tires go flat, and crashes happen. Toolkits have to be small enough to carry, but complete enough to repair almost anything that can go wrong in the field - at least enough to limp back to civilization. This means bolt drivers and wrenches for any common screws on the bike, tire changing supplies, a small multimeter, spare spark plugs, a multi-tool, and some odds and ends (bailing wire, duct tape, razors, etc). Wrap that all up in a roll - do a bunch of bike repair with it (to understand how everything fits together), and you're ready to repair most anything that can go wrong in the field.

A couple of sets of base layers, socks, and underwear finishes out the packed gear. Stuff that all in a our Giant Loop "Coyote" bags that sit at the very back of the seat (almost like a passenger), and we had what we needed. Camelbak type backpacks would carry enough water and we had small filters to be able to refill along the trail. Our first aid kits would ride in the backpacks, along with a sun hat for when we were off the bikes.



We would also need to carry extra fuel. With 3.2 gallons onboard, the 690's have a range of anywhere between 130 miles and 180 miles depending on how difficult the terrain is, how fast you're moving, and how hard you're pushing the engine. We would have to plan based on the 130 mile range to be safe. Multiple sections would require at least an extra gallon, and one very remote section through the Magruder Corridor would require another gallon beyond that. We opted to carry 1 gallon rotopax fuel cans, which can bolt to the bikes for sections where we needed a little extra. For the one extra long section, we carried MSR 10L "Dromedary" bags. Designed to hold water, people have found that if you're willing to withstand a little gas smell and throw them away after use, these could hold fuel for a day. Since they're basically collapsible bags, they would not require much space or weight before they were needed.

Some fresh tires, and the bike was ready to go.

Physical Training

Dirt biking is hard on your body. No two ways about it. You are standing on the footpegs for long periods of time and your body is always moving. Twelve to fourteen hour days are not uncommon and wherever the terrain is technical, standing up allows you and the bike to move more independently. Repeated jumps, hops over rocks, steep climbs, and lifting up heavy bikes all take their toll on your body, and in order to do this day after day for the nine trail days of the tour and always at altitudes from five to ten thousand feet, you need to be in above average physical shape. In addition to the riding, the better shape you're in, the easier you can handle the inevitable contact with the ground that happens during these types of adventures. Neither of us is out of shape or overweight, but the effects of Silicon Valley desk jobs mean that we have to devote specific attention to keeping our bodies ready. We ride mountain bikes, run, hit the gym, and generally try to get a minimum of three days a week of intensive cardio and cross training.

Skills Training

Being competent on the bike allows you to clear harder obstacles with less effort, crash less, and generally have a better time while riding. In some cases, it will be the difference between completing a particularly difficult trail or having to turn back. Working on balance over difficult obstacles, the ability to climb steep hills and the judgement to understand what can and cannot be accomplished on the bike means hitting the local dirt bike park - often. Although I would always prefer to spend my very limited personal time out exploring new trails, to be ready for this challenge we would need to spend a couple days a month (minimum) at the local dirt bike parks where you're close to help and can push your limits and try things that might not be safe to attempt for the first time when you're out in the wilderness.

We had previously taken a two day course with Jimmy Lewis, an off road motorcycle instructor and highly accomplished desert racer who also happens to be a Tour of Idaho finisher. After committing to the challenge, we signed up for another course, to sharpen our skills, and hopefully to discuss the tour with Jimmy.

This course was the first real inkling that something might be amiss. Jimmy has watched both Tony and I ride - he knows what we're capable of. He's got a decent eye for skills and for risk, and he knew exactly what was on the tour, since he had recently completed it. Over margaritas at the local mexican restaurant, we were able to hear about his adventures on the tour and ask if we were ready to attempt it.

"Absolutely. You guys will have a great time.....Just out of curiosity, what bikes are you taking?"

"Umm, well, our 690's"

"Oh hell no. Nope. Don't do it."

<Awkward silence.>



The Trip Out

The day had finally come. On a warm Wednesday morning, I loaded my bike into the bed of the truck, put my gear into the backseat, and drove down to meet Tony. With his bike loaded, we set out from the the bay area for Idaho. Years ago, while heading out to Utah to begin a different adventure, we had eaten at a barbecue joint called "The Pig", in Winnemucca. We arrived there just in time for an early dinner and then continued on to Twin Falls, ID. This was an ideal spot to leave the truck because we could run the tour up to the top of the state and then use the "Backcountry Discovery Route (BDR)" to get back down to the bottom of Idaho without having to spend an excessive amount of time on the freeways. We arrived around 3am to find a variety of "No Vacancy" signs. On our third attempt, we finally found a motel and fell right asleep.

Because we had been able to make the entire drive in one day, we had an entire day to make it 2.5 hours ride east to Malad City (the start of the tour). We decided to check out two of the Twin Falls landmarks.

Perrine Bridge is known for being the only man-made structure in the US that allows BASE jumping year round without a permit.



And the falls themselves:

After playing tourists for a bit, we hopped on our bikes and rode over to Malad City. Crossing Idaho was straight, flat, and boring. However, as soon as we turned down I-15, we saw the hills off to the left that we would be riding tomorrow. Excitedly, we chatted over the radio. Think we can see the trails for tomorrow? Maybe there was that one against the shadow? Overall, we had a great feeling about our riding tomorrow. We were ready. We were already envisioning ourselves on the platform of the fire lookout at the end of the tour.



We arrived at the motel and headed out to dinner at a local restaurant. Ready to begin, we went to bed a little early.

Tour of Idaho: D1

Although the alarm was set for 6:30am (5:30 for our internal California time), both Tony and I were awake before then, excited to get started. We pulled on our gear, hopped on the bikes and headed over to grab some sandwiches to start the day.





The first part of the track winds down to the Utah border, so that you get to start the official tour at the very bottom of Idaho. We encountered a very minor navigational challenge just trying to cut through the fields to the beginning of the tour - with a number of options, we had to make one or two attempts to get the correct trail down to the start. Some light rain started to fall - keeping the dust down and making the temperature very pleasant. The trails themselves were nice, flowy doubletrack. All good signs for what was to come. After a short ride, we made it to the official start of the tour.





We started to wind through the trail up towards Pocatello. The riding was fantastic. Tony coughed a couple of times. The cold he had been recovering from was not yet gone. As we continued on, we started to get to some rocky terrain and we began the first long hillclimb of the day. We had read about these hillclimbs from other people's reports. Instead of fixed rocks (which you can avoid or ride over), these were loose babyhead rocks. The loaded bikes deflected off rocks, wagging the tails and getting redirected back and forth, but staying mostly in the direction we were headed. We began to climb, sometimes quite rapidly. Small sections were very challenging, and the overall length of the climb (climbing 4000 vertical feet mostly in one shot) really added to the difficulty - it's easy to get worn out when you don't get a break from the "body forward, hands on bars, holding yourself in place" position that steep climbing requires

Tony's cold, however, was starting to take a toll on him. He bounced off the trail and was forced to haul the heavy bike back onto the trail more than once, draining lots of extra energy. During one challenging, rocky section, he came unstuck from his bike. It fell down and he had to catch his body with his right hand. Once we were back together, we started the final hillclimb to the first peak. I took the first run at it and made it about 75% of the way before getting bounced off the trail. I attempted to get going again, but the steepness of the trail and the general rockiness prevented me from being able to even get the bike moving. I turned the bike around on the hillside and rode back down to the 50% mark, where there was a slightly flatter section. While I was doing this, Tony made his first run at the hill and made it partway up before also getting sent off the side of the trail. He then rode back down to make another run while I tried from the middle. Although I got moving, it was slow going and I was spinning my rear wheel a lot more than I would like. I ran out of momentum with another 30 vertical feet to go and was forced to turn around again and ride back down to the beginning of this final section. Although the riding was tough, the views along the climb were spectacular





We decided to take a break and have a snack and discussed lowering our tire pressures a little for more grip before we made another attempt at the hill. While putting his pack back together to get moving, Tony suddenly winced. Hard. Something was wrong. I asked and he said that his wrist hurt. We took a few minutes to look at the wrist, which was already starting to swell up. When he took the fall on the rocks, he must have sprained his wrist. Within a few more minutes, his wrist was becoming significantly more painful and less mobile. We looked up at the hill that had already caused us a few issues, and discussed the risks of continuing. Consulting the topographic map showed that this wasn't the only peak. After a valley, there was another climb of at least the same steepness. With Tony's wrist in bad shape, this posed a significant problem - we have encountered this "valley between two steep peaks" problem before - going downhill is typically a little easier than going uphill, which creates a very committed situation - once you've cleared the first part, you have no options - you have to make the climb out the other side - even trying to back out by riding back up the hill you came down can be very difficult. We discussed further and decided it would be irresponsible to finish this climb, knowing we would be stuck between that and a potentially harder next climb.





With heavy hearts, we started to turn back down the hill to look for a possible alternate way around this peak. Without completing the climb, our attempt at the tour was over. A year of planning, a lot of money in bike and gear preparation, and countless hours spent working on skill building, and it was all over, 50 miles into a 1400 mile ride. Even more disappointing, we had made it about 3950 vertical feet out of 4000 and we had to turn back. It's hard to describe the frustration level at this point. Adventure riding is all about seeking out challenges and finding ways around what you can't cross, but that wasn't what we had come out here for. We came out here to ride a challenge. To give it our best shot. We had read mixed reviews of the difficulty involved. We saw videos of people making attempts at trails and tried to judge their riding ability against our own. We were confident that this was something we could accomplish. It was hard at that moment not to feel cheated. The hill was climbable, given our skill set and another attempt or two. However, with an injured wrist, pushing to the limits of what we could do, this early on could take us from adventure to danger.





After a few unsuccessful attempts to find a way around, we ended up down at the bottom of the hill and bailed out to the pavement. We checked where the tour tracks crossed the pavement and decided to ride out to there to continue the tracks. Just before jumping back on the tracks, we found a gas station that served some lunch. We topped off the tanks and ordered a couple of burgers, not expecting much from a gas station. However, the burgers were fantastic. We couldn't figure out if we were particularly hungry or if these really were fantastic burgers, until we overheard a discussion between the owner of the station and a lady who had just walked in. It turned out, the burgers really were that good - made with fresh meat from the slaughterhouse next door.





During lunch, it became apparent that Tony's wrist was getting worse, not better. Continuing the tracks for today would likely result in him not being able to finish at all. Since we were now just running the tracks for fun, there was absolutely no point in pushing a bad situation. We decided to just hop over to Pocatello and take a day to recover.





The tour's organizer is rather adamant that although anyone may use the "T1" tracks as they please, the ride may only be called the Tour of Idaho if completed according to the challenge instructions (9 trail days with a maximum of one rest day in Pocatello, with all tracks completed on course, and one challenge section completed per rider in the group). From this point forward, we will call this the "Loop of Idaho", since our Tour attempt was over as quickly as it had begun.





Pocatello

The next morning, I woke up before Tony and decided he needed the recovery sleep, so I snuck out and over to the local bakery restaurant. While I sipped coffee and ate a slice of pie, I pondered what we had seen. Clearly, this was more difficult than we had understood. Arrogant as we had been at the beginning, thinking we could crash the party with bikes that were out of their weight class, we were starting to realize that this challenge was closer to the difficulty level discussed in the description. However, it still seemed like something to continue. The views had been amazing so far, and we could still go have an adventure. After all, we had arranged the time off, we had driven out here. The bikes were ready. Midway through my pie, Tony joined me and we discussed the plan going forward.

One thing that made the climbing so much more difficult yesterday was the tall gearing of the bike. Although you can walk alongside most dirt bikes with the clutch out in first gear, allowing you to "tractor" up hills like that, the 690's are geared significantly taller to allow for more high speed riding. The result is that the 690 in first gear with the clutch out is already running about 6-7mph - much faster than a dirt bike. Although this might not seem like much, when you're trying to get moving on a very steep hill, being able to continue moving slowly can make a huge amount of difference. We decided to go to the KTM shop in Pocatello and change the sprockets on the bikes. Both of us had already geared down a little bit previously, but we would need to find a way to go lower.

The selection at the shop was limited, but we managed to find some larger rear sprockets that would fit. In the end, I was running 14/48 gearing and Tony had 15/50, resulting in almost the same gearing, significantly lower than the stock 15/45 gearing of the bikes. Tony's rear sprocket changing from 48 to 50 teeth meant that the chain was a little tight, even after as much chain adjustment as we could do. However my change from 45 to 48 teeth proved to be more than my current chain would allow - we simply couldn't get the axle back in the bike. We had to buy a new chain and a chain tool to continue. Splitting a chain in the middle of Pocatello with the shop now closed was a little nerve racking - any mistakes would have us sitting in Pocatello for two more days because the shop was closed the next day. However, we were successful and the new chain fit perfectly, after removing a few links. The upside of spending a bunch of money on sprockets was that both sprockets came in orange, giving our bikes a little extra bling.

Loop of Idaho: D2

Battered but unbowed and with a renewed sense of adventure, we started the next day early, getting up just before 6am to hit the trails out of Pocatello. The effects of the gearing change were immediately noticeable and pleasant. When we reached the beginning of the dirt for the day, we found ourselves faced with a locked gate. We assumed that we must have something slightly off in our navigation and decided to take the trail that was 40 yards further down the road. In the end, this trail was challenging and fun, but it never did loop back and hit the actual trail - we had encountered a true navigation challenge. Since we didn't want to go around the locked gate while following the tracks and since it was no longer critical that we be on the exact route, we ended up on a new trail.

Almost back to the original track, I shifted down and....nothing happened. the shifter didn't change gears and instead, fell completely down. I pulled over to check out what had happened, discovering that the bolt holding the shifter together had come loose, probably from all the rocky vibration the previous day. Worse, as it had loosened, the splines that hold the shifter at a specific had become about half stripped out - the soft aluminum of the lever chewed up by the hard steel of the gearbox. I repositioned the shifter, added some thread locker, and torqued the screw down as much as I could, to try to keep everything together and working. We waited for a bit to let the loc-tite set and then took off to rejoin the tracks.

In the next section of the ride, we encountered our first small section of "side-hill" This was the feature of the tour that had most bothered me when initially reading about it. I forgot to grab a picture but the general idea is a small track cut into the side of a steep hill. To one side, is mountain, often rising too high/steep from the trail to be able put a foot down. To the other side is nothingness - the mountain falls away as a cliff. Mistakes here are punishable, at minimum, by a long huffing and puffing session to pull the bike back on the trail and at maximum by severe injury (or worse) when you fall down the cliff. Luckily this section was short. I worked on riding slowly but with enough speed to maintain my balance. The rocks on the trail made the bike jump a little but the lower gearing was really paying dividends - I could creep along a little slower comfortably. Although speed helps with balance, it also quickly magnifies any small mistake.

Clearing the side hill and breathing a sigh of relief, we headed down more trails and into American Falls for a snack and to finish out the day. Although it was late afternoon and the sun was beating down, we were both very excited to continue the riding. The next section of the tour was sand dunes and then some rocky terrain. We loaded up on food and hit the sand.

Sand is not my favorite terrain. However, I've put in the effort and I'm able to cruise at a reasonable pace, even through deep sand. I doubt I'll ever love the feeling of the bike swaying back and forth beneath me at speed, but I've come to an understanding with sand. I stay loose and keep the speed reasonable, and in turn, the sand lets me stay on my bike (usually). This sand was different. From minute one, we were in trouble. This was deeper and finer than anything either of us had ridden these bikes in. They just sank as we tried to climb hills. Although we were able to keep them upright through the flat sand and the small hills, as soon as we tried to climb any significant hills, even with momentum, the rear of the bikes just sank into the axle. In the 95 degree temperatures, my bike even overheated on one attempt up a hill. Making problems worse, the dunes section starts with a small cliff. You and the bike go over the short cliff into the dunes. The issue is - there's no going back. We didn't even make it to the cliff. Two miles and 30 minutes later, with our energy completely drained, we were forced to turn back. If we couldn't get a couple of miles in this sand without sinking in, digging bikes out, and our pulses shooting up to maximum, there was no way we could cross the 30+ miles of dunes that waited on the other side of that cliff.

Disappointed, we turned back and rode out of the sandy area, taking pavement over to Arco (the end of the second day's tracks). It was starting to look like we had not been robbed on our first day. In reality, we were in over our heads. Our bikes were just too big for this challenge. We discussed that maybe, just maybe, Jimmy Lewis had been right and we had been foolish to ignore his advice.

One upside to the pavement to Arco is that we went through Springfield, ID. As an avid Simpsons fan, I was on the lookout for anyone who had been smart enough to cash in on their town's namesake. Sure enough, there was a bar we had to get a picture with:

Loop of Idaho: D3

Breakfast in Arco got us on the (dirt) road early. Today's trail had been advertisted as being easy, but as having the first exposure to "serious side hills". After some amount of gravel roads, we dropped onto a little two track through "Cherry Creek". Fantastic, flowing riding, with several creek crossings. ATVs on the trails had dug out some of the side of the creek banks, making it so you had to kind of jump the bike up out of the creek. It was nothing we couldn't handle and we were having a great time, taking down miles and enjoying ourselves. It looked like today, for sure we would be able to finish the trails.

A few more dirt roads brought us to an extremely rocky section with a rocky creek we got to ride through and a nice hill climb. I had a few struggles on a softer, but still rocky switchback and had to get the bike unstuck after coming to a stop, but then we made it to the top of the climb. We were clearly much stronger than we had been on the first day, and things we going well. We stopped to rest at the top of the mountain, had a snack and started down. The trail was extremely rocky, bouncing us all around (and occasionally clipping my boots on some larger boulders), but we were having a good time. Weaving back and forth, looking for the best lines, but still having to hit a fair number of rocks and even jump a few smaller boulders, this was the kind of challenging, but manageable riding we had been looking for on the tour and the views were spectacular.

We got to the halfway point of the day, put some more gas in our bikes (from the rotopax containers that we had filled), and started up a new trail. Things went bad for us almost immediately. Extremely rocky, steep and narrow - although open to all traffic, this was primarily a hiking trail. I stalled on one of the rocks, got going again, turned the corner and found what we had been expecting. Steep side hill trails, with rocks in them and even a log or two down in the trail - hopping even a small log on a narrow trail when any mistake puts you down the side of a steep hill requires a special type of courage - demonstrating that fine line between bravery and stupidity.

I screwed my courage to the sticking point and continued on. First gear, but standing on the pegs, my riding had already improved significantly from a training run we had done in downieville - there I had to tiptoe my way through the side hill sections while sitting on the seat with one foot against the mountain. I wound slowly up the steep trails, following Tony until I heard what I had dreaded "Oh wow, there's some bad switchbacks". In order to climb sections of the trail that were too steep to go straight up, the trail instead switchbacked very steeply. So steeply that the switchbacks themselves had several large logs in the middle of the turn, just to keep the trail itself in place. Probably great stairs for climbing if you're hiking, these became a significant challenge for me. At each switchback, I would find myself on the ground when my rear wheel hit a log it couldn't climb and slid out sideways. A series of about eight switchbacks left me picking up my bike about ten times. One particular log I managed to clear with spectacular style. I gave it a little too much gas and was a little too far back on the bike, and the front of the bike came straight up into the air, to about the 12 o'clock position - a perfect "wheelie over the log" Or it would have been, if it was intentional. In reality, the engine stalling was what dropped the front of the bike back onto the trail (otherwise I'm sure I would have looped over backwards), and it was only pure luck that the bike ended up on the trail, and not off the side. While Tony commented on how spectacular it looked, I wondered if I should change my pants.

Finally, exhausted and terrified, I reached the top of the trail. Tony commented on the view and all I could manage was a short "Uh". So far, this had not been an enjoyable trail for me - just too far above my skill and confidence level. The trail wound down the hill in a similar manner, with side hills and winding singletrack. Near the end, the exposure risk was significantly decreased and I started having a much better time. We filled our water packs (through a filter) from a stream we found, and checked our GPS's. Wait, that couldn't be right. Five miles. Really? We had traversed only five miles in over two hours? I could probably have hiked it in that time. I know I would have been faster on my mountain bike.

We hopped back on the bikes and continued down the track into Sun Valley. Quick gas up and were back on the road into the Sawtooth forest. We wound through a gravel road to a creek crossing. We started to scout out the path onto the trail. We would need to cross a creek that was about two feet deep and then at the edge, we had to make it up the bank, that was roughly four feet tall and almost vertical. Tony and I discussed the upsides and downsides of the creek crossing.

The biggest risk, of course, was failing to make the steep ramp up to the trail. Drop the bike there, and it was going into the creek, to be submerged. If you could hit the kill switch on the way down, you would just have to pull the bike up, take out the spark plugs, drain any water, dry out the air filter, and continue on. If, however, you failed to hit the kill switch in time, the stakes were much higher. Being incompressible, water in a four stroke engine does very bad things. As the engine turns over, and can't compress the water, something has to give. Usually, this something is the connecting rod. My children managed to get some water inside the engine of their CRF50F a while ago. The following picture shows the results:

Given the risks, we decided to find a bypass. It seemed that the dirt road through Sawtooth Forest came around and met our active track. We followed that around and reintercepted the track on the other side of that trail. We started down a wonderful little bit of singletrack. This had some side hills, but the exposure risk was very low. At max, you and the bike would fall about 20 feet - you might hurt yourself, but the stakes were much lower than what we had been dealing with. We wound through the singletrack, having a great time. I came upon a big boulder in the trail. I sat down on the bike and basically paddled up over the boulder slowly, continuing down the trail and telling Tony over the radio that there was a big boulder in the trail.

Tony decided to just hop up over the boulder - something I'm sure he could have done if we hadn't spent all morning winding through side hills and switchbacks, wearing ourselves out. Unfortunately, in this case, the bike stalled, and dumped Tony off the side of the hill. I heard some yelling in my radio, hopped off the bike, and ran back to where Tony was - Sure enough, his bike was inverted off the edge of the trail, and he had slid down into the creek below. Luckily, he wasn't hurt and the bike wasn't damaged. Together, and with a lot of heaving and grunting, we managed to get the bike back up onto the trail.

At this point, with the sun starting to drop in the sky, we decided to check how much further the track had left. We noticed an oddity - it seemed like the distance had increased. With a sinking feeling, I zoomed out the GPS - finding that I had indeed made an egregious navigation error. When we re-intercepted the track, I went the wrong way - we were actually tracing the track back out to the river crossing that we had decided not to do. After a moment of cursing my own stupidity, we decided to turn back out, and head back into Ketchum (right near Sun Valley). Another day, another failure to complete, and, if we wanted to intercept the tracks again, another 3 hours of pavement. I started to feel really discouraged and angry.

As we rode back to Ketchum, a thought started to occur to me. It was time to admit we had been beaten. The days were getting more miserable for us, and the tour description said that we had more of the side-hill stuff to look forward to. I just wasn't interested in spending the rest of a miserable trip on singletrack I couldn't handle, followed by pavement just to find somewhere to sleep. I mentioned to Tony that we should consider dropping this. Although the battery in his communicator was just about dead, I heard him long enough to hear the beginning of an agreement.

When we arrived in Ketchum and got a hotel room, the person checking us in was extremely friendly. She thought we were hilarious, in our dirt bike gear. "Well don't you two just look like a couple of powdered doughnuts", she remarked, presumably referring to the dirt all over our faces. After a shower, she remarked that we cleaned up nice and directed us to the "Pioneer Saloon" for Ribeyes. Over dinner, the plan began to take shape. We were just north of the Utah Backcountry Discovery Route - a mostly dirt route from the bottom to the top of Utah. It was designed for bigger adventure bikes, but it was known to be the most challenging state of the BDR series, which should make it interesting, but a few notches easier than what we were on right now. Here was a chance to recover our vacation. To accept that we had bit off more than we could chew with the Tour of Idaho and that we would have a lot more fun riding our bikes than dragging them up hillsides.

We decided to reserve a U-Haul about an hour south of us. We would load the bikes in that for a one way trip to the bottom of Utah. While driving down the U-Haul, we would move the truck from Twin Falls, ID over to Logan, UT, which is near the end of the Utah BDR so that we could do the BDR from bottom to top and then hop in the truck. We would stop at a Best Buy in Twin Falls and buy a cheap laptop to download the Utah BDR tracks from the website and load them onto our GPS's. The plan was settled. Our attempt at the Tour of Idaho was over.

Upon later reflection, we have realized that we ignored too many people's good advice. During both of our riding careers, we have gotten used to taking large dualsports to places that other people can't, or won't. We're not expert riders, but we have solid skills and we have found ourselves to be tougher than most. One person's definition of impossible might be another person's cruise through the woods and we've gotten used to hearing "You won't be able to do that", right before we tear through a section. We were prepared to work hard and to have the tour be a difficult challenge, but we weren't prepared for the magnitude of the challenge. This tour would be hard for us on pure dirtbikes - on dualsports with a little bit of bad luck in the beginning, it became a high-risk, low reward set of difficult trails that we weren't having any fun riding - pretty much exactly what Jimmy Lewis had warned us about.

To describe my feelings about motorcycle trips, I often lean on the writings of Hunter Thompson. His passion for life shows through in his quotes and he often seems to match exactly how I feel about riding. In this case, our closing quote comes from his book "Hell's Angels"

"It had been a bad trip. . . fast and wild in some moments, slow and dirty in others, but on balance it looked like a bummer. On my way back ... I tried to compose a fitting epitaph. I wanted something original, but there was no escaping the echo of Mistah Kurtz' final words from the heart of darkness: "The horror! The horror!. . . Exterminate all the brutes!" "

Tune in to the next installment as the Utah BDR begins. The weather gets warmer, and our spirits take an upward turn as our trip becomes more adventure, and less defeat. For now, though, I leave you with one last beautiful view of Idaho.