So leaving the dirt road and powering through a variety of sage, dirt, and rock made me think there are limits to this suspension-lowered adventure bike. While the heart is all there, the belly drags a little too often over some dirt risers and sharp drops. I'm not boulder-busting, but it does take some charge and hold on tight to get through some challenging "make your own trail" moments. All in all, I had forgotten what a heavy street trail felt like, not since my 1982 XT550 Yamaha have I have to wrestle anything this heavy in the dirt, and the Yamaha was 80 lbs lighter. We'll just have to practice more.
Coming back it was cold rain, plus you could see the April showers were dumping snow in the hills at the right elevation.
I love it!
UPDATE* In a momentary laps of reason I decided to adventure-tackle the Palisades-Sagebrush Flats-Baird Springs road Friday afternoon (April 6th) but got turned back about mid-point. It wasn't the torrential rain, or the mud so much, but the blizzard sleet that made the dirt-clay combination of the road too much for my Metzler Tourance tires and after almost spilling it every 1/4 mile in the end from the 1/4 clay and slick rocks turned back where the storm kept up with me way too long. The high point was that when I hit the blacktop again the rain was coming down so hard that it knocked 90% of the mud off by the time I got to Hwy 28 saving me $2.00 at a carwash. I learned a lot about my GS on this run, mostly that a 400+ pound motorcycle is a beast in mud and there is a poor medium between tires blended for street and trail, you are going to have to accept one of the other.
Palisades/Sagebrush Flats-1 RedTigre-0
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