RRob, Louge, and I attended the ADVrider Eastern Rendezvous Rally this past weekend; drove down Thursday, rode all day Friday and Saturday, drove home Sunday. Lou reserved us a river front cabin, more of a tree house really. We packed the espresso maker, bikes and riding gear. Accomodations were close quartered, cozy, and surprisingly comfortable. We partook in a huge dual sport dirt roads ride on Friday, 30-some riders. We wound back and forth over the Smokey Mountains along the NC/TN border on road after road after road. We were lead to several really cool spots and over looks. The roads ranged from simple dirt and gravel to much more rugged dirt and bedrock only roads. It didn't take long for the DAMN contingent to establish themselves at the front of the pack, egging the ride leaders on with irresponsible behaviour; many wheelies, slides, and full on dirt tracking corner exits. Did I mention we took the espresso maker? We did all we could to push the pace, but, alas, the guides had 30 some riders to keep track of. We met some really cool people on the ride though.
Saturday we got up for a hard core dual sport/trail ride lead by Yanni who runs a dual sport ride guide business locally. The ride ranged from incredible scenery, to challenging trails, to off road carnage, to the best little section of paved road in existence-anywhere-ever. We are talking outrageous lean angles and backing it in and spinning it up on corner exit-on freaking knobbies!
Here is a link to the ADV page with Yanni's photos and ride reports. We started the day with 17 bikes. Yanni and 4 others (including Lou) finshed the ride, followed closely by 3 more (including me) who got lost in the last few miles of the ride. We were only a few minutes behind the first 5.
Link:
http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthre ... 01&page=60
We really enjoyed the riding and the area. Met some real characters and some really good people. You can find a bunch of photos of all sorts of folishness that went down besides the riding, but we were really there for the riding. RRob did start a few new ADV legends while he was there though.
