Gatineau Dual Sport Ride
I participated in my first GPS guided dual sport ride this weekend. Actually, it was my first organized dual sport ride period! Gatineau is located across the river from Ottawa, and, as I found out the gateway to some of the most incredible dual sport riding in eastern North America.
Kawasaki puts on a series of dual sport events on Canada. I figured that riding up and back from Groton to do one of these rides would make for a great trip, and provide good rally preparation When I asked Bryan "Flanny" Flannigan, the owner of Earth, Water and Snow, an adventure company in Chelsea, Quebec, which ride I should pick, he of course suggested one that he designed. I am glad that I followed his suggestion,as it was an amazing trip!
I also was fortunate enough to get a new set of tires, the Maxxis 6006, from the manufacturer to try out. You can read more about the tire in it’s own entry here, but if you don’t bother, know this, I am glad that Maxxis decided to make the tire in the Size for the KTM Adventure R, and it is a welcome addition to the tire choices for the KTM!
So last Friday, under the threat of rain, I set off for Gatineau. The plan was to make it to the hotel, check in, and then ride over to Centre Sports Motorisés, the Kawasaki dealer hosting the ride, in the early evening. I left Groton just after 7:00am, and started taking a back roads route that would take me through some great riding in Hew Hampshire, Vermont, New York and ultimately Canada.
The weather did not cooperate. It rained off and on throughout the morning, but not too hard. While waiting for at the Vermont crossing of the ferry to New York, across Lake Champlain, it started to rain in earnest. And rain it did, not stopping the entire evening. This slowed me down considerably. Water got in everywhere, including my routebook holder, through a few tiny screw holes that I had neglected to tape up. The only thing left dry were my feet, Traffic slowed down, and I did not make it to Gatineau until seven at night. By that time, I needed to ride right to the dealership, so I could get the GPS routes loaded up to my GPS.
There I was greeted by Bryan, his wife Isabelle, and the crew from Rally Connex, who also sponsor the event series. These are the guys to go to if you ever want to enter the Paris-Dakar, the Baha 1000, or similar big ticket rallies. They can arrange for all of your logistics. It was nice to see them humbling themselves to cater to a bunch of dual sport enthusiasts!
The next day the rain had tapered off to a dull sprinkle, and I showed up back at the dealership for the 9:00am start. Twenty-eight riders in total, plus sweep on bike and truck, rounded out the group. Centre Sports Motorisés ponied up some great door prizes, and everyone go something.
Back to the ride. Each rider with a gps was given five routes, and two “easy” escape routes. Some riders did not have gps units, and so they joined up with others that did. Since Brian was not riding, but driving the sweep truck, he let a friend of his ride the bike in his stead. So there were two guys named Chris riding KTM Advertures. We set off, and were shortly off of the pavement, and onto the dirt. Shortly into the ride, we thought that we had made a mistake, as the gps route was veering off of our track. Shortly we realized that although the track and route might not follow each other exactly, they would converge at each waypoint, and Brian did a great job of making sure every intersection of question was marked with a waypoint. I also found that if you changed the GPS to show “track up” instead of “North up” as I usually use, made it very easy to follow the route without stopping at each waypoint. If the gps showed a right hand turn, you looked up, and there it was, a right hand turn. Simple as that.
I had not ridden any decent length of higher speed dirt since last summer. I was also getting used to the new tires (there had aver 500 miles on them by this point, but all pavement) so it took a little bit of time for me to get back in the swing. Soon enough, though, we were moving quickly though the twists and turns the of the route. It made for some great riding, as the first section was lots of exiting one turn, and setting up for the next, one after another. A local rider on a KLR, Steve, joined with us soon after the start, and as Chris and I picked up the pace, he did a great job of keeping up on the relatively slower bike, only falling behind when we would open things up a pit on the straighter sections.We saw some great scenery, the French-Canadian countryside is an interesting contrast to the rural Vermont and New Hampshire I ride in regularly.
When we stopped for lunch, Steve told us that he had not ridden like this for 20 years, and had just bought the bike 2 weeks ago. So much for the break-in period! Chris also told me that he grew up riding in the Edmonton area, dirt and street. Right now he has a sport bike, but he obviously had not forgotten much about riding in the dirt, but he did not lose much of the sport riding “drive”, as he showed me how a good rider can really make the KTM move on and of the pavement.
We had covered about 120 miles in the long morning, with about the same distance for the afternoon. This section included the Papineau Labelle Reserve, with a super mix of more technical logging roads. The rain the day before kept the dust down, and made for a great grippy surface, in may parts, and some deep sand in others. We spent some time riding with Predi Medina and his wife Najua, both accomplished riders. I spent some time following Predi; following his line was great learning for me. Every time we stopped, he had the biggest grin on his face as he would give me the thumbs up sign. I do not think I have seen his enthusiasm for riding matched by any other.
Right before exiting the forest, we helped a fellow rider fix a flat tire, getting eaten by the bugs in the process! Too soon the route deposited us back at the dealership. It was a long day, and I could feel the miles! The route that Brian had laid out was amazing. Many of the riders came from Montreal, and other points outside of the area, and I don’t think anyone was disappointed.
Sunday, I was treated to an afternoon ride with Bryan. We checked out some more technical trails, as well as some more beautiful scenery. Brian offers guided dual sport rides, at very reasonable rates. I am going to try and get a group together from this area to make it up there again before winter settles in, and I would not hesitate to suggest this service to others!
The following day, I said goodbye, and rode home, this time in much nicer weather than the ride up. I took roughly the same route to the New York-Vermont boarder, but then I departed and ended up riding down Rt. 4 and 30 in Vermont, going through Brattleboro to make my way back to Groton. A great four days of riding!
Posted by chris at 11:08 PM