I've known Matt for about six years now. We "met" as members of the Triumph Sprint ST email list. When I moved to California he was one of the first local motorcyclists to show me his favorite roads, and even though he moved from San Jose soon after I arrived, we've stayed in touch and done several long distance trips as well as weekend rides together.
During one of our weekend rides he decided to ride his Kawasaki KLR650, a dual-sport motorcycle, instead of his Sprint ST. "What's that ugly thing?" I asked when he first wheeled it out of his garage. He told me a little about dual sport motorcycling (motorcycles that are equally adept on pavement and dirt) and the trip he took to Alaska on one, but I was pretty much a street snob at the time and wasn't too interested in the idea. Later that day we traded bikes for a while, and I found the riding experience, well… interesting. The bike had very little power, which was a good thing because it had very limited brakes and a suspension that seemed to sag if you just looked at it hard. When we traded back Matt asked what I thought of it. I said I thought I could see how it might be fun to ride on some of the rougher rural roads, but little did I know that a seed had been planted.
Fast forward to November of 2004. Riding with a couple of friends in the boonies south of San Jose I managed to low-side my Sprint ST. Dang, my first motorcycle accident on the street! I was fine and the bike was still rideable, so it wasn't until I got the bike home and started to replace the damaged frame slider that I discovered that one of the engine mounting tabs had sheared off the cylinder head. Uh oh, one totaled motorcycle. "Hello? Insurance company?"
A couple months later I had a check in hand for the (meager) value of my Sprint ST. I thought about getting another Sprint ST because they really are tremendous motorcycles, but then a funny thing happened. Remember that little seed that had been planted during my ride of Matt's KLR? A few emails later I discover that Matt's brother just happens to be thinking about selling his KLR. Bingo--Blake's got a new bike!
Sometime in early August of last year I sent my buddy Matt a link to a cool video of someone's dual-sport motorcycle trip along a portion of the Trans-American Trail. "Let's go!" I said in the email, fondly recalling our last ride together. You know, one of those throw-away invites folks don't really mean.
What? You don't know what I mean? Hmmm. Neither did Matt!
So here we are, in the early part of March, 2006, and the idea of riding at least part of the Trans-American Trail is still gnawing at Matt's mind. It turns out that neither of us took a significant vacation last year because of work demands, but this year the stars are aligning and it looks like we're both going to be able to get away for a while. What better way to spend our vacation time than to abuse our bikes and our bodies by traveling the Trans-Am?
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