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27 Aug

Posted at 14:13h in Adventures, Groms, Ride Reports, TAT2018

Words. So many words. Epic, stunning, scary, exhilarating, challenging, fun, tough, rewarding. A heap of expletives in there too. We did it. We made it up and over Cinnamon, California, Hurricane, Corkscrew and whatever other pass was between Lake City and Silverton and yes there was some pushing involved. Cinnamon didn't feel terribly difficult to get up. Of course for some reason, we did not examine our map very carefully before hand and had it in our heads that it was...

26 Aug

Posted at 12:30h in Adventures, Groms, Ride Reports, TAT2018

Wow, another wonderful day of riding with beautiful views. Colorado is delivering on expectations. At lot of the scenery reminds us of parts of New Zealand but on a much bigger scale. Lots of elevation gain, through forests, which then top out with lovely views. Quite chilly throughout the day, rain jacket and heated grips on again. At one point it dropped to about 10 deg C (50F) most of the time it hovered around 17 deg C (62F). Interestingly enough,...

25 Aug

Posted at 12:01h in Adventures, Groms, Ride Reports, TAT2018

What a gorgeous day. Easy roads, great scenery and it smells nice. Although the clouds threatened to rain on us, we managed to stay ahead of any down pours. It got pretty darn chilly at one point, our gps app told us we were over 3000m (9842 feet) so that is probably why. Groms did OK at elevation as long as we didn't try to go fast. Heated grips and rain jacket kept us warm throughout the day. The roads here...

23 Aug

Posted at 20:01h in Adventures, Groms, Ride Reports, TAT2018

We think our little rest day has made us soft, cos the TAT kicked our butts today. A very early start saw us on the trail by 6:45am and 3 hrs later after only covering 100km, we had had enough. It was a mix of soft sand, occasional muddy puddles, wheel tracks that were either soft and sandy or had dried with hard edges. Regardless, once you got stuck in the wheel track it was a tough time getting out of...

22 Aug

Posted at 19:50h in Adventures, Groms, Ride Reports, TAT2018

Iron man movies +2, pop tarts +1, rear shock +1 We weren't sure what time our shock would arrive, so we got to have a nice little lie in today. Sim wandered over to the post office after breakfast and voila new barely used shock. While fitting it, the thunderstorms rolled in and we decided to stay another night. We spent a leisurely day doing not much of anything. Highlight of the day was being recognized at the gas station. The next 2 days...

21 Aug

Posted at 21:35h in Adventures, Groms, Ride Reports, TAT2018

Wow what a day. After yesterdays fast gravel, we thought we would be in for more of the same. If you think Oklahoma is boring, you need to ride it on a grom. We got off to a leisurely start this morning and once back on the TAT pootled along. Good gravel, cool temperatures, lots of wind farms and oil rigs to look at. It was very much straight roads with 90 degree turns here and there. One stretch of road...

19 Aug

Posted at 14:48h in Adventures, Groms, Ride Reports, TAT2018

Crawdad +1, kick stand sensor -1, rear shock -1 Trouble comes in twos. After yesterdays great riding, we were expecting more of the same. Not long on the trail, we came across a section of the TAT which was pretty unexpected. We were just following our little blue line on our GPS app (OSMAnd+) when the road turned from good gravel, to slightly muddy sandy stuff then steep rocky stuff reminiscent of the snow mobile trail we accidentally took on the MABDR...

18 Aug

Posted at 13:37h in Adventures, Groms, Ride Reports, TAT2018

Roadrunner +1, charging cable -1 What a fabulous day of riding today was. We left our motel a wee bit later than planned because of yet another thunderstorm but were still on the road by 7:30. The roads along the TAT route had dried out but were still damp enough to keep the dust down. The first part of the day we did a wiggly route through all the back roads. One second we were on gravel the next we were on sealed...