It wasn’t the tour I planned for the summer, but it was eventful.

The initial plan for my big tour of 2024 was to ride The Blueridge Parkway down to West Virginia and then come back on the MABDR and NEBDR. It would have taken me probably close to a month. But then those plans got kiboshed by unforeseen circumstances and for a while there it seemed I wouldn’t get away at all. In the end, I managed to spend four days in August touring Vermont with Riley and Marc from The Awesome Players Off-Road MC doing Sections 4 & 5 of the NEBDR.

We decided to do a spoke-and-hub type trip, using Silver Lake State Park in Barnard, VT, as our home base. This meant not only that we didn’t have to move camp each day but also that we could ride for a few days without luggage. I’ve stayed at that campground several times and it never disappoints. The general store in Barnard has gas and makes a great breakfast sandwich.

We decided to ride Bailey-Hazen down. B-H is an old military road dating back to the war of independence (1776). It’s primarily dirt and gravel and runs from Montgomery Centre down through Lowell, Albany, Craftsbury, Greensboro, Walden, Peacham, and into East Ryegate. I’ve ridden it a few times but never the hero section. In fact, the last time I rode B-H, I attempted the hero section and had to turn around. It’s basically an ATV trail filled with babyheads, and I was alone and on street tires. It’s definitely a challenge.

So I was thinking of that section as we rode down toward the border and thinking of it some more as we approached Montgomery Centre. (The hero section is early in the track.) This time I had Michelin Anakee Wild tires on and there were three of us, but I was fully loaded with all the camping gear. Riley and Marc have a lot more off-road experience than me and the last time I rode with them it didn’t go well. You never want to be the guy holding everybody up.

We headed up the nasty little hill climb and I got loose a few times but kept it upright. Riley said later that he was thinking I must be happy not to be on the Beemer and I was. The Tiger is definitely more capable with the 21″ front wheel. There was a crew working on the trail and soon we hit some deep gravel they were spreading and that was interesting. But somehow I made it to the top without dropping the bike and felt pretty good about that. Unfortunately, things were about to take a turn for the worse.

For those unfamiliar with Awesome Players lingo, a douche rope is a fabricated rope with a steel karabiner on one end and loops along its length for handles. It’s used to pull out the douche who is stuck in mud or, in my case, whose bike is down a ravine. I don’t know why I was going so fast, except I guess because adrenaline was pumping through me and maybe I was over-confident, having just done the tough part. I think I also relaxed my concentration. You can see my front tire slip out on the muddy downhill corner which threw my balance, and then I was struggling to keep the bike on the trail. Riley thinks I hit a false neutral because you can hear the bike rev a few times but I think I just panicked. Fortunately, what I lack in riding skills I make up for in tree avoidance technique. When I saw it coming up fast, the bike went one way and I the other.

I’m breathing hard into my helmet because I was in some pain and thought at first I might have pulled an Itchy Boots and broken my collar bone. But in the end, it was just a separated shoulder and, a month later, I’m almost fully recovered. The tendons have healed and I’m just working on strengthening and stretching the scar tissue. It could have been much worse. If the bike had hit the tree, I imagine there would have been structural damage and it would have been a write off. In the end, it just made for a few uncomfortable days around camp and especially trying to sleep in my tiny tent.

I was pretty mad at myself, as you can hear. It was an auspicious start to the tour and I was living up to my reputation. But here’s the thing I’ve come to realize after reflecting on the crash over the past month: crashing is not only an inevitable part of off-roading but part of learning. In fact, Brett Tkacs lists dropping your bike as an indicator that you’re improving your riding skills, which at first seems counter-intuitive, but when you think about it, if you aren’t dropping your bike once in a while, you aren’t pushing beyond your limits where both sh*t and learning happens. I’m pretty familiar with riding on dirt and gravel roads but haven’t done much trail riding. By contrast, Riley and Marc have been doing trails for years, so I knew that riding with them would be a learning experience.

Their experience was essential to getting my bike back on the trail. They had the gear and know-how. Here’s Marc explaining the procedure.

Once the bike was taken care of, we had lunch and I took a bunch of meds for the pain. I wasn’t sure how it would go on the bike but it was surprisingly okay; the shoulder is relatively immobile while riding, and it was actually off the bike around camp that I felt the injury most.

When we headed off again, I decided to let Marc go first and went slower on the downhill.

That’s my windscreen rattling; I lost some hardware in the crash that I replaced at the next rest stop. Later, Riley lead and I followed his line.

Bailey-Hazen actually isn’t a technical road, aside from a few bits. This clip is more indicative of what most of it is like—hard-packed dirt lined by trees and periodically opening up to nice views of the surrounding hills. It’s a fun ride and appropriate for big bikes.

The next day we headed south on Section 4 of the NEBDR but not before the amazing breakfast sandwiches of the Barnard General Store. There we met Bethel, who was visiting from California and had rented a Ténéré 700 from MotoVermont. She was enamoured by the general stores and bucolic countryside of Vermont, and who wouldn’t be, especially if you live in Superslab City. (I might have this wrong, but I think she said she lives in Los Angeles.) We shared stories over breakfast of falling in mud puddles and down ravines. It’s always nice to meet fellow bikers; there’s definitely a bond between like-minded people enjoying the freedom and thrill of motorcycling. Unfortunately, she was heading north to return the bike in Burlington and we were heading south.

If you know anything about the NEBDR, you know that it’s one of the harder BDRs and that Sections 4 and 5 are the toughest sections, so we were expecting some challenging terrain. I was trying to figure out where the by-passes were because I’d already decided I would take them with my gimpy shoulder; I just couldn’t risk another fall. But to our surprise, the section was relatively tame, more of the same winding dirt and gravel roads. When we finally stopped for coffee and a pastry at Sweet Birch Coffee Roasters and Bakery in Wallingford and Marc got out his map—yes, his paper Butler NEBDR map—we realized we had done all the bypasses. It seems that the most recent gpx tracks (March 2024) had the bypasses as the default and you had to load the harder sections separately if you wanted them. When I downloaded the tracks, there was much description of flood damage, so I suspect the organizers decided to steer riders away from those Class 4 roads for now. It worked out for me, but I think Marc was disappointed.

Despite that, Section 4 has some very nice riding. One of my favourite roads was the Forest Service Rd. 30.

Lower Podunk Road is also sweet, as is Hale Hollow.

Sorry about the bad angle of the action cam. If it’s not the wind deflector that obstructs the view, as was the case with my Newfoundland footage, it’s the bad angle unbeknownst to me. I’ll eventually get it right.

We ended up in Readsboro before high-tailing it back up to Barnard on asphalt, stopping en route for groceries and beer.

The next day we headed north on Section 5 and decided to split up so Riley and Marc could get their Class 4 fix. Unfortunately, while doing the harder section north of Stockbridge that follows the White River, Marc suffered the same fate as me. He said it was an easy section but he got target fixated on a rut and was thrown violently off the bike, separating his shoulder too! Now there were two of us gimpy. Even before his accident, he had decided that he was going to head home a day early because camping was not agreeing with him. That’s a polite way of saying he’s a wimp. No, seriously, some people are campers and some are not, and to his credit, he at least gave it a try. He said he enjoyed the campfire and time around camp, but I think he wasn’t sleeping well.

So after riding the exhilarating Lincoln Gap Road, we said our good-byes and Marc headed north on the 100 back to the border. It was already mid-afternoon and rain was in the forecast, so Riley and I decided to call it a day too. We picked up steaks and potatoes and, being the final night, some port. As we rode back to Barnard the rain started and never really stopped the entire evening, but we strung a tarp over the picnic table so all was well.

For the ride home, we figured we’d ride the Puppy Dog Route, which passes through Barnard and goes right up to the border. I’ve ridden it a few times and it’s an easy dirt route, but I’d only ever done it when dry. After the heavy rain of the night before, it was greeasy! We were crawling along in 1st gear when I stopped and asked, “Do we really want to do this?” Riley agreed that it would take us forever, so after a few miles of that we hit asphalt and stayed on it, but the drama was not over yet.

As we rode toward the border, the rain got heavier and heavier. When we crossed the border, it became torrential, and as we came over the Mercier Bridge it was apparent that there was major flooding, including on the main highway. Traffic had come to a standstill, so we had to find another way home and that included some deep water.

When I got in, Marilyn was none too pleased. She’d texted early in the day that we should just come straight home, but I didn’t know why since the rain wasn’t that bad in Vermont. Little did we know that Montreal was in the midst of more extreme weather and that many people were either stranded or had basement flooding. Apparently 80% of the basements in Dorval, the city next to where I live, were flooded.

A pretty hard crash, two, in fact, some challenging riding, extreme weather—this ride had it all and was the true adventure I needed before heading back to the doldrums of work. It also gave me a taste of the NEBDR and how difficult, maybe foolish, my original plan would have been to ride the entire thing alone, fully loaded, including the Class 4 roads “as a challenge.” The riding on the NEBDR is enjoyable and as challenging as you want it to be. We’ll see how I feel next summer but at the moment I’m feeling like I can skip the Class 4s if I’m alone.

The best part of this ride actually wasn’t part of the route at all but reconnecting with The Awesome Players. When I tried riding with them before, I just couldn’t keep up on the big GS when they were on smaller bikes. Now that I have the Tiger, I’m willing to try again. It’s the kind of riding I’ve wanted to do for some time but most of the riders I know don’t do dirt. I know I’ll be a little out of my comfort zone but in a good way, and there isn’t a better bunch of supportive, fun guys to ride with than them. You only have to watch a few of their videos to see what I mean.

But that will be probably next season, to be honest. Next week is the Ride for Dad to raise funds for prostate cancer research. It’s a great cause, and you can contribute to my team’s campaign here. Anything helps and is greatly appreciated.

After that, Marilyn and I are riding the Saguenay Fjord, which neither of us has seen, and I’ll be changing tires and windscreen for that tour so I don’t know if I’ll be back on the dirt until spring. Look for an upcoming post on Saguenay/Lac Saint-Jean, and a few more rides through the glorious fall season here in Canada when the leaves turn colour. Who knows: maybe I’ll even make it down to Vermont again before the snow flies.