July 26 2017. Today was a beautiful morning. We were up early and ready to hit the trail. It had rained a bit the night before so we were thinking the dust would be suppressed a little. The clouds weren’t to dark so we really thought nothing of it.

What we should of done was actually heed the advice of the designer of the TAT: “Some roads are dirt based and may become impassable”

But we’re smart guys, good riders, so whats a little mud?

These cows were actually warning us by not moving out of the way.

We rounded a corner and began a small climb. That’s when things got dicey quick.

After three hours of digging mud and rocks out of our brakes, chains, tires and sprockets we turned back to where we had come. On the way out of the foothills we ran into three Irish bros on the TAT. We pulled over and warned them of the hazards.

Once we hit a hardball road we headed back to our motel to get a hose to clean as much of the sticky mud out. We made it about five miles and JB’s rear brakes locked up and the right front fork seal was leaking.

We made it back to the motel, cleaned the bikes grabbed a bite to eat at the Pickle (from the night before).  The weather forecast was foreboding and we could see it off in the distance. We decided that the best course of action was to take a direct hardball route to Idaho City Idaho. This meant 200 miles of slab. But the mud and the weather made this decision easy for us.

Not two miles out of the town JB’s brakes locked again. We removed the brake pads to clean out the dried sticky mud.

Once repaired we had no issues and ran 216 miles of hardball road to get to Idaho City. Idaho city is a town of 400 people and we arrived at 9pm. Everything was closing and initially there were no rooms available. We Stopped in at Trudy’s roadside restaurant. We got really lucky and they answered the door even though they were closed. They offered us a small cabin and we could settle up in the morning.