More counter steering please

Headed out of the David Crocket (I guess they wanted to be formal and not call him “Davey” here) State Park headed west. Well, we THOUGHT we’d be heading west! It seems in order for Sam to get more dirt into his new tracks in Tennessee, there’s A LOT of going north to get east to get south to go west! BUT the trade-off was the best riding so far! Some really nice off-road tracks, especially through a pine forest near Collinwood and Lutts Tennessee. Super wide, smooth gravel with big sweeping turns!! PERFECT for fast riding!! We stopped and did some filming of each other riding through here and having a blast doing some sliding around in the gravel. The tracks weren’t too dusty, because we’d been dancing around a huge storm front all day and guaranteed we wouldn’t get wet by putting on our rain gear.

Then we swept down the lake formed by the dam on the Tennessee river area by Waterloo Alabama. Wondering why Sam would drag us down here, we soon found out just west of town when the road turned gravel and had HUGE, STEEP up and down hills with tight turns, great practice for out west. Just another few miles up the road, a little loop of the road provided our first real water-crossings. Corey unfortunately found the first one a little too abruptly and FLEW through it and killed the DR650. It was mid-engine deep and he hit it looking like the last hill at Disney’s Splash Mountain with a plume 10 feet high! Several more followed and we left with our boots full of water and smiles on our faces.

We finally figured the day would end near Corinth Mississippi, home of Sam Correro the guy who made riding this trail possible by spending years developing the tracks to connect together and create the TransAmerica Trail. With the storm moving in, we got to town just and the clouds opened up. Found a hotel with laundry facilities and made our first hotel stay for the trip. Great time to catch up on the blog, re-charge all the electronics and sleep on a REAL bed!!

Oh yeah, so back to the title. While we were flying along through these awesome gravel roads twisting through the soybean and corn field, Rod and I were getting pretty playful. Riding side by side at some pretty high speeds, sliding around corners, doing some great roosting and generally just having a blast! Then Rod had to go and powerslide a little TOO much around a corner in front of me and dumped his big Orange 950 on its side. I stopped and helped as Corey rode off unaware into the sun set. To his credit, he did come back in time to snap some crash scene photos. The only casualty was his brake pedal which we promptly bent back into place, plus Rod messed his knee up a bit. Hopefully a little ice and rest and he’ll be good as new in the morning. Good night from Mississippi!

Cheers

Bradley