Friday morning, we headed out on the Medium Bike Hard route. Things went south pretty quickly.
My 701 was fully fueled with gasoline and every time I started it, the bike wanted to idle rough and tried to stall. It was pretty perplexing and I really didn’t have time to diagnose because I started the bike at kickstands-up so we headed out. the bike kept idling rough so I did at one point slightly adjust the Rekluse to not grab as aggressively which I thought would fix things but nope. I unplugged my accessories and that didn’t help either.
Bob, the organizer warned us that the first 500 yards hill climb was the worst. If you make it up that big-ass hill, the rest of the ride will be easy going. The thing is, New Hampshire has been rained on every day for the last 2 weeks. It was a mud pit. 18" deep holes that you couldn’t go around, water crossings 60’ long 3 feet deep. It was going to be a very rough 100 mile loop but we were all excited. Everyone made it up the hill, even Jesse on his Tenere 700. He did an amazing job on that huge bike with basic 50/50 knobbies (Anakee Wild) that were a harder compound for street grip and not very gummy. He kicked a lot of big rocks down the hill on his ascent.