Stuntman Jeff and I were riding our Husqvarna TR650 Terra’s on a dirt road in Mexico when things got a little dicey. I had ridden this particular road six years earlier with Trail Blazer Milton and knew it to be a fun class 1 dirt road that made its way through a narrow valley with some gorgeous scenery. Of course, when I came through on the trip with Milton the road was dry. Today, things were different.

Rain had fallen shortly before Stuntman and I started down this road and the high traction clay I remembered had been converted into muddy, sticky, slimy, rutted clay with a traction co-efficient that seemed to be close to zero. Which, no surprise, made riding more than a bit challenging on our fully loaded adventure bikes. Our tires quickly became slicks as they clogged with wet clay causing our pace to slow to a crawl as we skated along, barely able to keep our bikes upright. I’m not a very good mud rider on my best day and this wasn’t one of my best days. While neither of us dropped our bikes, it took everything we had to not do so. Mile after agonizingly slow mile we made our way south, wondering when we would finally reach pavement.

It had been awhile since I had ridden in mud, so this was a good reminder that conditions can quickly change an easy class 1 road into a challenging class 3 road. Such is the nature of adventure riding.