We enjoyed nearly perfect weather during today’s dual sport adventure ride in the Texas hill country.  Our route included the low water crossing of the Colorado River at Shaw’s Bend and then 100 miles of excellent hill country dirt, culminated in lunch at the famous Cooper’s BBQ in Llano.

How fast did we ride today?

We started the day at TJ’s KTM store in Austin.  My buddy Bob hauled his KTM 500 EXC in the bed of his truck about 100 miles from his home near San Antonio.  As many of you know, KTM’s require completely unreasonable levels of maintenance and since Bob’s KTM had traveled 100 miles to arrive at the start of the day’s ride, it now required an engine rebuild.  Yes, I know the bike was trailered the 100 miles to Austin and not ridden there but one can’t be to careful with those oh-so-fragile KTMs.  Today’s route was nearly 300 miles so Bob was planning on another engine rebuild during our lunch break.  Here is the bike at the start of the tear down in TJ’s parking lot.

(For those who haven’t figured it out yet, I’m making a joke.  One of the common claims from non-KTM riders in the adventure riding community is that KTM’s aren’t reliable and need considerably more maintenance than Japanese motorcycles.  To my knowledge no one has any actual facts or statistics on the issue – it’s all heresay – but that doesn’t stop, or even slow down, the debate.)