Ca’TAT’strophe strikes at Warloop !!! (a perspective from Jeff)

What a fantastic calamity of events that ensured today…

It was amazing, unreal, exhausting, and a blast all at once.

We started out with the knowledge that Warloop Rd. was going to be the most technical of our entire trip. We knew that in the past it had laid claim to broken parts from the best and worst of riders.

Call it crazy, call it suicidal, call it a love for the sport (dual sport, that is)… we rode atop our trusty steeds with the realization that in this sport, the worst of times will become the best of times. Our bikes were running great, our spirits were up, and we even joked about the sign that read “Impassible Road Ahead” as we trudged on with gritty sand in our teeth and care free smiles.

The simple truth was, that I, and the rest of the team, was ever so very excited to see what was in store for us at Warloop. The plan was to make this the shortest riding day of the entire trip, and to just do Warloop and some additional miles following a stop in a Fayettville tatoo parlor for a permanent ink reminder of the time spent “riding the world.”

Since we’re attacking the TAT eastward, our route took us down Warloop, which I would argue is a much easier path than westward, which was uphill. By traveling down the hill, gravity maintains the bike’s momentum and that’s one less thing that the rider has to be concerned with… traveling westward, the rider must maintain the bike’s momentum by maintaining high RPM’s and feathering the clutch. It’s just that much more difficult.

Warloop started easy enough, hard packed dirt, and few switchbacks, and some mud puddles… then it quickly gave us a run for our money. Jenn, although quite a trooper, was still partially fatigued from the prior day’s fall, and was relying heavily on her one good remaining knee…, she was having extreme difficulty standing because of the pain in her left knee and ankle.

The “unpassable” sections of Warloop consist of large, loose, rocks scattered throughout very slippery mud. There is even a section of an old concrete street that once existed, but is now a small “cliff like” section of broken concrete and about a two feet drop off.

When we entered, we thought that we had to go down, then come back up to maintain the route that we had originally scheduled. Although we’d be doing it twice, we didn’t want to miss this stretch of the TAT.

Jenn went down at the start of the rough stuff. A relatively mild get-off, but after a short jaunt through some mud, she was down again, a bit harder this time. This time, hurting her right knee and leg and was pretty much done with Warloop. Since there was much more additional rough stuff ahead, and we knew we had to come back up, she decided to just have a break and wait for us to return up the road.

So Jenn parked, Russ and Dan rode ahead, and then John and I rode on. Dan and Russ, successfully navigated the path to the bottom. John fell twice, and he and I were quickly getting exhausted lifting the bike and trudging on.

Eventually, John and I reached the bottom and met up with Russ and Dan. That’s when we realized that we didn’t have to go back up this section, Warloop was call Warloop for a reason, it looped back around to the main road. We could actually loop around back down the easier start to get to Jenn and head out.

John had no interest in going back up the road, so he and Dan both got ready to go out to the main road; however, Russ looked at me and asked if I was interested in going back up. Feeling quite fatigued from my trip down with John, my brain asked my mouth to say “NO,” but somehow, the remaining amount of testosterone in my body, wouldn’t allow me to say no, and out came a great big "OK, let’s go back up." My brain even thought for a second, “Hang on, that’s not the message that I sent to the mouth.” Testosterone had won out on this one.

So back up we went. I went first and tacked the mud, then on to the hard stuff. As I crested the first big turn and slope of rocks, I saw the most beautiful log I had ever seen, and I simply had to ride it. I gunned the throttle, popped a wheelie, washed out the front, and crashed hard sliding on the log,…

I’ve ridden bikes all my life, but for that instant, I rode that log. And what a trusty steed it was. True and firm to its position. What a ride it took me for…

Riding up a bit further, I crashed out again, on another cluster of rocks. After both crashes, I was grateful for help from Russ to pick up my trusty steed. Russ however, made it up without issue. What a fantastic credit to his riding skills.

Once we made it to Jenn, we helped her get going and met up with Dan coming down the road as planned; however, John wasn’t with him. Apparently exhausted, John went down again as he came back around with Dan. This time John just waited for the group to return.

Once the group was all back together, it was on to get the TAT’s at the local tattoo parlor, then on to the Pig Trail.

Fun, Fun, Fun…