I've got to be my usual cynical self and point out a potential problem with this forum topic. The biggest stumbling block I see is that dual sport is such a broad category. It ranges from people that want to have a street bike with high fenders to ride on FM roads and gravel roads between Dairy Queens and Waffle Houses, to people who just want to be legal enough not to get hassled by the cops when connecting two single-track trails.

I have pretty much given up on discovering any good places to ride (in Texas) by just wandering around on a d/s bike. Just about 100% of the time, if you do find something interesting, you're trespassing, and sooner or later the owner finds out and doesn't appreciate you being there. For me, a d/s bike makes a lousy street bike if you want to go any distance on it. When someone suggests riding from Houston to Austin, or just halfway, I'm thinking about something with a big fairing and more than 1 cylinder on it.

To continue on this rant, I've been to two TRH d/s rides, one at Sam Houston Nat'l Forest, and the other at Terlingua. At Sam Houston, I was with some friends, who were beginner-level riders and pretty helpless off of the pavement, so we were going pretty slow. We left with the "medium fast" group, but told the leader not to wait for us, we had a roll chart and could take care of ourselves. We ended up having some minor mechanical problems and getting passed by the "slow" group, got going again, then caught up and passed them again. I was amazed how slow some of these people wanted to go in the woods.

At Terlingua, I was with a friend who's a decent rider, but not a crazy person. We took off between the fast and medium groups, again planning to use the roll chart to ride by ourselves and stay out of the dust from the big groups. Unfortunately, my buddy had bike problems (sounds like a curse, eh?) and we got passed by the medium group. We got going again, and started catching the back of the medium group. These guys at the back of the pack were riding completely blind in the dust, and when we hit some rain ruts cross-wise to the trail, they started going down by the handful. We made our way through the stragglers and then hit a bottleneck where there was a spot where the trail funneled down to a single line, and some poor guy stalled his bike halfway up this hill where there was no other way around.

We waited our turn, although some d-heads came along and cut in front of us squids, and eventually worked our way back to clear air again. Then my buddy's bike problem came back, so we got passed by the medium guys again. We stopped and tried to fix it on the trail, and got passed by the slow group and a few guys riding 2-up. He decided to back-track to town and work on his bike some more, so I went on without him, passed the slow group, and maybe half of the by-then strung-out medium group. When we got to a highway crossing at about the halfway point to lunch, I took the highway back to town to check on my friend. I was off the trail for about an hour and a half as I rode to town, looked at the problem, then decided to go ahead and get back back on the trail.

It looked like I was in the back of the pack again. I didn't see the guys riding 2-up, but I was definitely catching and passing the slow group again. We hit a sandwash and I probably passed a dozen in about 200 yards. Some of these guys were just helpless. There were some TRH guys trying to help these people along, pick up their bikes for them, start their flooded bikes, etc. I felt sorry for those guys, I don't know if they ever made it to lunch!

Anyway, my point is, it's tough to find common ground on d/s bikes. Am I wrong? Tell me why.