Now... the rest of the story...

After planning the route over on F650.com, the original plan was to meet in Fayetteville on Saturday morning, but as things do, things changed, and I decided to ride up to Austin to stay over night at Brewer's house since DAM was over there anyway. 

The evening was pretty tame--we bled brakes, and did some other minor wrenching to prepare for our ride on Saturday.  We also watched a little MotoGP on TiVo and played a little guitar.  Like I said, tame.  DAM did find this...

So, here they sat, await the adventure of the following day...

I was able to snap a picture of an actual attempted jailbreak!

We went to bed pretty early to awake to Brewer blaring AC/DC and yelling for DAM and I to get up at 6:00 AM on Saturday.

Thumper and Beltless met us at Brewer's and we headed out... yep, right to the gas station:

Here's DAM's picture of all of us at the gas station...
 

(Picture courtesy of DAMalden)

... so that he won't be left out, here's DAM taking aforementioned picture...

We took off from Austin to Fayetteville, and damned if the bottom didn't fall out on us.  All I had was a liner for my jacket, and that pile of shit leaked.  There was not one square millimeter of dry to be found on me.  I mean SOAKED. O well...

We met F650ster in Fayetteville.  Poor guy had been waiting on us for about an hour and a half.  By the way, never order grits from Orsak's Cafe.

After eating, we bullshitted a bit and took the group photo...

Then we saddled up the F bikes.  2 red ones, 2 black ones, 2 Dakars....

We didn't get too far when Thumper threw a chain.  It could have been ugly, but he was able to fix it and carry on...

(Picture courtesy of DAMalden)

Brewer was in charge of the route.  After filling up with gas one last time, Brewer took us onto the slippery-slidy mud bogged trails...

We were a couple of miles into it, when I noticed F650ster was not behind us any longer.  We waited for a few minutes...
... some of us watered the grass...

After a few minutes, I took the Red Devil back to find him.  There he was--in the middle of the road.  Apparently he had nearly lost control of the bike and ran off the road.  He held onto it and didn't wipe out, but this was his first time ever off road.  He had had enough, so Brewer gave him directions back to the highway, and he headed back to Dallas.

F650ster, good try, but today was probably not the day to learn about off-roading.  It did end up getting worse.  "Next time"... when it's dry!

I did take a second to shoot the obligatory dirt road shot while I was standing there.

As an aside...
... based on the input from the fine folks over at F650.com, I decided to get some Teeks for the Red Devil.  O yeah! 

I can run about 85 on muddy roads without any problem.  Good call to all who recommended them!

One cool thing about hauling ass like that is that you get to get cool pictures of everyone... (and note how deep that mud is merely on the road...)

Here's Brewer checking the route on his GPS again...

And Thumper waiting patiently...

And, all of us waiting patiently...

Then back on the trails again!

I must admit, DAM kicked ass with his street tire...

Conversation at one of the intersections...

"Bill, do you have a tire iron?"

"Yes DAM, I do?"

"Can you please get it out and pry my ass off this seat?"

As another aside, DAM also turned over 20K...

Another obligatory shot of the Red Devil...

Then we noticed Thumper's duck bill flopping about.  This was after he threw his chain earlier in the day.  So we did a quick duck bill castration...

Then we bullshitted some more and surveyed the mud EVERYWHERE!

And continued on into Elgin for some BBQ...

What do you mean you "cannot read my plate" officer?

I left the restaurant and headed back to Houston... of course I got drenched again. 

I did an overall assessment of the motorcycle.  Everything was still in tact (I had to tighten a couple of bolts), but it looked like hell... 

So, a couple of hours with some soap and water...

Ready for next time!

Other versions of the story can be found here: http://f650.com/forums/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=150071

As always, thanks for coming along.

Josh... move back home!