Rubbing elbows with a few big names in the ADV world

I had the distinct pleasure to spend the last few days with a few celebrities in the ADV world. 1st was someone that I’ve been following for a few years now,and it was a treat to finally meet her in person! Leslie Saforelli (aka ADVgrrl)   just moved back to the east coast from Vancouver BC where her extremely popular blog chronicled her adventures to the Artic Circle and more than one cross country trip( US and Canada). Unfortunately,Leslie is still recovering from a crash last year on her R 1200 GS with her partner Pam. I’m sure she will be back on those trails soon enough! Thank you and Pam for hosting me.

 

After leaving Leslie and Pams place in Connecticut, I headed for Rhode Island by setting my GPS to “walking”  which is always fun because you never know what will show up. I was pleasantly surprised to find a few miles of nice dirt at the Rhode Island state line. 😀 

My destination was 570 Nooseneck Hill Rd, Exeter, RI 02822, which happens to be the address of one of the largest designers  of parts and accessories for ADV bikes in the world….

 

It was a reunion of sorts when I met up with their founder and CEO Erik Stephens. Back in 2014, several members of the PNWSTOG and I  traveled to Mariposa Ca. for the Horizons Unlimited meeting where Erik needed a bike to do his demo talks 😉

I had half jokingly asked Erik if wanted he to go for a ride (thinking he was way too busy running the company) and was REALLY surprised when he replied sure!, ever been to Bar Harbour Maine?  This is was something I totally wasn’t expecting! It would just be the two of us for a couple days on the road up to Bar Harbour. It was nostalgic for him as well as this was the same ride he and his brother did many years ago and was the reason they started Twisted Throttle when he needed “farkles” for his 2002 1000cc Suzuki V-Strom

Sadly the V-Strom wasn’t in the best shape for this ride so he picked the new R1200GS LED demo bike. Twisted Throttle has about 6 or 8 special edition bikes for him to choose from…. 😉 I know, right? :-p

We headed out a bit after noon up through Rhode Island, around Boston traffic, through the bottom corner of New Hampshire and into Maine on US 1.

Dinner was of course a “lobsta roll” 🙂 overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, really hard to beat!

Day two took us up US 1 through small towns and villages along the coast up past a cool looking bridge and into “Bah-Habaa”

Day 3 started really early as we were headed up Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park. It’s supposed to be the first place in the US to see the sunrise. Sadly, it was cloudy but that didn’t stop over 100 others from joining us up there in the windy mountain top.

Thank you Leslie and Erik for hosting me during my travels . I feel very lucky to be hanging out and getting to know y’all on a personal level then just what I see on the Internet. Y’all are both really cool!