Get’n Older? GO SMALL! Little Adventure Bikes, Big Fun / Holy Smokies Day 1

Hey there guys, my name is Joe. Welcome to my channel JR DePue Moto Adventures, Ride, Camp and Repeat. Welcome to my first adventure motorcycle trip of the summer of 2024. I'm loading my WR250R up in the truck leaving my home here in Virginia. I'm going to set up a base camp headed all the way to North Georgia. I'm going to meet up with about 20 other guys. We're going to spend three days riding the mountain roads and trails, having some good food, some good fellowship. Glad you're with me. Let's get rolling. Nine hour drive to the Holy Smokies Ride. Looking forward to it. We'll get there tomorrow evening all loaded up. Looking forward to it meeting up with Brock Gill and a bunch of other good guys. Well I'm rolling down the road trying to loosen my load. I got seven women on my mind. Don't let the sound of your own voice drive you crazy. Yep, four and a half hour drive yesterday. Good night's sleep here in Kingsport, Tennessee. Just about to head out for Elijah, Georgia. Ride with Brock Gill. Be on portion of the Smoky 500 route I believe. Meet up with my son Mike and it's going to be a good time. There's going to be a bunch of other guys, lots of dirt, lots of dual sport riding and camaraderie. Got to hit the road another four hours to get there. The bike is riding great back there. Haven't had to adjust any of the straps or do anything to it. All right, Knoxville, Tennessee. We're here at the camp in Elijah. Getting set up along the river. Great spot and look who's just rolling in. Michael. Back together again. Nice spot, huh? Yeah. We're leaving camp, heading out to meet up with Brock and all the other guys. Having a little dinner and we're gonna get out of here. All right, I'm excited. The next three or four days of riding is about to begin and meet the other guys, have some dinner and kick this thing off. Well, we've been winding and twisting and carrying on since we left camp, but it looks like we must be in the right place. Let's ride. Wow. Are we too late? Is it over yet? So we've ridden up from our camp to meet up at Brock's headquarters cabin where we'll eat and meet and greet all the other guys. Brock's going to go over the ride for tomorrow and we'll have a little dinner and get to know one another. Quite a collection of bikes here. Yeah, a lot of bikes and I'm stoned. Stoned? Yeah. Oh, whoa. I've ridden the Mavdar on it, but I haven't ridden it for a couple of years, so I'm stuck. Yeah, I think it's just getting used to it. Welcome everyone. How's everybody doing? Great. I'm so glad you're here. We have a lot of fun stuff planned and it's going to kick off here in just a couple minutes. We're going to have food here in a few minutes. I hope you like burgers. Thank you. All right, good. We have a lot of fun things planned over the next few days. We're going to have a blast. I hope that everybody is ready to have fun, but I'm thinking about shooting some video. Is everybody okay with that? No? Okay, we won't do that. If anybody's like, no, leave me out of the video, just let me know, but I might try to shoot a couple of videos while you're on this thing because it might be fun to share it with other people. What do you think, Joe? Yeah, same for me. If anyone doesn't want to be in one of my videos, too bad. Here's the egg thing. Quick, this is Joe DePue. If you've watched my channel, you've seen him several times. Joe has his own YouTube channel and he is amazing. He is everyone's favorite adventure rider. If you haven't discovered Joe, it's JRDePue. Great videos. Just recently, they've been, there's been some really interesting ones talking about philosophy, the life on a bike, all that kind of stuff. If you haven't seen Joe, go check him out. It's June 20. I'm here with Brock's Moto Mission operation. We're doing a group ride. It's morning of the ride after a great outing last night. Everybody's getting ready to hit the trail. Well, there's a group of eight of us. Mike's leading, then he's going to get gas, then we're going to get on the tracks. We're riding in what we call the slow group because we're going to enjoy ourselves even more than anybody else. Okay, getting a lot more spicy now. I'm riding my 2013 WR250R and if you've been a follower of my channel, you know that I've mostly been riding the DR650 doing the BDRs out west and the Transamerica Trail in 2019. But I've had this WR for about three or four years and really haven't ridden it very much. Yeehaw! Making you work for your pay now. When I first got it, it was kind of twitchy and it took me a little time to figure out whether I even really like this bike or not. It's twitchy on the throttle. It has to be revved up. I didn't have much grunt down low. I wanted to die when you'd start off with it. It takes some getting used to. You need to keep it revved up and I've changed the gear ratio and that's really helped it so it does well in first and second gear now for tractoring. Just a few statistics. A reminder, if you don't know about the WR250R, Yamaha started manufacturing it in 2007. They ceased production in 2020. This is a 2013 model I picked up for a little over four thousand dollars with all kinds of goodies on it. Maybe I'll make a video one day showing all the aftermarket stuff that's on it. It's basically a four-stroke 249 cc liquid-cooled electronic fuel-injected single-engine thumper. Overall, it's well known for its reliability. It has titanium dual intake valves with steel exhaust valves. It has a plated cylinder. It can go tens of thousands of miles. Very reliable. It's a tall bike, you know, 36 and a half inches seat height. It can be lowered and most people might need to lower it, especially shorter inseamed individuals. 21 inch front wheels, 18 inch rear, fully adjustable front and rear shocks with 11 inches travel in the front and 10.6 in the rear with even rebound dampening in the rear. A very dirt worthy bike, kind of setting in that niche between an enduro bike and a street bike. Way capable off-road. Anyhow, I'm gonna see how I like it out on this run and probably be riding it all summer with camping gear on it. There's two other WRs out here on this three-day ride, so these guys are loving theirs, so we'll see how I love mine. We'll keep checking it out. That was, uh, that got spicy! Good job. You guys were waiting for the ambulance? Looking good. There's another one. All right, Dave. Good job. I hope everybody makes it. A couple more joining us. There's Mike. Looks like we all made it. Well, I had a nice little break there at the top. That was a sight of an airplane crash. Everybody gathered together. I guess we've had one guy drop and hurt his knee and hip a little bit, but he seems to be good to go. We're down the other side of the hill. It's not quite as spicy, but keeps your attention going. Everything's nice and dry. Having a lot of fun. We've got T700s. We've got KTM 390s. One guy's never ridden anything like this and he says it's doing great. That's fantastic. We've got WR 250s, DR 650s, WRs are doing real well. I just have the weight of a tool kit, tire patch, a tube in the back. Kind of settling into this WR. Feeling like I'm liking it. Definitely a different beast from the DR 650. But it's fun. Much lighter and flickable. It's okay. Go ahead. Following Michael now. We got disconnected from the rest of the group because of me making the wrong turn, but we're back on track. It's a windy twisty forest road, which is not too challenging, but watch yourself in the curves. All right. It's getting kind of hot here in these Georgia mountains, boys. Let's sit on the bench here a while and swing our legs. Kind of cool off. Let me show you how to do it. Yeah, you swing them like this and you do this. Dave, what are you doing over there? Got myself an itch, that's all. I'm swinging. I'm swinging. Downtown Ellijay River Street Tavern. Ellijay, Georgia. Well, that about wraps today's ride up, guys. Time for a little food and refreshment. Sitting down with Mike and my good friend Bob on his KTM 390. Did great today. If you're riding a light bike thinking of going more light, leave some comments down below. We've got two more days of riding coming up ahead, so think about subscribing and thanks again to Brockville for hosting this holy smokies ride. See you on the next one.