As the day of the event grew closer we weren’t sure the bike would make it. All the media models were out and they didn’t have anything to ship us. Finally we got word the bike will arrive Thursday, two days before the event. As promised, the bike was delivered Thursday in the morning to the venerated EDM offices. As the back door to the deliver van opened we looked in to see a very smooth rear tire and noticed the front and rear looked very close in size. We had trouble in paradise! In some sort of mix up the wrong bike had arrived at our offices! As it turned out the XMoto was in he van instead of the XChallenge. While the XMoto would be a blast to ride, we were riding mostly off road and the Moto would not work.

After some phone calls BMW pulled one of the most amazing feats I have ever seen… ever. They purchased an XChallenge from a local dealer and with a few hours for dealer prep, delivered it later that afternoon. Well done BMW America! Props to you for coming through in such a huge way.

Thursday night and most of the day Friday, as luck would have it, turned out to be the two wettest days of the year. We had about 7 inches of rain during the 36 hour period. Great for all the vegetation, really bad for riding an unfamiliar bike on tight woods trails. The good news is it was sunny all day Saturday so some spots were reasonably dry. During sign up riders were talking about last years conditions being much, much worse. I couldn’t imagine it being worse than this but it was. It had rained for a day before the event and all day during the ride! I would have gone home. After sign up, breakfast was served, nice touch Marvin, a riders meeting and we were off. What a mess. If you have never seen the dirt in South Carolina, imagine the red dirt on a baseball field. Now imagine that same dirt soaking wet and trying to run on it with sneakers. Now try to stop or turn. You get the picture.