WITH STAN TON

for our May 4-5 tour, the sandy dirt backroads were still damp, semi-hard packed, and therefore eminently roostable on our Triumph Tiger 900s and Scrambler 1200 XE.

There were still a few short deeper sections, though. I was just about to panic-topple over in the first grassy dual-track one early on Day 1, as is my habit, when I saw Sara Stanton, Mrs. S., right ahead of me and doing fine on her Tiger 900 GT Low with just the occasional dab. If 5-foot-2inch Mrs. S can do it, I can do it! This is faulty logic, as she’s been riding since early childhood just like Jeff, and is also a great rider. But it pulled me through. Confidence is all…

We were almost to the end front tire augured in, but when the guy behind me stopped, Mrs. S.’ Tiger tapped his bike just hard enough to require a duct-tape windshield repair. The irony, the hilarity…will Jeff dock her for the broken windshield mount? I feel like crashes at less than 5 mph shouldn’t count, like the five-second rule for food.

The whole point, says Jeff “Six Times (AMA Champion)” Stanton, is to expose people to the beauty of his native Michigan, where he lives on a seventh-generation farm near Sherwood, complete with barn full of motorcycles, a motocross track, kids, actual crops, and all kinds of animals including the whitetail deer he breeds but does not get emotionally attached to. At the tender age of 4, Jeff’s mom put him on his first motorcycle, the whole family would go racing most weekends, and the rest, as the cliche goes, really is history: Six AMA championships, a bunch of Motocross of Nations triumphs and a place in the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame.

At the height of his pro career — which ended at 26 years old in 1993 — Stanton was packing it off when we had to pause in adjoining sandy ruts while a guy ahead of us extricated himself. Mrs. S. confided she likes to stay well back from the pack just for that reason. When we got going again on more solid dirt, I was in front of her and feeling my oats, revving the Triple up, steering with the rear, yahoo!, until I tried to “rail a berm” on the outside of a tight right, which turned out to be more of a loose bank of sand: It was a slow, poofy high-side as my to Europe to get the start money at huge stadium races like Bercy: “I’d do all the AMA Supercross races, AMA Nationals, GPs, then I’d do as many invitational races as I could. I would go to Bercy and Madrid and places, and race three to four nights a week at $30,000 or $40,000 a night start money. I raced two years’ worth in a few of those years, but I made more money over there than I did over here by winning championships.”

Mary Stanton taught Jeff to ride on and around the farm from about the age of 4. She was a District 14 champion before womens’ classes existed. Left: Stanton in his heyday, flying high. Above and right: Quality instruction, both group and personal; that’s J.S. with the author (in grey and yellow Aerostich).

All that racing, training and traveling may have shortened his career, Jeff thinks, but with no regrets — and racing in Europe in those days did result in some great stories that get shared around the dinner table.

Crucially, that Stanton work ethic was a valuable commodity; the general wisdom (shared by Jeff) is that he wasn’t the most gifted rider but made up for it with hard work and determination. After his career ended, Honda kept him on board for 10 years as a consultant, where he helped riders like AMA Motorcycle Hall of Famer Ricky Carmichael achieve their full potential. (Now, all these years later, Ricky and Jeff are helping Triumph perfect their new MX bikes.) Helping people like me achieve my full potential on an adventure bike should be a walk in the park. Or a ride in the woods. The bar is low…

Hence, Stanton’s school is one of three that Triumph officially sanctions, the other two being in

Wales and Malaga, Spain. Stanton’s school, operating out of Two Hats Ranch about an hour north of Grand Rapids, Mich., offers three levels of adventure-bike training just like the other two schools. All three follow the same Triumph curriculum, so it’s possible to take Level 1 in England, Level 2 in Spain, then journey to Michigan for Level 3. Mix and match as desired. Level 1 is for those with no off-road experience, Level 2 is for intermediates, and Level 3 is for masochists and experienced adventure riders. Ripped from the BMW playbook, these types of schools are genius for getting people on ADV bikes and keeping them there.

Ignorance being bliss, we weren’t signed up for any of the three levels of Jeff Stanton Adventure Training, but for the 2.5-day JS Adventure Tour. Life’s too short at my age for learning the basics all over again, most of which I’ve already been exposed to even if they haven’t been fully absorbed: Stand up, lean back, go loose on the bars in the sand, and the throttle is your friend. My son Ryan (who I smuggled in as official photographer), who rode motocross up to the RM85 stage, was a bit taken aback at first that there was almost no instruction before he was set free on a shiny

(the very machine he’s been thinking about buying with actual money).

Our new friend Bryan Rice (who’s directed Shakespeare plays in New York and now operates an architectural design app business) didn’t have an easy time getting up the winding dirt driveway to Two Hats Ranch lodge on his Road Glide, since he says he’s never ridden off pavement in his life. Stanton took note and gave Bryan a little private instruction on arrival afternoon.

Meanwhile, high school buddies from Detroit, Matt Kendall (now a patent attorney living in Grand Rapids) and Chris Hargunani (pediatric otolaryngologist now living in Portland, Ore.), signed up after Chris ran across the school on Triumph’s website. Chris has been riding a 2018 Tiger 800 about five years; Matt’s got a BMW K75, Honda CB200, Moto Guzzi Lemans 1000 and interesting airplane flying stories. Neither had ridden off-road at all.

Stanton’s boys like to keep the size of each class down to keep things more personal. Our final rider was Adam Hughes, a petroleum engineer from Austin, Texas, and a skilled off-roader who’s been riding moto for years and now has a KTM 890 Adventure. Adam bumped into Stanton, a childhood hero of his, at last year’s Motocross of Nations at Redbud, Minn. Next thing you know, he’s signed up for our first ride of the season, and literally rubbing elbows for three days.

It’s about 100 miles west to Lake Michigan from Two Hats Ranch, and by 9 a.m. we’re rolling out the gate of the 1300-acre compound. Stanton’s own farm is in fact 170 miles south, but his whitetail deer breeding business got him in touch with the Two Hats owners, who mainly run a luxe hunting lodge: People, many in private jets, pay sums of money to plug Jeff’s trophy deer that make even expensive motorcycle habits feel positively ascetic. Also turkeys, hedgehogs, assorted marsupials, fish…

I was worried about a couple of the others, especially my own kid, who hasn’t done much “adventure” riding, if any, but mostly worried about myself as we started out on those sandy backroads toward Lake Michigan; it always takes a bit to get used to that sketchy feeling of your tires wandering round beneath you. Jeff likes to lead by showing. Here we are rolling along at 25 or 30 mph, standing on the pegs, white-knuckling the grips and feeling as if we could topple over any second. Now here we are at 50 mph, and now things are much more stable and relaxed. Jeff looks casually back at us with one hand on the bars, twists the throttle wide open and fishtails across the width of the road a few times and off into the distance. See? Faster is better. Steer with the rear.

It takes us ducklings a while to catch on, but soon everybody’s picking up the pace and not falling over. There are thousands of miles of dirt roads up in there, and even more dual-track seasonal roads, logging roads, and single-track leading off in all directions — all VFC: very few cars.

Leave it to Jeff, who spent years in SoCal during his racing and training days, to find Carniceria La Conasupo Taqueria El Paisano in Shelby, Mich., for lunch. This restaurant/grocery store caters to the migrant farm workers in the area, and the tacos are muy delicioso. Not what I expected. From there we took more backroads, both paved and dirt, to Little Sable Point Lighthouse, one of 200-some on the Great Lakes, dipped our toes in Lake Michigan, then turned and blasted back to Two Hats. Two hundred miles on sandy dirt roads is a long day, but even our least experienced rider made it without much difficulty.

From a MotocrossAction mag.com article two years ago: “My mom had bikes, my eyes locked onto exactly the tree I was surely going to hit as my front wheel bogged down when my hand opened the throttle by itself without my brain telling it to, which straightened the bike out, and on we rode. Well, I’ll be… is this learning ? my dad had bikes, and we always rode around the farm. That later led to buying property in Northern Michigan where there were tons of trails. I remember the many trips up there on minibikes, falling over in the sand an endless number of times and mom and dad picking us up...”

You need a basic understanding, I suppose, before you can learn anything.

On Day 2 we got a small sample of what you’d be in for if you signed up for a little JS Adventure Training, from Triumph Level 3 instructor Fred Britton, and JS’s right-hand man Troy Devlin, who’s also a Level 2 instructor. From his moto days, my boy Ryan had been blasting out of corners sitting on the seat, foot-out style. Now he learned the importance of standing up on the pegs and steering with the feet — weighting the outside peg while pushing the bike onto the sides of its tires to make it turn… much better. Everything about the Tiger is engineered to operate that way. We also learned how to turn around if you get stuck halfway up a hill, knowledge I could’ve used a few sweaty times in the past. In two or three days, you could no doubt learn a lot

The 200 lighthouses around the Great Lakes (middle right and previous page) are there for a very good reason. Our tour took place the week after Gordon Lightfoot died, and The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald was on an endless loop for a good part of our ride.

After lunch we blasted off with our newfound knowledge. Now Ryan and I and Adam the fast guy were slaloming along behind Six-Time Stanton down sandy two-tracks through the trees, rolling out of the gas for the bends and throwing roosts of sandy soil at the exits. The kid was loving the Scrambler 1200’s torque, and it’s just as fun to twist the Tiger triple at a bit higher rpm with the same result.

Now and then, Jeff shows you how fast it’s actually possible to go; he’s out of sight in about three bends through the forest. But his fresh tire tracks show you exactly the correct trajectory, dark crescents slashed on a sand-colored background. Another three bends later, my kid’s out of sight too thanks to his new feet-up, pushthe-bike-down technique.

“Hey!” I yell at Jeff at the next stop, “the kid’s ready for flat track huh?”

“What? Frankly I was so far ahead I didn’t see him.”

It’s all relative. JS isn’t the type to heap unwarranted praise. Instructors/chase riders Troy and Fred take up the slack, with words of encouragement and praise. It’s a good crew.

Dunno why, but wherever there are tighter corners, the sand gets deeper. Coming in hot and out of control in one S-bend after a longish straight, my eyes locked onto exactly the tree I was surely going to hit as my front wheel bogged down…when my hand opened the throttle by itself without my brain telling it to, which straightened the bike out, and on we rode. Well, I’ll be… is this learning?

Toward the end of our last day we stopped in yet another wood where two roads diverged. Stanton would occasionally take Adam the expert down single-track trails, while directing the rest of us onto the easy route. This time he pointed at Adam, Ryan and me to follow him down a dark dual-track (me hesitantly) while the others would take the easy way. I’m a made man!

Now we’re flying through the trees on an even snakier two-track, growing more confident and smoother with every turn. Say, this Tiger 900 Rally is magnificent! These Karoo 4 tires are unflappable! The others were out of sight again after a bit, but sometimes close enough to see a few grains of sand still tumbling as I connected their fresh tire marks.

BrrrrRRRRRrrRRRRR! growled my Tiger as it consumed the trail. Maybe I’ve learned to ride at last… this is blissful, the low 60-degree weather is perfect… My companions are now family. Then it happened, as we came out of the trees into a sunny clearing with a great big Mojave-style deep sand wash.

Twenty yards ahead, my kid who hadn’t put a wheel wrong all day, or even fallen over in two days, was ever does pull the trigger and buy a Scrambler 1200 like he’s been threatening (mostly to commute around SoCal), I’ll feel much better knowing he knows how to ride the wheels off the thing. Okay, well, you’re not an expert after two days of touring, but after following Stanton all that time, he knows exactly what one looks like, at least. Shudder to think how proficient one might become after the Level 3 school.

Bryan Rice felt like his life had been transformed as he packed up his Road Glide to ride home (it was his dealer trying to sell him a PanAmerica that got him to look up Stanton), and you could see the gears in the other fellas’ brains — all serious overachievers — plotting their next adventures.

Adventure biking didn’t really get to be a thing until I was on the wrong side of middle-age, and felt like it was a sketchy activity best avoided. Now I’m having to reconsider. On a nonbehemoth motorcycle like this Tiger 900 Rally (with low seat option), and a little expert instruction in how to do having a hard time getting through, nearly falling over and using his feet to paddle; Jeff’s advice had been to paddle through if you were afraid to use his favored method of blasting through. Panicky and unable to decide which technique to use, I crawled in at about half throttle and toppled over almost immediately. Dammit!

Luckily Fred is a great bike pickerupper (it’s good form to pretend to help but it’s him providing 87% of the lifting), and at least, unlike California sand, this Michigan stuff is a bit easier to waddle through in first gear. It could be that this Tiger is just way lighter than the BMW 1250GS that last tried to Rommel me in the Mojave a few years ago.

But by now you’re getting the idea. My son and I had a blast, and if he it right, it’s all way less threatening and much more thrilling. I can’t think of a better way to find out if it’s for you than a few days with Jeff Stanton, riding around on borrowed motorcycles, on the very proving grounds that made him famous, and hanging out with him and other great people at the lodge at night. Ask Mrs. Stanton about the pulled squirrel. AMA

Thanks to Motonation for Ryan B.’s Pursang jacket/ pants and SIDI boots; Shoei for the Hornet X2 helmet; and Kriega USA for the R22 backpack. Also to Arai and Aerostich for J.B.’s XD-4 lid and Roadcrafter R-3 suit.