It's not every day you get to ride with a professional rider on ND soil. Luckily enough, we got to hang out with mountain bike slope-style legend Andrew Taylor. Andrew was traveling the country in an RV, riding in every state along the way. ND was number 15 of his 48 state tour. Team rider, Jesse Erhardt was one of the first people to reach out to AT about riding in Nodak. Unfortunately, his time here was cut short due to some unexpected troubles in Montana. This meant we were limited to only a few trails in the Bismarck area. So we tried to show him the gems of Bis-Man. AT's first stop was out to Harmon Lake. AT and Jesse got some phenomenal shots with all fall colors included. I flew back home that evening from the dealer summit at Specialized HQ just in time to join in on some fun.

Fall had been wet, abnormally wet. I am not complaining, the rain was needed. I don’t like wild-fires and dry soil anymore than the next guy, but unfortunately ND’s clay based soil does not play well with wet and rubber. So we went to plan B… fishing on the Mighty Missouri. The fishing wasn't hot at the time, but we hoped to land AT’s first fish of the 6 states he had fished. The walleye were slow. So we decided to run into the bays and try to hook up on a Northern or two. It was one after another on some smaller and medium sized pike. Fishing had to be cut short due to AT having a podcast interview. None the less we had a good time. Unfortunately, AT had to take off on the 3rd day, but we got to sneak in a ride at Pioneer with team rider Kaden Hintz.

All and all we had a phenomenal time with AT and made a great friendship. AT and I still stay in touch. We hope we showed him a good time and some ND hospitality for the short amount of time he spent here. He said he was very surprised in ND and that he will be back again. Check out his video of ND and follow his 48 State tour on Youtube.