How not to sell a motorcycle: One last twist of the Tiger's tail

"Triumph Tiger 800 for sale. Meet me in Las Vegas with a large sum of cash. I'll sell you the motorcycle sight unseen, after I use it on a two-day, 400-mile off-road ride across the desert. Don't be late because I'm skipping town as soon as I get the money."

Do we have a deal?

How not to sell a motorcycle

I was shuffling bikes around my garage in Philadelphia one balmy August evening when reality hit. I had just bought a slightly used KTM 1090 Adventure R and while I had originally planned to keep my 2015 Tiger 800 XCx, it quickly became clear that owning two adventure bikes was pushing the limits of my already cramped one-car garage. In addition to the Tiger and the 1090, there was also my road-worn 2005 Triumph Bonneville and a "rough-around-the-edges" 1976 Honda CB550, as well as a full-sized workbench and hydraulic motorcycle lift.

Buying a bigger house with a nicer garage wasn't in the budget (as the budget had clearly already been spent on motorcycles), so something had to go.

Having just returned from a weekend of side-by-side evaluation on some of my favorite trails and Jeep roads, a victor had been decided. The KTM came out on top, earning it a spot in the garage, and the Tiger went up for sale.

My buddy Abhi Eswarappa runs the website Bike-urious, as well as the online motorcycle auction house Iconic Motorbikes. He has also facilitated some of my favorite motorcycling trips, like a weeklong ride down the Baja peninsula in Mexico or riding a Ural sidecar rig across the desert from Los Angeles to Las Vegas in the LA-Barstow to Vegas Dual Sport ride.

The latter claims to be the longest two-day dual-sport ride in the world with over 400 miles of desert riding spread over 48 hours. Riders depart from Palmdale, California, at dawn on the day after Thanksgiving and (ideally) roll into Barstow just before sunset at the end of the first day. The second day's ride ends with the glittery lights of Las Vegas guiding you to the finish line at The Orleans Hotel and Casino.

When I casually mentioned to Abhi that I was selling the Tiger, I also lamented that I'd love to do one final ride with the bike. Within days I received an email from Abhi saying he might have a buyer for the Tiger... in California.

How not to negotiate a motorcycle sale

When I first met the potential buyer, Kyle Hyatt, neither of us was in a strong bargaining position. He opened negotiations by telling me that he was currently "between jobs" but was actively interviewing. I, meanwhile, wanted to ride the Tiger one last time in LAB2V before bidding it farewell, potentially adding new damage to its typical ADV scars. Neither of us was in a position to drive a hard bargain, so he agreed to my asking price and said he'd fly to Vegas and ride it home after I finished the LAB2V. For my part, I tried not to think too much about how hard it might be for him to keep that commitment considering he didn't actually have a job.

Trusting that Kyle was an employable fellow, I set about preparing for the trip to California.

My motorcycles get used hard and often feature the battle scars of those adventures, but they are also meticulously maintained. Therefore, any of the Tiger's wear items that were in questionable condition were replaced. That meant new wheel bearings, steering head bearings, chain and sprockets, tires, and an oil change. Even the air filter got replaced, and if you've ever replaced an air filter on a Tiger 800, you'll know what kind of commitment it entails. The clutch was relatively new, so I left that alone. After a few weeks prepping the bike, I was set to roll out.

Longtime Triumph Tiger-riding buddy Steve Kamrad had agreed to join me on this trip and together we trailered his 2013 Triumph Tiger 800 roadie out alongside my XCx over three days, taking turns driving. The second day on the road, I heard from Kyle. While he had landed a job, he was still working to secure financing. I was planning to use a portion of my proceeds from the sale to cover the cost of the trip. But by that point, I was already on the backside of the Rocky Mountains. There was no turning back.

Riding LAB2V: Last tango on the Tiger

The energy on Friday morning at the starting line was palpable. About half of our group of friends had ridden the event before and the other half had not. For all of us, however, it would be our first time tackling it on larger adventure bikes.

All riders leave around the same time, so it usually takes a while for everyone to get spaced out, meaning the first 20 miles or so were quite dusty. I was straining to see through the swirling golden brown cloud that seemed to dance around me, scattering the desert sunlight into a haze, when I heard someone scream "Stop!" I parked the bike at the edge of the trail, dismounted, and moved cautiously forward on foot.

That's when I saw it. A jagged, pit-like hole in the middle of the trail where the ground must have collapsed under a heavy desert rain. It was large enough to consume the two Honda Africa Twins that sat upside down about six feet below the ledge where I stood.

Nathan May, the pilot of one of the Hondas, looked up at me in a daze, as blood mixed with dirt dripped down his chin from an unknown wound. Abhi, the pilot of the other bike, was assessing the damage to the machines. While Abhi and his bike were relatively unscathed, Nathan wasn't so lucky. He would ultimately need eight stitches in his upper lip to stop the bleeding. His bike suffered a broken windscreen and cracked luggage mount that would require welding to fix.

Together we got the bikes out of the hole and limped them back to the main road. Nathan rode off in the direction of the closest hospital and we continued on.

Our group soldiered on across the desert, all a bit sobered from the exciting start to the day. I gave myself a stern reminder that the Tiger needed to show up to Las Vegas in one piece. I eased up on the throttle and waved the others in front of me.

With the dust, the heat, and the exertion needed to keep going through the powdery sand, we were all too happy to hit the sleepy desert town of Barstow.

The ride, day two, and crash number two

Nathan was waiting for us at the hotel with a freshly sewn face and a welded Africa Twin. (He found a mechanic in Victorville who was willing to open his shop and get him straightened out.) As for the Tiger, I had snapped both my centerstand spring and my kickstand spring, which made stopping a bit challenging, but ultimately it wasn't anything a few zip ties couldn't fix.

The second day was hotter than the first and things were slow going heading out of Barstow. We struggled through deep soft sections of sand, trying to find traction in the slightly firmer edges of the trail. In the sand, your brain tells you to slow down, but you actually want to speed up or you'll lose momentum, the rear tire will start to spin, and you won't be able to get moving again. By 11 a.m. we were well behind schedule and opted to burn some highway miles into Baker, California.

After filling up the tanks at Baker, we headed north out of town on Death Valley Road past Silver Lake Cemetery and soon came to another notorious sand section. I was riding along at a good clip, feeling solid and fast as I cranked on the throttle a little harder, riding around some folks who had pulled over to rest. All was right with the world and I was in my happy place, feeling good as I rode boldly and blindly through a dust cloud.

They say pride cometh before the fall. And fall I did. Hard.

Exiting the dust, I had to swerve to miss some riders on the trail. Not an easy maneuver in deep sand at a relatively fast pace. I tucked the front wheel. The bike stopped. I did not. Instead, I performed a backflip with the agility of a Russian gymnast. Unfortunately, I landed with the grace of an elephant, hard and clumsy.

Knocking the wind out of myself, I stayed down for a minute, staring at the deep blue desert sky above me. My thoughts drifted to the bike. How bad? Was it ridable? More importantly, was it sellable?

I had pushed into the handlebar so hard that I had rotated it down in its mount and I needed to adjust it back into place, but the bar wasn't bent. There were a few new scratches on the AltRider crash bars and some of the plastic bits, but all things considered, the Tiger was in good shape.

The rest of the ride was executed with maximum caution. Our group had two strikes against us and I wasn't in any hurry to whiff on a third. At one point, someone suggested taking the harder final stretch into Las Vegas to end the trip. Ultimately, we reached a consensus that it would be better to head straight to Vegas on the main route. I was visibly relieved.

The handoff in Vegas

Kyle was waiting for us as we rolled into the Orleans Hotel parking garage well after dark. The Tiger was dusty and dirty but was in one piece.

I immediately dug out a spare set of kickstand springs from the chase truck and got that sorted while Kyle examined the bike and went through the boxes of spare parts and accessories I was including with the sale.

We wrote out the bill of sale on The Orleans stationery while sipping celebratory cocktails at the hotel bar. It had been a hell of a trip and an even bigger gamble. But when the dust settled, Kyle ended up with a bike he was excited about and I had enough money to cover the cost of the trip and then some.

This was easily the most expensive way I've ever sold a motorcycle. And as for Kyle and the Tiger? He hadn't made it halfway home before ditching the highway in favor of a sandy dirt trail. I immediately got a picture of the bike lying on its side with its new owner standing over top of it, grinning like a kid in a mud puddle.

I was glad to see the bike was in the hands of someone who was going to treat it properly. After all, garage queens don't have stories to tell.