BOTE Presents //
The Machine

Photography: Sean Murphy
Videography: Tyler Trant

ENDURANCE

[en-dur-ance] noun

The power to withstand pain or hardships; the ability or strength to continue despite fatigue, stress, or other adverse conditions.

KENTUCKY ADVENTURE TRAIL - 4 guys. 4 bikes. 5 days. 12 total hours of sleep. 800 miles. 14 inches of rain, hail and snow. After we survived the Everglades in 2018 we said “Never Again”. Yet here we are, 4 years later. A new terrain. We traded crocs for cliffs, sand spurs for hail and boards for bikes.

For some reason I crave pain – or maybe more aptly put I crave hardship. Not in the true sense of physical damage or long lasting bouts of real trouble; moreso something I can dip myself in and out of. However it’s always the “out of” portion of the dipping that comes back around to bite us.

My latest submersion into this form of hardship came by the way of Pete Buzzelli. Pete runs our DarkRoom R&D here at BOTE and is truly a relic of an ancient form of man. The kind of man that feels nothing, is scared of nothing, and let’s just say is willing to subject others to his version of reality in which the aforementioned traits must apply - otherwise you’re screwed.

Pete and I (and many others here at BOTE) have a love for motorcycles. One day in conversation, Pete asked me if I would be interested in going along with him on a moto trip on the “Kentucky Adventure Tour”. I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about, but I figured, “what the hell. This is 6 months away, I can figure it out by then.”

Well, I got busy and 6 months flew by and there we were, facing our Kentucky Adventure Tour trip in the face.

In my mind when I commited, this motorcycle adventure was going to be more like something you would see from Ewan McGregor, or some Discovery Channel show. 50% road ride, 40% gravel roads and maybe 10% off road - and we were going to do it on essentially road / adventure bikes with some knobby tires. At least that’s the way Pete described it. About 2 weeks out from leaving, I realized that I had put blind faith into Pete’s description and travel plan organization (remember how I described him) - so I decided to do some research of my own.

Holy Hell. Pete had signed us all up for what was essentially a dual-sport, dirt bike, 1200 mile trail tour. And we had street bikes... that’s like riding a road bike on a mountain bike trail, just for kicks. We had 1 week to scramble; piece together whatever kind of gear we could put our hands on and get mentally prepared for Pete’s “Hell Week” in Kentucky. We had zero hotels booked, no clue how to navigate the trail, and really nothing but some rider generated YouTube content for guides.

Lets just say that it was pain, hardship, manshit, and at the end of the day a really badass experience that I will never forget... and never do again. The video documentary of the trip will tell the real story - I just wanted to “set the stage” for how and why I got myself into this...

- Corey Cooper // CEO & Founder