Plate? What plate?

A few weeks ago I was out and about trying to find a few roads I had not been on with the KLR to explore and see what was around the next bend or up the next trail. I was running up and down a small back highway and just taking any dirt road or trail that I thought I could squeeze down and see where I ended up. I ended up coming across some trail that was off of a rail crossing and went down this odd trail that for some reason was paved with asphalt. It became obvious that it was an old rail bed by the look of all the crushed basalt next to the trail. The trail ended up going from dirt and asphalt a few times and I even slowed down to hit a few side trails until as usual around here I came across a no trespassing sign. A few miles into the trail I was going probably 50 mph or so and the trail turned in to dirt once again with a few whoops spaced apart so I could conveniently get in a rhythm and blip the throttle just right to get the front wheel up and cruise across. Being that I ride a KLR it is heavy and after a few times of these whoops I felt and heard the rear suspension bottom out. What I did not know at the time was that on one of the suspension bottomings the rear knobby tire came up and chewed a nice crescent shape out of the rear lower fender that my license plate is attached to. Needless to say I actually ran into a fish and game officer later who did not notice the plate missing but the sad thing is neither did I.

Two weeks go by and I am going out to do errands and low and behold no plate. I backtracked all over the place trying to locate my plate in hopes that I would not get pulled over in the mean time. No such luck on the plate. Oh well what's another ten bucks when I had such a good day of riding. If you look carefully at the bottom picture you can see where the tire took out the fender. The new plate is as high as possible while still being under the license plate light that is required in Washington State.

My chewed up inner fender