My Story
Hi there,
My name is Kyle Wrightenberry. I’m the founder of Unseen Pass, Inc.
My family has had a cabin in Lansing, NC since 1998.
I spent my childhood, high school, and college years coming up and exploring the rivers, woods, and elevations of Ashe County, NC – in addition to spending time in West Jefferson, NC (eating, watching movies, etc.).
For the past three years, I’ve been riding dual sport bikes in the northern and northwestern parts of Ashe County: Crumpler, Grassy Greek, Lansing, and Pond Mountain, NC.
When I’d get back from each of my adventures – I would always share the photos with my wife, mother, sister, and family members. They always want to go along; however, they didn’t feel comfortable on a dual-sport bike and it just wasn’t the same in an enclosed vehicle.
It occurred to me that it would be awesome to get them out to these views and dirt roads on a street-legal side-by-side (SXS). SXS are an order of magnitude safer than the dual sports bikes and much quieter 🙂
I knew that street-legalizing SXS was now possible through companies like DirtLegal.com. Luckily back in November of 2019 when I was at a power sports dealership in Raleigh, NC, I saw a guy pull up on a Honda Talon with a license plate. I told the guy “I thought it wasn’t possible to street-legalize a SXS in NC”. He explained to me that there are companies out there now that could make it happen and that what they do is register SXSs out of state as auto cycles.
Since then, it has been on my mind to buy a four-seat SXS so that I could take my family out to these awesome sights I’ve been taking in on my bikes.
During this time and the first part of 2020 – I was unable to get around to it because I was laser focused on my company, Health Fair Connections (HFC), which I co-founded with two stellar individuals.
In 2019, HFC finished off the year with 941 corporate events and expanded our exhibitor community to over 14,000 exhibitors. Moving into 2020, HFC began to secure national deals with exhibitors like HelloFresh, Liberty Mutual, and many others and it looked like the sky was the limit. Then came COVID-19.
The Coronavirus brought our business to a screeching halt in March when the event restrictions were released.
To take a breather and to de-stress from all the cancellations and refunds, I started cutting trails back at home and I came up to the mountains to ride my dual-sport bike for some fresh air.
While in the woods, it occurred to me, that I could start a street-legal SXS business that allowed people to take in the sights and explore the elevations. It seemed like tourism was still doing great in Ashe County and in other parts of the state. It also occurred to me that events weren’t going to take place until April of 2021 and that when HFC pick back up at that time, I could still rent side-by-sides (SXSs) and work online for HFC during the day. It weighed on me that this was a win-win.
Once I had all these realizations – I took the plunge and founded Unseen Pass.
This is my little girl, Ember Day, standing outside of the building once I finished working on it.
Unseen Pass started out renting traditional SXS or UTVs such as 1000 cc Honda Talons, Polaris RZRs, and Kawasaki Teryxs with out-of-state tags so that they could be legal for on-road use in NC as many others have done. It started out great until we hit a hurdle with the NCDMV on Labor Day Weekend of 2020, which prompted us to no longer run 1000 cc SXS on NC roads (full story).
Unseen Pass has switched over to renting Mahindra Roxors out of West Jefferson, NC. Roxors are 2400 cc road-legal SXS. They became road legal in NC on October 4th, 2020 thanks to House Bill 307 (S.L.2020-40).
Unseen Pass is scheduled to re-open on April 1st, 2021. We hope you’ll come check us out and rent one of the SXS to experience the awesome views Ashe County, NC provides.
Looking forward to meeting you!
Kyle
