Indholdsfortegnelse for Nov 2017 057 i Australian Motorcyclist

REMEMBER PLAYING in the mud as a kid? That wonderful sensation of sloppy, wet mud and deep muddy puddles that brought so much joy into your head and so much anguish to your parents with its aftermath. Well, as ‘grownups’ we can still play in the dirt but on motorcycles and this is exactly what we’ve been doing for our adventure bike special feature this month. I hope you enjoy what we’ve brought to the table for you and you get out there and enjoy the many off-roads there are to enjoy. Have you signed up for our next readers tour yet? If you have, you’re going to have one hell of an awesome time; if you haven’t, then you better hurry the hell up and blow the cobwebs off…

RIDING IN THE DIRT can be a hair-raising experience for many of us. I have had my fair share of moments in the dirt and also had a couple of crashes – albeit small ones. Most of my mistakes have come from fear, so if there’s one tip you take from this piece about riding off-road is to be confident and not try and overdo things – you’ll be surprised at just how well you ride those trails from now on! STAND UP, OR SIT DOWN? This is a big debate with many riders but in all the off-road riding I’ve done there are times when you need to stand and times when you should sit down and rest the body. Essentially my theory goes like this – if the…

THIS ADVENTURE RIDE is perfect for bikes of any size, but the machines with smaller fuel capacity should always carry a spare five litres of fuel whenever heading Outback. There is excellent bitumen up out of Cairns and heaps of dirt (and some sand) to enjoy. You do need to keep your wits about you, as there are numerous ‘G-outs’, which are essentially wash outs over blind crests. The bulldust is thick and there are numerous bulldust holes along the way which will cartwheel you down the road if you don’t see them. Remember, help isn’t just around the corner, it can be hours away and being sprawled out, broken on the side of the track is not the way to go. The vultures, lions and tigers are lurking in…

KAWASAKI Z650L FIRST SERVICE TIME! WE’VE ROLLED OVER the first one thousand kilometres with our long term Z650L so I popped into Kawasaki Motors Australia for their technician to wave his magic hands over this beauty. The first service is mostly a check over with a change of oil and filter. The check over was pretty much stress free with only the chain and throttle cable needing minor adjustments to get them bang on the money. The oil was still clean but a new Kawasaki oil filter ($10.50) was fitted, along with a new sump plug washer – something that Kawasaki stressed all motorcycle owners should do when they change their oil, regardless of the brand. The Kawasaki washer retails for $2.40. Then the golden stuff was poured into the…

THE RIGHT ADVENTURE touring gear can make a huge difference to your off-road riding. So can the wrong gear, leaving you cold or wet and miserable, snivelling by the side of the track. A pair of proper adventure or full-on off-road boots will be far more relaxing, supportive and comfortable for the long haul than cheap boots – especially if you have to stand up for hours. Not to mention having an appropriate hydration pack; that’s pretty much essential out in the bush. And I’m sure you can add more than one other product to that list. But it can be quite difficult to keep track of just what is available, especially when it’s new. We asked various suppliers of adventure touring gear to show us what their latest and…

HISTORIC GAS POTUS be b… err, never mind Mr Trump. I’m going to the States again next year even if you haven’t been impeached. And while I was looking through the material from a previous visit, I found this photo of an old Phillips 66 sign. And so I thought – why don’t I bore you with the history of that name? Phillips Petroleum Co. was incorporated on June 13, 1917. After the discovery of Texas’s huge Panhandle gas field in 1918 and the Hugoton Field to its north in Kansas, Phillips became increasingly involved in the rapidly developing natural gas industry. In particular, the company specialized in extracting liquids from natural gas and by 1925 was the nation’s largest producer of natural gas liquids. A couple of years later,…

RIDE EUROPE - JUNE 2018 EUROPEAN MOTORCYCLE ADVENTURES European Motorcycle Adventures is offering some great bike tours in June 2018, in the French Italian Alps, the Dolomites and Tuscany. Ross Naylor, who operates the tours, has been offering them since 2003 for Australians looking for relaxed riding in small groups on handpicked roads and staying in great hotels. Ross has operated tours in Italy, France, Switzerland, Slovenia, Croatia and Turkey. Tours are normally 7 days and are priced from $3200 per rider or $4900 for a couple. This includes bike hire, hotel stays and organisation. Lots of people have been on Ross’ tours over the years and many come back for more adventures. Come on your own, as a couple or in your own group. Check out the website -…

LAST ISSUE WE gave you the entire itinerary, so in this issue you get the short version. Contact our friend, Mr Dong at Vietlong Travel for the full rundown or grab a copy of our last issue. You’ve been waiting for it and here it is! Our next reader’s tour is to Vietnam and boy have we got a tour for you! We have an eleven day North Vietnam tour lined up with the experienced Vietlong Travel people. This tour will take in some of the most stunning sights and experiences there are to see and do in Vietnam. (The route does contain some dirt roads but Stuart will help you through if need be. It isn’t overly challenging so don’t fret.) The Honda CRF250 is the perfect device to…

RIDING TO Cape York – the tip of Australia has to be one of the bucket list items on just about any riders’ list. I thought I’d never get the chance to do it, but courtesy of BMW I did, riding from Cairns to Cape York for the first half of the 2017 BMW GS Safari Enduro. The Enduro safaris are meant for the more experienced off-road rider, with more challenging terrain to be tackled. I was surprised at the opening night Welcome Dinner that half the room put up their hand to say they had never done a Safari before. Having done a few of them myself I thought that maybe some riders had bitten off more than they could chew… and some had, indeed; but almost every participant…

HERE’S OUR WINNER! Robyn Procter’s name came out of the hat, which was pretty full this time. Obviously, Nowendoc is pretty well known among our readers. “Hello,” wrote Robyn,“My email is very very sick and slow as a wet week… You are at the Nowendoc General Store. The distance would be to Barrington I think or Walcha via Thunderbolts Way. It is much further to Tamworth.About 120 klms via Topdale Rd to Ogunbil and on to Tamworth.The store is RUN by Mr Maxie Holstien.All roads are exciting to ride whether on dirt to Walcha or dirt to Wingham.The tar roads would be much more enjoyable if in better condition. The scenery is magnificent, the hills and views grand.This and watching the cattle is food for the soul. Great places to…

I USED TO HATE Bredbo. Bredbo and Tarcutta and Breadalbane and Bookham and a pile of other towns on the old Hume, Federal and Monaro Highways where the cops would hide behind buildings and cars and probably the odd bloody horse to ambush travellers who’d not slowed down just quite enough. Those four are named because they’re the ones where I got pinged and decided to never give the towns a cent of my hard-earned. As the Hume straightened out and towns like Bookham and Breadalbane became billabongs and then pretty much closed down, the boycott became easy but then as I started to learn the stories of these places I figured it was time to let go. It was a bit late to make amends with Breadalbane where the…

IT WAS BACK IN 1974 when the mooted junket seemed like a good idea, but alas it was not. Well, in fact it was a good idea, but its execution was not. Then again, perhaps it was the fault of the three certifiable jackasses who were involved in the exercise which made the excursion such a strange, and more than a little comical, interlude. In retrospect, that’s probably what put paid to it being any sort of a good idea at all! What was all that again? The plan was simple; every bit as simple as the trio of oddly-assorted characters themselves were, while two of the three men - it could be argued - are still more than a little odd. Unhappily, the third party to the odd charade…

YOU KNOW HOW it is. There can only ever be three on the podium, and for us, these are the top three adventure touring bikes. They make the podium because they offer outstanding off-road abilities along with great touring capacity. Getting both of these right at the level at which these three bikes offer them is practically unknown. But just how good are they when you compare them with each other? Time to find out, so here we go, riding out through the back of Lithgow along ‘Stuart’s track’ and up the Black Fellows Hand Trail back to Lithgow with all three bikes riding on Continental TKC 80 knobbies. Pricing is always a consideration, whoever you are and whatever you’re buying. So the Honda Africa Twin being about ten grand…

 We resume our tale of The Bear’s Icelandic adventure ride with Edelweiss Bike Tours. “He alone who wanders wide and has much experienced, knows by what disposition each man is ruled and who possesses common sense.”NORSE PROVERB WHO WOULD HAVE thought that herrings would be interesting, except as tucker? Well I’m here to tell you that the Herring Era Museum in Unpronounceable (and unspellable), a small town which in the 1940s and ‘50s was the Herring Capital of the World (seriously) is a knockout. The fascinating combination of displays of boats, photos and implements with a complete salting works including the staff dormitories creates an impressive vision of those times. I had three types of herring for lunch, with some dried fish (not herring) on the side. The riding was…

TALK ABOUT CULT BIKES – Suzuki’s 650 and 1000 V-Stroms have followers all over the globe. Popularity has been outstanding and owners have not been shy about creating riders’ groups on the interwebs and out on and off the road. Many members of these groups will be reading this right now, so I’d better be very careful what I write…maybe. Suzuki has expanded the range of V-Stroms and the XT models are the more off-road focused of each capacity. Obviously it was time to grab one of each of the 650 and 1000 XT models and compare them against each other to see which one really is the better for Aussie conditions. The design principles behind the XT models include both toughness and functionality. The bikes exemplify Suzuki’s adventure DNA…

WANT A BIKE that will let you get yourself dirty from time to time, but whose main duty is to tour our big brown land in comfort and style on bitumen or gravel? Well, come and have a gander at the Triumph Explorer 1200 XCa – a luxury adventure tourer that has all the bells and whistles straight off the showroom floor. The list of standard kit on the XCa is long, but here we go! Wire wheels, crash bars, pannier frames, sump guard, fog lights, heated rider and pillion seats… and radial mount Brembo calipers up front which are probably what will first catch your eyes. Once you delve a bit deeper there’s electronic suspension, electric screen, heated grips, hill hold, 12V and USB sockets, centre stand, cruise control,…

HENTY COPILOT BAG Jump the Pilot Price - $349 Targeted at the crowd that doesn’t have enough sense to use an engine, the Henty bags were originally developed with push-bike riders in mind. Heaving along with nil-power, of course the equipment they use needs to be light, durable and rugged. Funny about that; when I spoke to Henty and said their range of kit would be perfect for our crowd with hydrocarbon assistance, Simon from Henty agreed. So what we have is a shoulder bag ideally suited to slinging on as a backpack or strapping to a rear rack or back seat to put to the test. If you want to know the perfect scenario for the CoPilot, it goes like this. I often pack gear for a two or…

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