Yes, apologies for the layout - it just goes to illustrate how different media have different requirements. It was actually intended to be one chapter of the book of the trip I'd eventually get round to completing and, as a work in progress, the pictures and the words were still living separate lives. I'm still not even sure all the paragraphs in the report will stay together happily ever after. I'll hit the edit button, chop the text up and rummage around the photo pile to see if I can make it read a little easier.

We did find the area of Venice beach you mentioned - with all the weights and other gym paraphernalia, but much to my wife's annoyance there was a lack of six packs on show on the day we were there. The whole area was being used for some glamour photo shoot with pouting bikini clad models draped suggestively over various bits of equipment and surrounded by lights and reflectors with photographers shouting "ooh, that's lovely, keep it up, more of that" and other inanities. I'd have been happy to stay a little longer but Helen decided that she really wanted to see Santa Monica pier instead!

The Wing report was really intended to be just that - focussing in closely on what I thought of the bike after riding it around 10k miles. In the wider context of the trip there's a lot more to be said. For example, John, my friend from NJ, came with us on his late 90's Triumph Sprint - a 900 triple as you probably already know.




The Triumph getting new tyres fitted in Salt Lake City

On the way back we swapped bikes every now and then and the comparison between that and the Wing was interesting - or it will be if I ever get round to writing it. We did think at one point John was going to use his 1976 original Gold Wing for the trip instead of the Triumph, but 10k miles on a reasonably tight schedule (he had business meetings arranged with clients in LA and Salt Lake City) on a bike that hadn't done much more than local trips in decades was a bigger chance than we thought sensible. It would have made for an interesting comparison though.

That "then and now" comparison is what prompted me to post the report without giving much thought to the layout. After rummaging around the debate over in the pub section about the weight of the new Africa Twin and its direct competitors and how it affects their suitability as serious overlanders, it seemed to me that the Gold Wing hasn't been the only bike that's been suffering from epigenetic obesity. Each new generation of adventure bikes has been getting bigger and heavier and gaining "presence".

Most of the bikes in that "adventure tourer" category seem to be optimised for the road but advertised for the dirt. Of course dirt hasn't changed that much since we (you) were ploughing through it on featherweight (by comparison) Japanese two strokes decades ago. Neither have people changed that much. I'm told that the average (male) Brit is 5' 9" tall these days and I remember being told as a (young!) schoolchild back in the 50's that 5' 8" was the aspirational height then. Ok, McDonalds has done its best to ensure our horizontal dimensions match our vertical ones but give or take a few inches we're roughly the same as we've been for quite some time.

What has changed of course is/are the road(s). Cars, trucks, pickups / vans etc are bigger - much bigger by and large - than they used to be (that's a Euro observation but true (imho) in the US since my first visit in the mid 80's). They're also more powerful and more refined and as roads have improved the amount of power a bike needs to keep its place in the road hierarchy has also increased. I would guess a bike needs twice as much power now as it did in (say) 1970 to "make similar progress" and with that power comes the weight of heavier parts to control it.

That's where we are with a lot of bikes - bigger, more powerful and heavier to cope with changing road conditions and, rather than being an island of avoirdupois excess, the Wing is only somewhere further along that spectrum. With a "statistically std" rider more bike weight impacts on the dirt performance first but doesn't change that much on the tarmac - in fact it improves it in many ways. The Wing however is living proof that if you add enough weight even road performance is compromised.

Actually, I remain to be convinced that the real problem with the Wing in "soft road" conditions is all down to the weight and my lack of ability. There's something slightly unstable about the way it rides at very low speed - under 5mph for example and the sorts of speeds you'd be trickling along at on dirt. It seems to roll more than it should and you notice it both at low speed and when setting it up for a corner when it'll fall in faster than you expect. I thought it might be something to do with the profile of the tyres (and it did become slightly more stable as they squared off) or maybe more weight than I'm used to being kept both high and left/right of the centre line. That's what really put me off riding it on loose surfaces.