HERE WE GO ..................... WHAT DO YOU CALL OFF ROAD ?
Is it going along a forest track
is it doing some very hard green lanes
or is exploring somewhere you havnt done ?

So many people talk about taking there BIG trail bikes " off road ". but there not
made for that ............. you try to change direction on a muddy track on a gs 1200 !!
If you want to ride off road you need a 250

A lot of local roads, for example in the United States or Morocco, or even Spain, are unsurfaced, so I normally talk first of all about OFF-TARMAC roads. There's a reason for that. My previous travel insurance company was OK covering me for accidents on pistes/tracks as long as they were considered local roads. The fact they were unsurfaced was immaterial.

The definition of piste for biking is the same as skiing, and is a 'groomed track'. In the case of Morocco the groomed tracks are maintained by the local—and are thus by my definition, local roads). These pistes run over whatever is on the ground locally they might be sand, earth, grit, stones, rocks, or whatever and combinations thereof.

A metalled piste, or macadam piste, uses crushed and graded rocks brought in from elsewhere normally by the local government. Some of these macadam pistes are then given a thin layer of asphalt and are then tarmacadam (or tarmac).

__________________
"For sheer delight there is nothing like altitude; it gives one the thrill of adventure
and enlarges the world in which you live," Irving Mather (1892-1966)

Hi Tim,
hows it going ?
met you a few years ago in Azro,
Carnt get enough of Morocco 47 times now !
but been back backpacking a lot .
but back in april , hope most of snow has gone !

badou ( tamtatuoch )

It's difficult to get Morocco out of your system. Going again in a few days.

__________________
"For sheer delight there is nothing like altitude; it gives one the thrill of adventure
and enlarges the world in which you live," Irving Mather (1892-1966)

Last year in Thailand I has the pleasure and honour to watch and follow the guys and ladies racing on the BMW GS trophy race in Thailand.
I was on my Honda CRF250l and with a lot of knowledge of the tracks, we were riding on.
During ALL of the stages, i was finding very difficult to keep up with the BMW even on a CRF250?

Big Bike in THE RIGHT HANDS can ride offroad but to be fair these people competing in the GS Trophy was the best of the best from all over the world.

Yes, its a great place, but as you know, you need to go a few times to get into the maroc way of life !
Love ... casa + sidi ifini

for me off-road is lack of any on horizon



also, I think for real off-road 250cc is too weak. I would rather take 450cc.

I think it's fair to say "off road" does describe a variety of surfaces. Though for long distance travellers who probably won't be riding a stripped-back lightweight enduro bike without luggage it's more likely to mean "not on sealed tarmac". The bigger bikes have limited off road capability but are more suited to gravel tracks than deep snotty swamps or soft sand*.


*Disclaimer: I know people can and do ride big bikes in these conditions, that still doesn't mean they're suited to them!

Off-TARMAC is a good description, and I'm pretty sure it is what most people are referring to when the thinking of buying Aventure/Touring bikes.
For me, where I now live in Palawan, Philippines, there is only 1 main concrete road running North-South almost the full length of the long thin province....

Even some of this is still compacted gravel....


To get across the island east-west you travel on gravel or dirt roads....


...with the occasional river crossing.....

However, during the rainy season these can get a little 'interesting'.......





Hence my needs for an Adventure/Touring bike. V-Storm, Africa Twin, KTM 1050: something like this.
Not true 'off-road' as the purists may debate, but still enough to qualify as 'adventure'.
And the reward at the end of the road is finding this......

Happy times!


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Hi LoLo
That what I call dirt roads?
Great stuff but I think a Honda CRF is more suitable for the condition in some of the pictures.

Lolo, on this muddy parts of your pictures heavy adventure bike can be a challenge, doable though Get at least something with good ground clearance like Africa Twin, KTM 1090 adventure R. V-strom not so much.

Pics not showing up ... I heard photo bucket has gone belly up?
You may want to change Photo hosting site. I use SmugMug. Never fails.

True, an expert rider can push a big bike to crazy places. I've done it in the past but no longer consider it much fun ... also beats the shit out of a very expensive motorcycle. I've seen NEW, $25K motorcycles reduced to trash in 3 or 4 days of "Adventure" riding.

Question of right tool for the job. Does anyone think if Ewan & Charlie knowing what they know now, would take R1150GS's across Mongolia again ? ... or would they go on a small, lighter weight bike? I think the later is pretty certain.
(especially when you've got a full crew carrying all your crap! )

So, photobucket has kicked the bucket - or it has as far as "3rd party hosting" is concerned. That means no more putting a picture there and linking to it here or anywhere else - unless you're happy to send them somewhere around $400.

I hope it doesn't mean I can't access the library of images I have up there, many of which I have no idea where the originals are. At the moment I can't tell whether there's an issue or whether it's just as glacially slow as normal.

It would have been nice to have got a bit of warning and let me consider my options but that does seem to be the American way; one minute everything's fine, the next you're on your a*se on the sidewalk.

If they've shot themselves in the foot who else should I be looking at? SmugMug? Any others?

The ProCycle guy (Jeff) over on the DRriders forum was able to pull all his photos off Photo Bucket (no idea how). He has now set up his own domain (whatever the **** that is?)

I also have a Picasa account (Google product). It was fine up to about a year or two ago when they got "smart" and re-designed the whole thing ... thus making it nearly impossible for me to use! Nice! Thanks Google! It's all robots so you can't get help.

SmugMug has actual people who are ALWAYS there to help. The owner of ADV Rider site is Baldy, also owner of SMUGMUG.

His kids run SmugMug and I've dealt with both Son and Daughter over the years. Brilliant kids. For $30 a year ... to me it's a NO BRAINER. (I have zero brains for computers ... and could care less)

The greater issue here that no one seems to be talking about concerns the serious damage Photo Bucket's demise does to existing forums. I believe any photo posted there from PB ... will no longer appear. This means millions of pics on hundreds of forums will lose photo content ... BIG TIME ... thus ruining threads and devaluing the whole site.

I have no idea how Grant and Susan can deal with this. Seems unfair. It's unlikely members here or elsewhere will go back to every thread they have pic in and REPOST them using another host. But the problem is 1000 times worse to Site owners.

No way can they fill those photo gaps. Oh Well! Would be better if when a pic is posted, the site captures and stores it ... and essentially OWNS it ... so as long as site is up ... your pics are up. But that's a nerd problem, let them waste their life figuring this crap out.

Good luck!

For the off-road purist I can understand the Honda CRF, but I've got to pick something that will tour 2-up with luggage while crossing the 2000m mountains.
Any small lightweight true off-road bike ain't gonna make the grade, and as I can only afford 1, I need to compromise toward an off-TARMAC adventure/tourer.
I'm leaning towards the DCT Africa twin now. Honda bullet-proof reliable and DCT ease of use (60% of all New AT sales are now DCT - that's how good it is!)


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