the Future of Adventure Motorcycling?
 

I came across this recipe book yesterday…and was intrugued but saddened. Anybody have a chance to take a peek at it?


Haynes Adventure Motorcycling Feature



Based on the website and PDF's, it seems that Adventure Motorcycling could become just a Holiday:(

They could re-title it "I really want to be Ewan and Charlies really Special Friend" from what I've seen :oops2:. (Not wishing to start that one again, it's just the first re-title I could think of to put it in the context of this "adventure" toys bandwagon we seem to have going). All pictures of large trail bikes with tin boxes and laser cut thingies to stop your sat phone falling off when you ride unsupported to Bournemouth or Scarborough :thumbdown:.

If you are going to buy your kit from a catalogue and ride where your mates did last year with the same tour company and stay in the same hotel, it is a holiday even if they do offer you the chance to ride on mud for a bit.

If you hop on a C90, ride where ever you fancy and talk to real people along the way you'll have an adventure even if you never leave Britain.

I'm sure there are a lot of stages in between and I hope everyone enjoys whatever they do and whatever they call it. I just really think we don't need the tin boxed, sat-phone equipped band wagon that IMHO some of the current crop of books represent.

Andy

Edit to add: How the heck can you have a "Typical Adventure"? If it's an adventure it's not ****ing typical!!!!

The guy introduced himself on here asking for help...

http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...ghlight=haynes

Is it any different to all the books on 4 wheel driving adventures?

I'm not worried about this at all - there always have been,and always will be, such books / journals. Frankly speaking, I've now gone to the point / age in my life where I really am not concerned about what others do or think when they travel.

Adventure motorcycling is just a holiday for some - an opportunity to go out with a group of mates and all have a good time together.

Being the misanthrope that I am, I eschew group travel as I believe being part of a group of travellers takes away from, rather than enhances, the travel experience.

However, by its very nature, travel by motorcycle does encourage a more solitary experience.

Garry from Oz.

Here's the one for the street-sportsbike riders:

Product: Sport Riding Techniques

Andy

bloody hell!!!
 

thats the book that bought me to this fine website!! read it a couple of times. its got nice pictures and a really good forward by ted simon. buttttttttt, the recommended bikes are all state of the art adventures (gs, pegasso, v strom, amazonas) and the 'equip ur bike' is practically a touratech catalouge, and it doesnt really explain the 'fiddly' bits, like "hey you need Z, Y and Z at a border, unless your in this certain country where a couple of bottles of single malt will do....). It deffinately brings adventure motorcycling to the masses of people who are E+C wanabees (live and let live) but personally, theres a reason I only read it twice, and its now at the bottom of a pile of bike magazines (dont judge me lol). Dan and ted showed me the real light, and finishing Jupiters was like nothing else I had experienced; it put me on a high, really!

Ignoring the lack of sense this sentence makes - if someone needs telling that different 'adventures' will involve different geography and encounters, should they really be given the keys to a bike?

Quote:

Adventure Motorcycling will inspire, enthuse, invigorate and enable everyone - expert and novice alike - to undertake a motorcycle adventure with confidence.

I am not enthused. I don't think it will be replacing Kerouac, Hunter S. and Greene as the inspiration on my shelves.
And why do the experts need to re-learn how to do it with confidence?

Live and let live, some people like to buy the shiny bike, and accessorise it with the coffee table books and t-shirts. I suppose it gives an opening to tell Tarquin and Roberta how arduous that solo, unsupported trip to the toilet was when they come around.

It doesn't worry me re: the future of adventure motorcycling, the world is a big place, there's space for all of us.

Birdy

Can't help thinking that someone writing a book claiming to be a definitive guide to bike travel, would have included more photos from their own experiences, instead of resorting to BMW/KTM/Touratwat marketing material.

And from that topic...

Everyone else seems to be cashing in on it so why not? 1000 places would make it the size of, well, a coffee table book.

Each rider/author could write a 1000 word article about one specific place they went to on their route and the roads travelled complete with maps and photos. You could follow that with a brief sub-article about the author themselves, the bike they took and maybe their top 10 useful tips (excluding the bleeding obvious) for anyone thinking about a similar trip.

I'd buy it. :thumbup1:

Two thoughts;

1. Places are special, but so are times. Best place I ever went was Berlin. Why so special? The wall came down the month before. No point putting that in a book of places, nice as modern Berlin is. There are people too.

2. Based on the above, would you like your favourite place to have a pay-and-display installed so the locals can still get to the shops and all those 15 bike parties from the GS Club/RAT/HOG/Etc. etc. can tick it off in their book?

I really, really prefer people to simply talk. Ask me about a trip, tell me you might be near part of it, then I'll tell you where a good place to eat could be.

Tip of the day (also in two parts):

1; Use water when available, melting snow wastes stove fuel.
2: Never use yellow snow :nono:

:rofl:

Andy

Point taken. Scrap that idea.

Keep having the ideas though. While I believe the whole bike travel book thing peaked somewhere between Ted Simon and Chris Scott, there has to be something that'll break the current combined checklist and Toratech catalogue thing, without getting into "what I did on my holidays".

Personally, I'm thinking forget the whole doing the trip idea. I'm going for a Flashman-esque novel about an ex-East German Porn star going RTW on an MZ 250 with his really special friends in tow! :innocent: After the book I'll do the ride (to the places that'll still let me in).

Andy

"Adventure" is a relative word. An adventure to me may not be an adventure to you. Similarly, I see guys getting all excited and starting websites to chart their progress on a ten day, nine country saunter through Europe. Not an adventure to me but clearly, a big and significant undertaking for them and they're proud of it. Who am I to judge?

Whatever you want to label it is up to you. Being new to "adventure" riding, I found the book quite interesting. Some people's adventures will be a holiday to you. I greatly admire some of the exploits others get up to and aspire to it but I like to minimise some risk through planning and that obviously reduces the level of adventure. It remains, for me, an adventure. Ewan and Charley wannabe? Probably! I honestly don't care but it's frustrating to know that some of the people I admire on this site for their adventures, look down their noses at mine.

[quote=Wildman;238501 Being new to "adventure" riding, I found the book quite interesting. Some people's adventures will be a holiday to you. ..... Ewan and Charley wannabe? .......it's frustrating to know that some of the people I admire on this site for their adventures, look down their noses at mine.[/quote]

I hope no one looks down on anyone. If they do it's their loss not yours.

You are spot on that an adventure is what you make it. What I struggle with is the formulaic nature. We all take the whatsit out of leather tassled dentists riding cruisers and the one piece power ranger suited sportsbike types with their Black and Deckered knee sliders, but there is a similar trend emerging in "adventure travel". I have no right to say three weeks in Normandy on a Goldwing isn't an adventure. If you've never done it before it could be, but of course I really wouldn't want to see the website if it did just turn out to be your first holiday in France. Take a C90 you bought from a Pizza delivery company the week before instead of the wing and go in January and it is an adventure. That website could be worth a look if written with the sort of humour and bodged repairs you might engage in.

What is true is that you don't need an R1200GS, tin box panniers, a GPS map of the Gobi and a laser cut sidestand thingy that doubles as a spare heliograph if you are going to the North Cape in May. I've been there and done that and was a Ewan and Charlie wannabee before Ewan and Charlie wanted to be. It therefore rather annoys me that writers are selling this copied image rather giving people real pointers towards real adventures. Back when I was doing this there was no general use internet, so information was really limited. We knew Norway had long dirt roads, we knew lots of Germans had done better with Tin boxes than Ted Simon did with with MOD packs and leather satchels. We bought the tin boxes.

If you are going to the Gobi, you read Chris Scotts book and talk to the big trip people on here. Gloss pictures don't help you.

Today, with the net you can link up with the people doing the get-as-far-as-you-can-in-three weeks stuff as well as the RTW trip of a lifetime ones. There is no need to base your guesses on German bike magazines faxed to you from your companys office and badly translated using a school dictionary. There are certainly better uses for the price of a sidestand/heliograph when you work for a living and only get those few weeks a year while you plan and hope for the chance at a really big trip.

Maybe that's the book that'll break the cycle? "100 three week motorcycle adventures that won't break the bank or cause a divorce". Lets have more C90's riding the alps and Harleys going to Moscow and fewer sidestand-Heliographs in Surrey.

Andy

There you go again, Andy!

I'm sorry if my nine day trip through the Pyrenees and on the Route des Grandes Alpes on my brand new GS with a few Touratech farkles harshes your cred as "real" adventurer. Want me to carry a sign saying, "It's really only a holiday"?

They help me, I find good glossy pictures rather inspiring.

I have no cred, so it's rather difficult to harsh it :helpsmilie:. Apologies if my choice of words wasn't as accurate as I'd have liked.

Your trip was an adventure because you'd never done it before or even if only because the weather was different this time, not because your GS has TT kit on it. The bike and kit is just what you prefer. You'd have had a different adventure on a Harley or Ural? Probably, because you'd have spoken to different people, but the rough details could have been the same.

Chris Scott devotes 2 chapters to bikes and equipment. Ted Simon about half a page. This book (and other like it) is a lot about shiney things and less about getting them dirty, which IMHO is where the adventure takes place. Shopping for things is not an adventure (although TT's delivery schedules sometimes made it seem that way!).

Andy

:yes: Now ain't that a fact!

Nope.. the shopping bit is as much of the whole thing as the riding is for me.

I love the planning, the shopping, the looking through catalogs and magazines to see what's new. I love going through the maps in Stanford's, tweaking my gear and bike until I think I've got it spot on.

Then I get on the bike and 'have the adventure'. Actually I think the whole thing is the 'adventure'. But you know what, this thread is about as much use as an argument about why we use the word Innovation now instead of Research & Development.

m

You've obviously never gone looking for shoes on a Saturday afternoon with Woman. That puts a whole new meaning on the word "endurance".

adventure
 

I look at it this way, When out riding my bike every day is a ADVENTURE !!!!!!
Ron&Rocket Ride Free

:rofl: alexebrit.

Shopping is definately an adventure to be done solo.

Live and let live is what i say.

I'm just about to start a trip, yes on a shinny BMW F800 GS, from the UK to Oz and I chose the bike i thought would be the best tool for my trip.

I'm meeting up with a few others to share the cost of getting through China and in that group is a guy travelling the world on a 125 vespa.
I applaud what he's doing and will be very interested to see how he gets on and what his experiences have been like travelling on a scooter.

I guess what i'm saying is that it takes all sorts of people to make this world the diverse and interesting place it is. The most important things are to travel with a smile on your face and be open to meeting new people and having new experiences. How you do this and what vehicle you choose to do it on doesn't matter one iota.

Yes and No!
 

Wise words my friend, but...!
I'd love a BMW GS! I'd love a supermodel wife, a lifetime beer tab and a khazi that wiped my arse and lowered the seat...it ain't gonna happen. We ride what we have because it's all we have. A Bmw makes sense if you are touring, i wish I could afford one, what I like about the Hubb is the diversity of machines ridden.
You are quite correct. It's the experience that matters, whether that be trading stories with farmers, bodging your electrics at the roadside or sharing lunch with some street girls. It's a wonderful world and any pocket is deep enough.
Pete

I thought the book was fine. For chrissake it even recommends the HUBB! I can't see why any rational person would want to criticise its existence. Okay, it's a touratech (I won't say touratwat, I don't share the need to sneer) catalogue with lots of perfect photos of perfect GS1200s and KTMs. I don't want a GS (certain GS riders: feel free to interpret this statement as evidence of envy if it makes you feel good). I quite fancy the look of the KTM Adventures (mine would be a 950 with an RVAqualine Safari tank) but couldn't afford one without selling one of my three bikes. Which I love, so I won't. Besides, I enjoy taking a bike that wasn't meant for off-roading off-road.

Me too. I can (and do) spend hours and hours poring over kit catalogues, guide-books, maps.

Absolutely. Planning is fun, but you don't need to go mad with it. I set out for what to me was a huge adventure having only decided the night before that I would be going. And even then I was umming and ahhing the next morning. Did I have the full touratech list of essential items (including a waterproof toilet paper holder FFS)? Did I fack. I didn't even have a sleeping bag - and yes, I was camping.

If we are so inclined, we can all choose to sneer at someone whose "adventure" is less than what we ourselves consider an adventure. The trouble with that philosophy is that unless your name is Glen Heggstad / Robert Fulton / Ted Simon /~ there's always someone who has had more of an adventure than you.

As others have said, it's a big planet. There's room for us all.

I only had a quick look at display copy, so I'll word these as open questions as I might have missed something:

Does the book have a section on rat bikes?
Any mention of C90's/postie bikes, Harleys or Enfield Bullets?
Anything on ammo boxes for panniers, making bash plates..?

Even just looking at a shopping list, to me a decision on buy/make/bodge/do without is way more important to having YOUR adventure than going with the BMW inside the TT catalogues front cover and trying to have Ewan McGregors. Not to say the TT-BMW is in any way bad, it might suit you, it just seems an incomplete work that only presents that option.

I'm glad HUBB got a mention, there is never any shortage of options presented here :thumbup1:

Andy

I reckon it's simply a case of some people getting enjoyment out of shopping for bits for their bike, or researching what modifications to get done; with other people getting enjoyment out of making/doing stuff to their bike themself. Neither is more "right" than the other, but I would rather read and hear about the latter because it's more relevant to me (in that I could not afford, nor would I want, to get kitted out in the latest Touratech etc gear).


A classic situation is people not working on bikes themselves, because the time they'd spend doing it could be spent doing their Job and earn more than enough money to pay somebody else to do it. Maybe I'm just a pauper in denial, but even if this were the situation for me I'd still rather work on my bike myself. Both for the enjoyment I get out of it, and for the reassurance that I know exactly what I've done.

I also think the pride and satisfaction to be had from say, completing a trip one a bike you've made/modified yourself is great feeling in its own right.

"big balls ferry pilots?"
 

Great thread Motoedde, with several very heady replies. This morning, I feel like I am on the Left Bank (Rive Gauche) flowing along with the Seine as it heads toward the sea. Perhaps the HU Bar can be found somewhere on Boulevard Saint Germain des Prés, Saint Michel, or Rue d'Ulm, where a past generation of *adventure writers gathered, they were the adventure writers of life.

The mandate of the cultural anthropologist is objective participatory observation, this in order to gain experiences of comparable magnitude, because the observed descriptions of differences and similarities between cultures is necessary for understanding each culture.

I invite each of you who read here to review the following page of a blog entitled: "Big balls ferry pilot" written by pilots who ferry airplanes around the world.

Big Balled Ferry Pilot - PPRuNe Bulletin Board

Generally, I follow the example of another guy born in Oklahoma, Will Rogers, who would have fit in very well with the writers who hung out on the Left Bank, but didn't because he "refused to join any club that would have him as a member," but, I do not have the strength of conviction that he had when it comes to motorcycle adventuring.

So, the ferry pilots earn their living by flying airplanes from one airport to another. These are brave men and women who often fly brand new airplanes from the manufacturing plant to the buyer. Sometimes they fly single engine planes from one continent to another. Then, some of them blog about their experiences.

It is my observation that motorcycle adventurers and motorcycle adventure writers lie somewhere between the *Left Bank gang of Paris ...of old, and the "big balls ferry pilots."

The future of adventure motorcycling is positively correlated with the number of adventure motorcyclists, some will be more like the "big balls ferry pilots" and others will be more like the adventure writers of life, who gather here.

If the adventure motorcycle writers cannot accept and even help the new, the novice, the uninitiated adventure motorcyclist, the very key to the future of adventure motorcycling, to that extent we are not contributing to the survival of adventure motorcycling. Some will evolve beyond the best of us.

xfiltrate


*Life's adventure writers/ Left Bank gang ...... Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway,Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir , Richard Wright, Saul Bellow and a young, and relatively unknown and impoverished James Baldwin, as well as George Orwell, and john Dos Passos. Their words fiction and/or non fiction influenced millions and are still influencing millions of people all over the world.

One problem I've noticed here in the state is that many people want to be seen as living the lifestyle. That was evident with the SUV binge from the past 10 years. Why did folks need an SUV? I have no clue except that hey did look cool.

I mean, I have a truck. It hauls my bikes when I need it to. It's practicle.

Now with the bike market... geez... hate to drop a bomb here but I give kudos to BMW for convincing every Tom, Dick, and Harry that they too can be an Adventure Rider if they bought a GS! From my experiences, 90% of all GS's are still on the road. Tarmac. Asphalt. Whatever you wish to call it.

Another point is on how lazy, and lack of dreaming, folks have. There are gaggles of morons want to ride the exact same route you have if you post it somewhere on the web. They don't want to do the research, they don't want to follow a dream, they don't want an adventure. They want someone elses.

To me it's always been about a dream. A dream of far away places. Where books read in childhood come to life. Where exotic places you've seen in National Geographic are tangible.

Adventure is a state of mind, be it a weekend or a longtrip. It's what you find along the way. Today's society is more concerned with the end result (destination) than the process which gets us there (travel). The adventure isn't in the destination. It's what you did on your way to where you are. It's the ultimate metaphor on life itself.

Too many riders today don't understand that.

That's a shame.

FloridaRider, WE AGREE !
 

"The adventure isn't in the destination. It's what you did on your way to where you are. It's the ultimate metaphor on life itself."
posted by FloridaRider


And, when you finally arrive at that final destination the question is - did you help others along the way? posted by xfiltrate