October | 2020 | 650thumper

Has the adventure bike seen its heyday?

My dad has never understood the adventure bike. He rode in England through his youth and of course took an interest when I announced that I was getting a bike.

“It’s an adventure bike, dad.”

“What’s that?”

“One that can go anywhere, on-road or off. I can take this bike on dirt trails if I want.”

“Why not get a dirt bike?”

Aye, there’s the rub. Recently I’ve been riding with some real off-roaders, and I’m beginning to see the limitations of my bike.

It’s small by street standards. At 650cc, it’s one third the size of some bikes in my street club. But by dirt standards, it’s a pig—a 430 lb. street bike with crappy clearance. Does it really belong on an ATV trail? A snowmobile trail?

On both excursions, both I and the bike came back broken in body and spirit. (Literally, I broke my thumb in a little tip-over at the top of a hill I couldn’t quite conquer.) I seriously began to consider getting a dirt bike, or at least a smaller dual sport, like the Yamaha WR 250R or a Honda 250 Rally. Then I would get a proper touring bike for the long distances, something like the BMW 1250RT (although, in my case, it would more likely be a used 1200RT).

This would be the perfect set-up: one bike with the weight, clearance, and durability (not to mention tires) for going where no adventure bike ought to go, and one with the power, rider modes, dynamic braking, and creature comforts for touring. Maybe my dad was right all along when he said that with an adventure bike you end up with a lousy dirt bike and a lousy touring bike.

This is the direction some of my riding buddies are going. One owns an Africa Twin, another a Triumph Scrambler XC. And recently they’ve decided to get little 250s. And they ride with others who have little 250s as second bikes.

The adventure bike is the Swiss Army Knife of motorcycles.

Adventure motorcycling is the only segment of the market still growing. It’s been growing since 2004, when Ewan and Charlie showed us in Long Way Round what can be done on the BMW GS. Since then, every major manufacturer has come out with an adventure bike, including Harley-Davidson. Yes, hell froze over. In fact, most manufacturers now offer two: a large- and a middle-weight ADV bike. There are riding schools and programs to help street riders adapt to the dirt, ADV clubs, ADV rallies, ADV touring companies that lead guided tours, and organizations like Horizons Unlimited that help you plan your own. The ADV market is alive and strong, but I can’t help wondering—reflecting on my own immediate experience— if we are beginning to see a shift. Has the pendulum reached its zenith?

The ADV market has changed in recent years. There was a lot of criticism directed at Ewan and Charlie for their choice of motorcycle, with many saying they should have gone with a smaller bike. There’s a scene in the original Long Way Round when their cameraman Claudio’s bike is damaged I believe in Mongolia, and they buy a small bike locally for him to use while the GS is shipped off to be fixed. The next time they stop, he’s praising the smaller bike, saying how easy it is to ride through the tough, muddy terrain of Mongolia. Meanwhile, we watch Ewan and Charlie roost each other as they push laboriously through the Mongolian wetlands. There’s been a shift in the ADV market toward smaller displacement bikes. The recent introduction and popularity of the KTM 790 and Yamaha Ténéré 700 reflect this change, not to mention the BMW 310GS Adventure. Is the shift toward a smaller bike recognition that, unless you are Chris Birch, you really shouldn’t be taking a big adventure bike on trails?

Maybe my dad was right all along when he said that with an adventure bike you end up with a lousy dirt bike and a lousy touring bike.

While I was contemplating these questions, so were Jim Martin and Shawn Thomas in a recent episode of Adventure Rider Radio. The subject was the GS Trophy—an international off-road competition using either the BMW 850 or 1250 GS—and inevitably the conversation came round to the criticism of taking the big bikes off road.

At the 32′ mark, host Jim Martin asks Shawn, “What is it about riding the adventure bike that makes it so appealing to you . . . because we all know that we can get rid of the adventure bike and get a dual sport or a smaller bike that is going to be a lot easier to handle?”

The short answer by Shawn: “I guess it depends on where you’re riding it.”

He explains that on a recent trip to Moab, he road 65 miles an hour on the highway and then did some “intense” off-road riding “without taking [his] feet off the pegs,” the bike seamlessly taking him to places most people can’t get to except perhaps in a jeep. And it occurred to me that the answer to this dilemma is in the name. An adventure bike takes you on an adventure.

That doesn’t have to be around the world or even off the asphalt, but if it is, the ADV bike will get you there as well as anything on the market. You can ride for hours in relative comfort on the highway, and when that highway turns to dirt, and the dirt to mud, or sand, or snow, you can keep going, as far as your skills and nerve will take you.

“I guess it depends on where you’re riding it.”
Shawn Thomas

The adventure bike is the Swiss Army Knife of motorcycles. Okay, if I had to skin a rabbit, I’d rather use my hunting knife. If I had to open a tin of tuna, I’d rather use a can-opener. And when I have to loosen or tighten a screw on my bike, I reach for the appropriate driver and not a Swiss Army Knife. But if I had to take only one tool into the bush, hundreds of miles from anyone or anything, I know what I’d take.

I don’t think I’ll be selling my 650GS anytime soon. It’s a great little reliable bike that I plan to use to take me around this continent at least, and hopefully others, once this damn Covid thing is over. I can lift it when I drop it, and I can fix it when something breaks. It doesn’t have ABS or rider modes, but I know how to brake safely in an emergency, and I’m working on my throttle control. The only thing stopping me from doing more with this bike are my skills, and that is part of the appeal of adventure riding. There’s always a steeper hill to conquer, a more challenging technical section of trail to ride. The challenge and learning are endless, if you’re into that, as I am. Sometimes I have to remind myself that I’ve only been riding five years.

I have a dream of one day loading the bike and heading west, nothing but country and time ahead of me, work and responsibilities behind. I’ll have a general idea of where I’m going and I might have a specific destination in mind, but the rest I’ll decide along the way. I’ll ride as far as I want in a given day and then turn off the asphalt and look for a place to pitch my tent, open a bottle, and maybe light a fire. I’ll be in the moment with everything to discover, but one thing I’ll know for sure is that I’d rather be on no other bike than Bigby.

What are your thoughts on the matter? Let us know in the comment section below. I always like to hear from my readers.

My dad had a bike—never one in Canada but in England—before he and my mom immigrated. It was a 350 Matchless, and later, an AJS which, according to him, was essentially the same bike. You couldn’t tell them apart, and they were probably made by the same manufacturer. I don’t know why he would buy virtually the same bike twice, but I guess the options were pretty limited in England in the early 1950s.

A 350 single is pretty small by today’s standards, but he and my mom went across Europe to Venice on it for their honeymoon, including traversing the Alps. But before they did, he took the engine out and apart, had it rebored, changed the piston rings, and put it all back together again. He must have had a lot of confidence in his mechanical skills to do that and then ride off with his prized possession on the back.

Sometimes my mom would fall asleep on the bike. He said it scared the bejesus out of him so he made her keep her arms around his waist so he could tell if she was drifting and give her a nudge. When I got my bike in 2015, he didn’t want to go for a ride but my mom did. Only by that time she was well into her 80s and now it was me who was worried she’d fall off, so we never did that ride.

His brother, Keith, also had a bike. I think it was a Triumph Speed Twin, a twin cylinder, and when he cracked the throttle he could make my dad look like he was going backwards. But my dad always claimed that the big flywheel of his single was better in slow-moving traffic. If you were easy on the clutch, you could coax it back up to speed without having to gear up and down in the stop-and-go.

When I visited my uncle in England, he told me a story about a time when he and my dad crashed. Okay, it wasn’t a crash, but a slow-speed lowside. My dad needed to catch my mom—I think at the bus station, if I have it correct—for some reason. Maybe she’d forgotten something? My dad’s bike wasn’t around so he asked his brother to quick, give him a lift. They raced off down the driveway and as they pulled out onto the road there were some wet leaves and down they went. An older couple passing by asked if they were okay but were waved away as the only concern was for the bike. I don’t know if they ever caught my mom at the station in time.

My dad only came off once. A young boy ran out between parked cars and kind of fell over the front wheel, striking and breaking the headlamp as he did. My dad was thrown over the handlebars. Both were okay, but my dad had a concussion and rode for another 45 minutes blind into Portsmouth before realizing he was going the wrong way. He remembers sitting at a stop light and it was like a curtain started to lift and he could see the feet and ankles of the all people passing on the crosswalk in front on him.

And my dad’s dad also had a bike, or bikes, through the years—a BSA, one of the first Honda 100s in England at the time (1967), and later a Triumph Thunderbird 650. He was still riding when I visited him in 1985. He took me out to the garage to show me his bike and told me how when my sister had visited a few years earlier she had in mind that she would borrow it to tour Europe. No training, no experience. She hopped on and said, “Okay, so show me how it works,” or something like that. “What’s this pedal for?” Thankfully for everyone, including her future children, that plan never materialized.

Grandad rode well into his 80s and was only pulled off the road by his doctor when he was spotted going the wrong way through a roundabout. Of course he was incredulous and angry, but we all have to face that decision sooner or later.

_{Photos above are not of actual bikes mentioned.}

I started riding in 2015, prompted by my cousin, Mark, who also rides. If you are making a family tree in your head as you read this, Mark is the son of my dad’s brother, Keith. We were texting one morning (evening for him) and he said something like, “Rode through The New Forest today to visit the folks,” accompanied by a photo of his BMW R65 LS, parked roadside presumably somewhere in The New Forest. I was stabbed with a pang of envy and replied, “I’ve always wanted to ride,” to which he said, “You should.” And then a door of opportunity that had stood closed through my early adult life, which was filled with education and family responsibilities, suddenly opened. Why not? Within a week I had registered for a training course and had started researching possible bikes.

I’m thinking of these stories now as my dad lies in bed recovering from major surgery. He has long since given up riding, and more recently driving, but it seems that his last months with us will be largely confined to a bed. I’m thinking of all he has given me, including some of that mechanical know-how, but especially this passion for motorcycles, something that will always be associated with him. It’s in my blood. And as much as it scares the bejesus out of me to imagine my own son riding, I suppose it’s somewhat inevitable, when the time is right for him. When I’m long gone from this world, maybe his future son, or daughter, will remember me once in a while when they throw a leg over the saddle and fire the engine to life.

650thumper

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