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.