Adventure motorcycling or simply touring?
 

Just a quick followup with some comments on Sun Chaser's post about the morphology of the term Adventure Motorcycling. As the post is locked it's not possible to reply there.

Having met and 'toured' with Ken Craven a few times back in the 70's I can imagine the response anyone would have got from him if you'd suggested that we weren't 'tourers' but 'adventure riders'. He really was a no bullish*t sort of bloke and when I wrote a magazine article about a trip I went on with him in 1978 I described it as a bit like going on holiday with your school headmaster. By that time of course Ken had been travelling and organising trips for about 30yrs and had made both his name and his panniers for the 'Partitours' he ran in the 1950's. I don't recall anyone, either in person or in print in any of the magazines I avidly bought in the 60's and 70's, calling travel by motorcycle anything other than touring. We shortened it to 'bike trips' but the term 'adventure motorcycling / biking' would have been laughed out of usage as being pretentious in the extreme.

It may of course be - as was suggested - that it's the usual two cultures separated by the same language at the root of it, but the idea of seeking new experiences on a motorcycle wouldn't have been regarded as that unusual even in Ken's world. It's just that he (and our small bike travel circle as well) would have kept adventure in its noun form. To use it as a verb - that we were 'adventuring' - would have been to give what we were doing delusions of grandure. In fact for me, still, the word adventure is something more appropriate for things that the under 10's do, something, for example, from the pages of an Enid Blyton book about The Famous Five. As an adult I'd be expected to put away childish things including the concept of 'adventure'. I might still experience it but by then it would have grown up into 'touring' or 'travel'. Simply my opinion of course and one formed by the culture and the times I was brought up in, but 'adventure' seems to be an idea taken from those early travellers and sold back to us by marketing companies.

Having bought Ken's 1970's touring book - the one pictured in front of the hovercraft - back in the day it's interesting to contrast it with one on the shelf in front of me at the moment - Robert Wicks's Building the Ultimate Adventure Motorcycle. The world of motorcycle travel, and particularly the 'gadgets' available to help with the process, may have moved on in 40+ yrs but the core idea is much the same. As it was back in the mid 1950's when Ian Mercer wrote his book - Europe on Wheels - about travel by scooter. If the word adventure is used in that book I can't find it.

I have no clue where, how, or by whose authority the term “adventure motorcycling” entered the lexicon. But of course the word itself—“adventure”—has long been co-opted, then sold back to us; that’s what our economic and political systems do with terms and concepts perceived to have strength in them. That doesn’t render the terms and concepts invalid; in a way, it merely confirms the presence of something important. The same complaints are at least equally valid about “touring” (consider what a “touring” bike looks like these days) or “overlanding.”

When Yvon Choinard, who would surely know what adventure looks like, said long ago that adventure begins only once stuff starts to go seriously wrong, he was onto the essence of it. So the more I try to control events by purchasing upgrades, carrying plastic cards or using mapping software, the less actual adventure I’m likely to encounter.

Personally, I complain about this all the time…while caressing my stack of debit cards, credit cards, safety devices, and get-out-of-jail-free connections. Looking back, the major “adventures” of my life, at least in the physical realm, have mainly been in the distant past, before internet, ATMs, or GPS—even before (gasp) Lonely Planet guidebooks. And I can hardly even use the term “adventure motorcycling” without a bit of a sneer, designed to demonstrate a degree of adventure-sophistication to anyone who gets it.

But there’s a real quandary here: how to invite the unknown and unpredictable into my travels without crossing over into stuff that is beyond my current, 68-year-old risk tolerance…and having done that, how to communicate it efficiently to other people. I tried to do the latter recently while traveling with a bunch of people less than half my age in Central Asia, complicated by the fact that while *they* were clearly having a grand adventure, *I* was definitely not.

This is where I stop rambling, and sign off with some variation on mileage varying. Besides, I just finished my latté and pistachio croissant here on this breezy patio overlooking the local volcano, and it’s time I went out in search of adventure. Or at least “adventure.”

Mark

One man's adventure is another man's (or woman's) commute to work. There are very few real adventures left in this world, however long or however far you travel. If there's any sort of road there, someone has been there before you and built it. Even if there's no road, you can bet someone has been there before you. So it's all relative. I'm drawn to a definition I read before, that if it takes you outside your comfort zone it's an adventure (to you).

That said, I try to avoid using the term, it has become something of a cliche, and TBH I'm quite happy "touring". You can still go to out-of-the-way places and you don't need to stay in 4* hotels, and you definitely don't need a YouTube channel to have a mini adventure ;)

When my Mum, who is an 85 year old retired teacher, talks of activities from her youth such as riding horses long distance she describes them as "little adventures", and has done so since I can remember. So, I doubt it was ever a big jump in the use of language.

Touring if you travelled by bike before the Ewen and Thingy phase, and Adventure Motorcycling if you were inspired by those 2 lovies to buy a Euro Heavy Bomber (Japanese and US derivatives available too) to tour around on. Didn't the BMW marketing department invent the phrase "Adventure Motorcycling"?

(Made it onto the front cover of a certain (previous edition of the) AMH book penned by a chap who hangs out in these 'ere parts and my likeness also appeared in the brochure of the 2002/3 R1150GSA, that Lovie 1 and Lovie 2 rode on their rather epic capers... I'll get my coat :D )

The KTM 620 Adventure was launched in 1997, so the 'adventure' moniker predates Ewan and Charlie by at least seven years.

BMW claims the 1980 R80 G/S was their first adventure motorcycle but the name 'adventure' wasn't actually applied to their bikes until the 2001 1150 GS Adventure (three years before Ewan and Charlie) where it mainly indicated a larger fuel tank and longer travel suspension.

When I rode my 1969 TriBSA to Morocco in 1972 there was no way you could describe my cafe racer hybrid as an adventure bike, but it certainly was an adventure for me.

I'm happy to use the term in the way @Tomkat describes. If I am headed off on a network of unknown dirt tracks after bad weather, or headed into a really remote area that possibly doesn't have accommodation and where the locals don't speak my languages, then there's a certain amount of trepidation and it's at least a mild adventure.

I'm also very happy to revisit places I've been before but tracks may have been asphalted, roads may now be dual carriageways so I am laid back, relaxed, and just touring.

Why just to remit to KTMs or BMWs, from the first Hondas Africa Twin RD03 650s from 1989 has the ‘Adventure’ (sports) magic word in her side pannels, although that was a ‘true adventure’ bike as are consigned now on same pannels the new Africa Twin generation.:mchappy:

But anyway, who cares? For me Adventure is to still be alive and still ride bikes, doesn't matter if are call adventures or not…. :D

I'm glad I'm not the only one for whom 'adventure' is a bit of a weasel term. It seems to be something I recognise and know what it is but when I come to pin it down - in a definition or in some sort of context - it slips through my fingers like mist. If it, as has been suggested, only begins when things start to go wrong then it must inhabit a wafer thin spectrum between normal and incompetent or inept. Touring suggests a degree of normality in its usage whereas adventure inhabits a realm where abnormal is the expectation. As such it seems to be something that is only awarded the mantle once the event is over and you're looking back at it. It's travel through a rear view mirror.

Last month I was touring through southern France on my vintage Yamaha when I hit a day of non stop thunderstorms and rain torrential enough to bring down trees and flood roads. For a couple of hours I was stuck on a mountain road in non stop rain while a blockage was cleared. Relating it to some non travelling friends afterwards, I was, they said, 'very adventurous'. Did it feel like I was having an adventure at the time? No, it just felt cold and wet and miserable and, because all of this was forecast, I was annoyed with myself for not staying in the hotel for another day while it all passed over. I don't suppose any of the 50 cars that were stuck with me thought they were in the world of adventure either. They were just late for work, or late getting to the shops or whatever their purpose was. It was just another delay and about as adventurous as a traffic jam. My 'adventure' vs their annoying day? Let's not delude ourselves.