[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"?

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Paul "Every county of England, every country of Europe and every (part of every inhabited) continent of the Earth" 94% done! What's left? Central America, East, Central and West Africa, Australia & New Zealand

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

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

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.

Wise words my friend, but...!
I'd love a BMW GS! I'd love a supermodel wife, a lifetime 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

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.

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I have no cred, so it's rather difficult to harsh it . 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

Now ain't that a fact!

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Paul "Every county of England, every country of Europe and every (part of every inhabited) continent of the Earth" 94% done! What's left? Central America, East, Central and West Africa, Australia & New Zealand

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

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

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