Lois,
Great meeting you (and Austin) in San Francisco last month.

Not sure about other countries, but I think that there is a simplicity "fad" happening in the US these days--in part simply from a longing for a more engaged and simpler life (in a world where constant electronic distraction/communication and work are the norm), and in part simply due to a value shift effected by the crappy economic situation. Motorcycle travel gets caught up in that.

As for me, my first adventure moto trip was in 2006--all of 10 days around the western states, as I recall. I prepared by making a sheepskin seat cover, getting a side of leather and a saddlebag pattern and making myself a set of saddlebags. Lined 'em with trash bags for rainy days on the road. Bungeed a canoeing drybag up top, got a handful of paper maps and some camping gear, and off I went.

I survived (getting caught in a snowstorm in a mesh jacket was quite something), but as soon as I got home, started slowly acquiring fancier gear that wouldn't leak, rust, or break so damned easily. On my last cross-country trip, I was riding through an apocalyptic thunder and hailstorm, completely lost, in South Dakota, thinking, "gosh, I'm glad for hard panniers--I'm free to worry about imminent death from a lightning strike, without fussing over whether my gear is getting wet."

There's also group of very DIY, punk/leftist activist folks in the US who travel widely on the thinnest of shoestrings--networking and sharing travel expenses and putting each other up, sleeping under bridges when necessary, using secondhand or homemade gear. They aren't going back to basics, since they never left. Most are bicyclists; two of my acquaintance are motorcyclists, and one rides an old Ascot 500 with homemade bags to within an inch of its life. A few of them are friends, and I admire their courage and adaptability and minimalism; certainly I've learned a great deal from their style of travel, but my own psychological makeup needs a bit more gear and resource use to make it fun for me. Still, their tales of breakdowns and hitchhiking on the Dalton Highway, going to metal shows held in coal mines in Albania, being blown off the road in Montana, and sleeping in caves in the Pyrenees are great stuff, and proof of lives well lived.

The only non DIYers are those that choose an organised tour. For some this is a very good option as it's a good way to make the best use of your time off.

Everyone else is DIYing to some extent. We have always been very organised on our trips in terms of the bike and luggage although everything is home made and all the modifications to the bike are our own doing. Other than that we have a destination and a vague route in mind but the rest is made up as we go along. On our trip to Cape Town we met some bike travellers several times and you cou see them changing as they went along from being on a 4 month trip to becoming long term travellers picking up work where they could etc. and others again who just couln't wait for it to finish so they could get back to their comfortable European lives.

The Adventure bit for me is going further than you've been before and seeing new places and meeting new people for the first time. I was always surprised at how different my experience was from what I'd read in guide books. There are some that find it's the escape from their previous lives that they were looking for and they become long term travellers and there are others who just don't like being outside their comfort zone.