It’s been a while since I’ve ridden anything new, and that’s because I haven’t really been shopping. But the world’s motorcycle manufacturers won’t stop releasing new bikes, and while I now have my Triumph Street Triple R and Suzuki V-Strom 650 set up just the way I like them, I’m always half-heartedly scoping out…
Every now and again I’m reminded that the Crossrunner exists. Overlooked, it didn’t sell very well in it’s previous incarnation, being little more than a jacked-up VFR800, suffering from oddball styling and many of the same problems that plagued the 14-year-old design of its sport-touring cousin. But shortly after the VFR itself was overhauled, the…
As regular readers of this site will know, I rather like my Suzuki V-Strom 650. It’s comfortable, economical, practical and, most importantly, fun. Because if a motorcycle isn’t fun to ride, then we might as well all drive Toyota Priuses. But what if someone told you that there was a motorcycle that combined all the practical…
I think that Harley-Davidson might have their marketing for this bike all wrong. Sure, it’s stylish, highly fashionable amongst the young beards-and-beer set and definitely better suited to the sort of weather that you get in sunny California. But with the exception of a brief dalliance with sportiness in the 2008-2012 XR1200, Harley has been synonymous with…
Riding the Suzuki V-Strom 650 a few months ago, followed by a 1200-mile, 5-day tour of Yorkshire on my Street Triple R, further reinforced my belief that my perfect two-up touring/commuting motorcycle might well be found in the modern-day Adventure Tourer. I felt sure that I wanted to have the upright seating position for all-day comfort,…
I’ve spent the past nine months or so test riding, researching and carefully evaluating any number of motorcycles for consideration as my two-up tourer and winter commuter. A year with a Triumph Street Triple R has shown it to be a bike with tremendous strengths, such that I if I were to sell it I would…
Triumph’s Bonneville: Sunday cruiser or hipster throwback? Most articles I’ve read about the British firm’s modern remake of their once-famous roadster suggests that I should be comparing it to Moto Guzzi’s V7, Harley Davidson’s 883 Sportster and Kawasaki’s W800 – all classic naked designs evoking an era of mechanical simplicity and wind-in-your-hair motoring. The marketing…
In my ongoing quest to choose a new two-up tourer and all-year commuter, I’ve ridden BMW’s two big boxer-engined bikes, as well as Triumph’s flagship triple. I’ve experimented with middleweight adventure bikes in the Tiger and found them lacking. All the faired middleweight sport-touring bikes like the Bandit seem to have been whittled down to a…
I’ve never known quite what to make of big, fully faired, bells & whistles touring bikes. A few months ago Rosa and I took BMW’s outgoing air-cooled boxer twin R1200RT out for a couple of hours, and we rather enjoyed it. Sure, it was big and heavy, but it was surprisingly light on its feet…
What is an adventure bike? Definitions abound, from two-wheeled SUVs to giant dirt bikes; from tall, upright sports bikes to the inevitable evolution of the sports tourer. Regardless, the industry, and indeed the biking public as a whole, seem to have latched onto the image of the tough, rugged, do-everything motorcycle, even if most bikes end up doing exactly…
Boy Meets Bike 
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