CRM
15th December 2010, 16:24
Pretty excited as I'm picking up my new toy tomorrow and entering back into the fold of adventure riders.
My recent history has been XL250Degree about 7 years ago after 20-something years not riding. This was used for trail riding and just getting back into bikes. After a couple of years having heaps of fun on that I decided I was ready for a step up to something more grunty so bought a road legal DRZ400E. I found it too harsh to enjoy on the road and a bit tall and heavy for hard-core trails so swapped it for what I hoped would be a road-legal ultra-lite traily (and I'd always wanted a trilas bike)- a Gasgas Pampera 250 two stroke. It was a lot of fun but had reliability issues (like stripping out the back valve stem half-way around my first trail ride and all sorts of problems getting the carb sorted out) and it's range on pre-mix was really limiting - so I sold that - basically deciding I needed a DR650 and get more into adventure riding than trail riding.
Meanwhile I met a friend who told me he had an XR600 he had bought but wasn't using. I had ride on that and I was hooked. I had that for 18 months or so, doing the mid-north adventure ride, lots of local riding plus a long ride as far as Timaru including the West Coast and Arthurs pass. As I had these long distance trips to make for my work I decided that I really needed a more suitable adventure/touring bike and bought a V-Strom 650.
I did about 6000km on the Wee and it never really did it for me. It went well enough but was lacking character and hurt my wrists and elbows. I also was disappointed by its lack of ability in gravel. It was just the wrong fit for me. So I decided that touring and adventure don't mix and swapped the VStrom for a VFR800 v-tec. I've been riding that for 9 months and done 18k on it - around NZ twice plus numerous trips around the North Island. It's a great bike and I've enjoyed every minute of it - but missing the simplicity. Everything seems expensive on a sports/tourer and 99% of the time I don't use or need all that performance.
So the other day I had a ride on a Transalp 650. Amazingly it seems to have all the ingredients I want - relative simplicity, smooth easy highway cruising, trail-bike handling and riding position. So hopefully I'll be a happy biker this time tomorrow riding it home :yes:
My recent history has been XL250Degree about 7 years ago after 20-something years not riding. This was used for trail riding and just getting back into bikes. After a couple of years having heaps of fun on that I decided I was ready for a step up to something more grunty so bought a road legal DRZ400E. I found it too harsh to enjoy on the road and a bit tall and heavy for hard-core trails so swapped it for what I hoped would be a road-legal ultra-lite traily (and I'd always wanted a trilas bike)- a Gasgas Pampera 250 two stroke. It was a lot of fun but had reliability issues (like stripping out the back valve stem half-way around my first trail ride and all sorts of problems getting the carb sorted out) and it's range on pre-mix was really limiting - so I sold that - basically deciding I needed a DR650 and get more into adventure riding than trail riding.
Meanwhile I met a friend who told me he had an XR600 he had bought but wasn't using. I had ride on that and I was hooked. I had that for 18 months or so, doing the mid-north adventure ride, lots of local riding plus a long ride as far as Timaru including the West Coast and Arthurs pass. As I had these long distance trips to make for my work I decided that I really needed a more suitable adventure/touring bike and bought a V-Strom 650.
I did about 6000km on the Wee and it never really did it for me. It went well enough but was lacking character and hurt my wrists and elbows. I also was disappointed by its lack of ability in gravel. It was just the wrong fit for me. So I decided that touring and adventure don't mix and swapped the VStrom for a VFR800 v-tec. I've been riding that for 9 months and done 18k on it - around NZ twice plus numerous trips around the North Island. It's a great bike and I've enjoyed every minute of it - but missing the simplicity. Everything seems expensive on a sports/tourer and 99% of the time I don't use or need all that performance.
So the other day I had a ride on a Transalp 650. Amazingly it seems to have all the ingredients I want - relative simplicity, smooth easy highway cruising, trail-bike handling and riding position. So hopefully I'll be a happy biker this time tomorrow riding it home :yes: