Too Much Bike, Not Enough Road
Too much bike, not enough road
LEANINGS
Peter Egan
WHILE MOVING MY VINTAGE BRIDGESTONE Sport 50 around the garage yesterday so I could sweep the floor, I unconsciously found myself picking up the entire bike by the handlebars and the back of the seat and scooting it closer to the wall.
Interesting sensation, picking up an entire motorcycle, and one I haven’t enjoyed for a while.
This set me to wondering what the Bridgestone weighs. I thought about fetching our big doctor’s-office-class bathroom scales (where I daily monitor the wondrous effects of beer and enchiladas) and dragging it down to the workshop, but I soon realized it would be easier to roll the Bridgestone up to the house.
In the end, of course, common sense won out and I simply looked in my old 1964 Bridgestone brochure and noted that the bike has a claimed “unladen weight” of 149.6 pounds. Close enough. In any case, it’s nice to have at least one bike that’s lighter than you are.
Back when I owned a Bridgestone 50 as my first bike, of course, my main problem in life was that the bike was too small. On the highway, I had to cling to the shoulder of the road at a shrieking 39 or 40 mph while pickup trucks full of milk cans swerved around me. I wanted to ride from Wisconsin to California, but when I looked at a map of the greater U.S., I realized that what we had here, essentially, was too much road and not enough bike.
Now, of course, that problem is often reversed.
This thought has struck me a couple of times in the past month. The first time was right before three buddies and I left for a dual-sport ride in Mexico (the one I wrote about in my last column). Expedition planner Mike Mosiman sent me an inspirational DVD of Long Way Round, a documentary of the world tour done by actors Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman.
I’d already read the book, but it was fascinating to see the film. It was a grand adventure, and you have to give these guys credit for hanging in there. But about halfway through the movie-after watching the exhausted McGregor and Boorman struggle for the umpteenth time to pick their bikes up out of the sand and muck-I actually shouted at my TV screen, “Your bikes are too bloody big!”
As if they hadn’t already noticed.
They originally had KTM 950 Adventures (exactly like mine) in mind for the trip, but KTM pulled its sponsorship at the last moment. McGregor and Boorman were crestfallen (oddly, they seem not to have considered buying their own bikes), but BMW bravely stepped in and loaned them a pair of R1200GSs.
Frankly, I thought both the KTM 950 and the R1200GS (two of my favorite allpurpose road bikes) were too big for this rugged trip, and I couldn’t help thinking how much more fun they could have had on BMW F650 Dakars or KTM 640s. Or anything smaller and nimbler. The concept of going seriously off-road on a 400pound-plus bike is simply baffling to me, like renting a B-52 to take flying lessons or opening a bag of Cheetos with a Howitzer. More machine than you need.
Yes, I know the great Paris-Dakar champions have soared over sand dunes on these big trahies, but I ain’t them. And not many people are.
A week after watching this movie, of course, I was in Mexico, riding down the steep dirt roads of Copper Canyon with three other guys. And two of them were on-guess what?-BMW GS models. An RI 100GS-PD and an R1200GS.
Like our friends Ewan and Charley, they toughed it out and made the trip— with a little help from their friends-but they could have spent a lot more time grinning and relaxing on smaller bikes. I watched Dave struggle up a stretch of steep, boulder-strewn canyon road on his big, wallowing P-D, and said to Mike, “Too much bike, not enough road.”
I’d almost brought my KTM 950 on this trip, but at the last moment I saw someone’s website photo of a dirt road in Copper Canyon and said, “Hmmm... Looks pretty gnarly. Think I’ll throw some new knobbies on my DR650 and take that.”
I was glad I did. The KTM would have been too tall and heavy for me to hold up on our one big river crossing, and the battery (which lives inside the skidplate) would have been under water. Not ideal. The bike would probably still be down there, drying out its electrics.
As it turns out, my Suzuki DR was a good choice for the trip. Bob and Dave returned from Mexico vowing to keep their big GSs for daily use and Alaska-type trips on “well-graded gravel roads,” but to buy much smaller bikes for their next encounter with true dirt.
I hesitate to sound like some kind of evangelist (and, no, I am not under secret contract to Suzuki) but I have to say that the trusty, sometimes under-rated DR is toward the top of my list of recommendations.
Why?
Well, with a 324-pound dry weight, it’s not exactly a gossamer concoction, but at least it carries its weight low and you can put your foot down when you have to (and, believe me, you often do). The seat height is only 34.8 inches, and you can easily lower it another 1.6. This is a very good thing, at least for most of us earthbound mortals.
Also, it has an electric starter and it’s inexpensive, simple, air-cooled, durable, dead smooth at 70-80 mph on the highway, agile enough to steer a tight trail and torquey enough to blast effortlessly up steep mountains. There aren’t many other bikes out there with this combination of traits-although I see the new-for2007 BMW G650 Xchallenge shares some of these virtues and is in the same weight class (see riding impression, page 78, this issue).
Maybe Ewan and Charley can try that ’round-the-world thing again and have a little more fun this time, with lighter bikes. I’m sure they’re anxious to attack Siberia’s Road of Bones again during mosquito season. Should be a piece of cake.
And a good reminder that lightness, in nearly all things, is just another form of freedom. It’s those alluring extra molecules we buy that are always the trap. □
