Jewel Sport with Andy Strapz

Adventure Rider Issue #53

• Fit Out
• Checkout
• 4500km Of Tassie Adventure-Riding Pleasure with Miles Davis
• Aim High with Karen Ramsay
• Jewel Sport with Andy Strapz
• The People You Meet
• Australia Day Jaunt
• Something Different
• April Ride
• On The Comeback Trail
• Ducati Multistrada V4 S
• RideADV Ténéré 700 High Country Rally
• CFMOTO 800MT Touring
• 10 Things
• Team Rehab
• It’s what we do

Miles’ column recently renounced the practice of trailering bikes to adventure riding places,encouraging us to enjoy our road riding, especially the corners.

As most adventure-riding places these people trailer their wheels to scare the titanium plates out of me, I’m hearing you loud and clear, mate.

In the past when I’ve been waxing lyrically about the olden days, I’ve mentioned the word ‘dualsport’. That’s what this gig used to be called. I reckon it’s taken a bum wrap as the more sexy word ‘adventure’ was conjured up in a marketing department somewhere.

The modern adventure motor-cycle is the sort of jigger Aussies should have been riding from the outset. Let’s face it, most of the rural roads these days are bumpier and more cut up than most dirt roads. Long-travel suspension and a riding position
that flows with the bumps rather than shaggin’ intervertebral discs is so much more real world. Some potholes would get Jules Verne’s imagination going 15 to the dozen. Nineteen-inch or 21-inch front wheels tend not to journey into the Earth and try to throw us down the road.