Reader’s Ride:Gibb River Road, WA

Adventure Rider Issue #7

• Checkout
• Reader’s Bike:Darren Brumby’s F800GS
• KISS
• Ol’ Mate
• Playing The Field with Karen Ramsay
• Reader’s Ride:Gibb River Road, WA
• Wish You Were Here
• DEBRA
• Stop Press! Scott Britnell
• The Dark Side with Ken Dark
• ADVX Changes with John Hudson
• Preparing For Adventure with Robin Box
• I Have A Dream
• Kawasaki KLR650 Shop Bike
• BMW F700GS
• India
• Greg Yager’s WR250R
• Bolivia
• BMW Safari-Enduro
• Industry Players: Nick Dole
• Dirty RATs
• Contributors
• It’s What We Do

Three brothers and a mate decided to give adventure riding a try. A damn good try, as it turned out.

Getting older shouldn’t stop you from riding, but you may have to reassess your abilities as throwing enduro bikes around gets harder. With a number of riding buddies from our Crusty Quinns website buying adventure bikes and heading off into the wilderness, I too needed to re-evaluate my riding future. Was it going to be semi-retirement? Or full-on desert racing aboard a heavily laden, fire-breathing dragon?

Getting set

With only a handful of capable dualsport bikes to choose from, the DR650 appeared to be a popular choice for the level of pure dirt-bike enjoyment we had in mind. Not only is the bike cheap to buy, but there are plenty of aftermarket bits available to suit most riders’ needs. I picked up an older 2007 model that had already undergone some pretty good upgrades, and then got to work to build a bike capable of carrying my fat arse and another 50kg of gear from Perth to Kununurra and back. The best money spent was on suspension, and the bike’s off-road performance couldn’t have been better.