#adventure-touring

We’ve traveled down this path before when we asked what types of bikes our readers have owned. What we learned there, frankly, didn’t surprise us too much. You’ve owned a bunch of different motorcycles. That makes you a lot like us. We like motorcycles – all motorcycles. As an industry friend once said about our profession, “All motorcycles good; we investigate.”

This guy, Dave Gasser of Canton, Ohio, did! That name by itself should’ve been enough to win the contest, but Dave also correctly guessed that the MO crew would pick the BMW S1000XR as overall winner of our epic going-postal up the-coastal adventure, and earned himself a new Arai XD4 helmet. How’d he do it?

Every time I get on the phone with my brother in Ohio we talk until the time difference forces him to go to bed, one of our cellphones dies, or one of us runs out of beer. Running out of beer usually isn’t the culprit, and after enough of them my brother will oftentimes start bemoaning his responsibilities of  fatherhood, being a husband and business owner. “I just want to go back to when I was 22 and all I had to worry about was how much money I’d have left over after paying rent and bills to buy beer with,” he’ll slur, and I swear I can almost hear the tear rolling down his cheek. Needless to say, he doesn’t get to go on many adventures without an age-appropriate destination (his kid turns three in October).

We live in an age of specialization and performance. A few words written by one of MO’s finest the other day drove this home to me. He had muttered those magic words: “200 miles per hour.” That is a very impressive number indeed. There was a time when topping a “Ton” (100 mph) was the magic number to the porridge pot helmet crowd on their British cafe racers, today we can kick around the notion of 200 mph without being regarded as completely daft.*

Next week your intrepid MO crew is embarking on an epic Adventure-Touring ride with nine – yes, nine – of the biggest and baddest A-T bikes in the segment. Over the next six days the nine bikes and riders will cover 2000 miles over various terrain. Each bike will be put to the test in what will be one of MO’s largest-ever comparison tests. We won’t give away all the bikes taking part in the test just yet, but you can likely guess some of the obvious choices. One of them being the BMW R1200GS. So for this Church feature, we look back at the 2006 BMW R1200GS Adventure. Lending his words is former MOron, Pete Brissette, who will be joining the MO crew as a special guest tester for next week’s epic ride. Lastly, be sure to check out the photo gallery for even more pics of the 2006 GS Adventure. Take it away, Pete…

The Aprilia Caponord Rally is the most high-tech road motorcycle in Aprilia’s range, a touring flagship fit with everything from active suspension to traction control. What separates the Rally from the standard Caponord is the extra versatility of having standard large and sturdy panniers (33 litres each), spoked wheels enabling off road tires, a taller windscreen, front fairing crash protection and extra LED lights. Still, dynamic damping is the highlight.

The rendering above comes courtesy of www.IndianCarsBikes.in which illustrates its ideas for what the upcoming Royal Enfield Himalayan might look like. We think it probably overestimates the amount of suspension travel and windscreen height. The exhaust design also seems unlikely, with low routing that would be damaged in off-road riding and a muffler that is way too small to adequately quiet a biggish Single.

The 2015 Aprilia Caponord Rally sails through as the Noale firm’s flagship touring and adventure bike. The Rally is high-tech where the absolute highlight is the ADD (Aprilia Dynamic Damping), which makes any ride, fast or slow, comfortable and safe. Traction control, sophisticated ABS brakes and smoother ride-by-wire throttle response are other highlights which make the Caponord Rally a treat to ride.

I should know better than to say yes when Brad says let’s go on an off-road adventure, but that weekend it was either Death Valley or start deconstructing 18 years worth of worldly possessions for an impending housing relocation. I still had the KTM 1190 Adventure in my garage, and how many times would those two things align? Also, Brad’s rides are less death-defying now that he’s paraplegic. How he rides his DR350, I know not. Nor how he walks, but he does both amazingly well, looking only a little like Mr. Natural sometimes if he’s had a cocktail.

Built to morph from an Adventure-Touring boot to a Sport-Touring boot, and back again, the Sidi Armada is a one-boot solution to a two-boot problem.

One year and a handful of months ago I was returning from Spain with the knowledge that KTM had constructed something special; the 1290 Super Duke R. The SDR went on to claim MO’s 2014 Bike of the Year award, as well as similar accolades from competing publications. If you read my First Ride Review of the SDR, this story will sound familiar. In what seems like déjà vu, I’m returning from Spain with the knowledge that KTM has constructed something special; the 2015 1290 Super Adventure.

Instead of two specially-prepped BMW R1150GS Adventures, Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman should have split Long Way Round riding duties between stock versions of the GSA and KTM’s (at the time) 950 Adventure. An epic shootout of 20,000 around-the-world miles! Alas, they did not. Leaving moto hacks such as myself and John Burns to venture less than twenty-hundred miles within the confines of the state of California. Kind of the opposite of epic.

Motorcycle.com recently got the chance to ride the new 2015 Kawasaki Versys 1000 LT at its world launch in Sicily, it’s a motorcycle that’s being offered in the U.S. for the first time. With aggressive styling that mimics Kawasaki’s Ninja model line, coupled with roomy, upright ergonomics and an extremely comfortable and effective handlebar bend, this is a machine which is well-positioned for entry into the rapidly growing Sport/Adventure Touring category, priced nicely at $12,799. This video gives a glimpse into our time with the new machine and sheds a little insight into how it lives up to the outstanding reputation of its smaller Versys sibling.

The Adventure-Touring category is quickly becoming one of the hottest segments in motorcycling, and now BMW is throwing its hat in the ring with the S1000R-based S1000XR, introduce at EICMA 2014. Sharing the same engine and frame as the S1000R streetfighter, the XR version gets longer-travel suspension, plus a beefed-up subframe to handle saddlebags and the increased weight they entail. As usual, BMW has packed the XR with an impressive electronics package. E-i-C Kevin Duke is live at EICMA, where he files this report after giving the S1000XR a close lookover.

Today at Intermot, Aprilia unveiled a new variant on the Caponord 1200 we first rode last year. Called the Aprilia Caponord 1200 Rally, it takes the touring-oriented Capo and beefs it up for light off-roading/adventure riding.