How Many Motorbikes is Enough?

One of Peter Egan's articles in Leanings is an answer to the age old motorcyclist's question: how many
motorcycles is right?  Egan's list follows his own interests in the sport.  His suggestions are:

1. a sportsbike for short, focused rides that are all about dynamics
2. a sport touring bike for spirited long distance riding
3. an off road bike (though this could be a bigger dual sport or adventure bike, not just a dirt bike)
4. a Harley for long distance 'Merican Dream type rides
5. an old nostalgia machine that takes you back to a bike you couldn't afford when you wanted it

He suggests that more than five bikes is too many and you end up with them going stale and getting covered in dust or getting so few miles they get musty.  Collectoritus is another thing,but if you're a rider with a working stable, five's the limit.

I've had a crack at the bike stable before, though Ontario's craptastic insurance system makes that more frustrating than exciting.  There are a couple of Peter's choices that are very specific to his interests that I think I can cut or clump into efficiencies.

The easy drop for me is the Harley.  I'd combine the touring with sport-touring in a Kawasaki Concours 14 that is big but athletic and can carry more weight two-up than a Harley anyway and with suspension and serious performance.

Shaft drive means it'd be a low maintenance device and, being a Kawasaki, it would run more or less forever.  We rode a previous generation one in the Arizona desert and it was brilliant; powerful, comfortable two up with luggage and surprisingly agile in the twisties, just what I'm looking for.

I figured that the sportsbike thing would get sorted with the Concours, but the Fireblade has changed 

my mind.  I don't need a brand new digital weapon.  Something light weight and minimalist would do the trick.

The 'sportbike' is more a 'cornering dynamics bike' - the point of it is to go on engaging rides where you're riding to ride rather than get somewhere, so a naked bike could do the job too.  To that end, if I had my choice I'd look for a naked alternative as it'd be easier on my old bones, though for anything up to 90 minutes I'm fine on the 'Blade, so I'm not in any rush to swap it out.  The naked bike I've always had a thing for is the Kawasaki Z1000 with it's anime like sugomi styling.  If it was a cost-no-object thing, I'd have a Z1000 in the most lurid orange I can find in the garage.

The dirtbike thing is another one of those opportunities to splice together a bike that'd do many jobs.  If you really wanted to condense things you could take the sports touring, touring and off-road categories and combine them together in something like the spectacular new BMW 1250GS that I rode last summer at SMART Adventures Off Road Training.

But as I get better at off road riding I realize what a compromise a big adventure bike is in really doing it.  Like the SUV that proceeded them, ADV bikes are so expensive and heavy nowadays that, while they might handle a bit of gravel, they aren't useful for trail riding or anything like off roading in more than an unpaved road kind of way.  I like the idea of getting deep in the woods and I like things that aren't so special that you're always worried about scratching them.  I wouldn't want to think about one falling on you in the woods.

This Honda 600XL came up last week on Kijii for under two grand.  I'm a sucker for that colour scheme and the gold rims - very 1980s.  Having something that old and simple would be nice to work on and straightforward to maintain, even if I wanted to get down to complete engine rebuilds.

It might be a bit too old for what I'm looking for as its function would be to get beaten up in the woods so something newer would be better, but that colour scheme...

Back in 2019 I went and looked at a Suzuki DR650 that had been purchased by a local farmer as a field bike.  He had a heart attack and died shortly after bringing it home and it sat in his barn for four years with no kilometres on it.  His wife was selling it for $4000 and I still regret not picking it up, basically a brand new machine (albeit one that's sat for a while) for 60% the price of a new one.

Something like that would be light and capable of trail riding while also being dependable and not so precious that a scratch would wind me up.

At the end of the day, if space wasn't an issue in my wee garage and Ontario's insurance system wasn't so nasty, I think these would be my five:

1. Athletic Distance Machine: (Kawi Concours14)
2. Dynamic Rider: (Fireblade, Z1000, or another light weight sport or naked machine)
3. Adventure Bike for Canadian Exploration (roads suck here, even if they're paved, and they often are suddenly not. An ADV bike will cover the rough over long distances)
4. Dirt/Trials Bike (a pedigree machine for intentional deep woods trail riding)
5. Revolving Door Bike (project, by and sell, experience something new bike - sometimes even a Harley!)

Adventure Biking

An epic journey with
an epic budget

I'm over a year into the habit now and my biking interests continue to evolve.  One of the things that got me started was Ewan and Charlie's Long Way Round.  When looking for my first bike I was all about the adventure bike.  The idea that I could ride to Borneo or the Andes was pretty enticing.  A bike that could go anywhere and do anything seemed magical.

Look at me and my friend
Ewan on our big bikes!  It's
hard not to get taken in by
the image.

It turns out it is magical.  You give up a lot of physics to have a tall bike with knobbly tires that looks like it can ride to the Andes.  Being a guy in the vanishing middle class with a young family and work, I'm not in a position to gallivant off into the woods for weeks on end following my inner McGregor.  I get the sense that, like SUV drivers, many adventure bike riders are in it for the posing.  I've never been good at posing, it's one of the reasons that cruisers have never done anything for me.  I'm less interested in being seen on a bike and more interested in the process of riding it.

An epic journey on a
shoestring

To complicate matters I then saw Mondo Enduro and heard Austin Vince's arguments for adventure riding for adventure riding's sake (rather than adventure marketing for sale's sake).  The idea of taking inexpensive, small bikes around the world seems absurd from a Long Way Round/BMW/Adventure Bike Rider point of view where anything less than a 1000ccs without electronic assist and no wind is 'uncomfortable'.

Why can't I buy this
in Canada, Austin?

While Ewan and Charlie actually did the deed, they did it with an awful lot of support, brand new sponsored bikes, a staff and no worries about money.  That they did it is being leveraged a great deal by bike manufacturers to move large, heavy bikes that are ill-suited for off road work, but they look the part and let you live that movie star dream.

I get Austin's angle, and still get excited by the idea of travelling light and far for travel's sake, not for image's sake.  I'm currently reading Ted Simon's Jupiter's Travels, and he too focused on the opportunities motorcycling around the world offered rather than the image it portrayed.

I just turned 45 and fantasized about mid-life crisis motorbike choices.  I was surprised to find that adventure biking didn't make it onto my list considering it was one of the genres of riding I was most excited by.  Like the SUV driver that has never driven on gravel but wants 4 wheel drive and a massive vehicle just in case it might happen, the idea that an adventure bike will make it look like I can travel down roads I'd never take is marketing that I just can't buy into.  

The road beckons, it's right outside my door, so why would I ride a bike that wasn't designed for it?  It's not like you can't go pretty much everywhere on a road bike, Nick Sanders certainly has.  If you want to get off the beaten path and camp Jo Sinnott can manage it on a Triumph Bonneville.  If you want to be extreme, Melissa Holbrook-Pierson will introduce you to the Man Who Would Stop At Nothing who makes Charlie & Ewan look like frat boys.

There is no doubt that adventure riding is a meaningful genre of motorcycle riding, just as off-roading is a meaningful genre of four wheeling.  But are you the guy who has to hose out his jeep after going deep, or are you the guy who polishes his SUV and pretends he's all about the mud?  I suspect I've read too many life changing adventure bike articles in magazines that sell the myth.  As long as adventure riding is about the image rather than the deed, it doesn't do much for me, mid-life crisis or otherwise, which makes me sad.

One Bike To Rule Them All!

I think I need 3 bikes, a road bike, an off road/scrappy bike and a touring bike that lets me 2 up easily.  The wee garage would easily swallow this stable.  The Ninja was $3500.  I think I could cover the other two for $4500.  Keeping the bike stable at half what our cheapest car cost seems reasonable.

The Ninja is the sport bike... $3500

This Kawasaki Concourse was $2500 in the summer.  With a pillion seat-back it would make a great long distance shared riding bike.

If I could pick up a good dual purpose bike for under $2000, I'd be able to fill out the stable for about $8000 (£5000).  This KLR fits the bill, though I'd be longing to paint it (not a problem).

Unless I can find a way to throw legs over as many bikes as I can, I can't see another way to get an idea of how various bikes ride.  Finding a bike that does everything is a fool's errand.  Bikes that claim to do this are a series of compromises.  The key to riding a variety of styles is to ride a variety of bikes.

The first bike that would suffer in a diversified garage would be the somewhat sensible all round Ninja.  In its place I'd be looking for a naked streefighter... a Triumph Speed Triple would be on my short list.

Motorbike show NOTE:  I had a chat with Riders Plus Insurance.  They insured me in my first year of riding and were helpful and efficient.  This time round I was curious about how insuring multiple bikes work.  They told me that buying a second bike means you're doubling your insurance payments.  This doesn't make a lot of sense to me as I can only ride one bike at a time.  I expected something like you're insured at the rate of whatever the highest cost bike is plus 10% for the paperwork on the other bike.  What I was told was that you get a 10% discount on your second bike and pay another full set of insurance on it... which makes owning multiple bikes not really financially viable, so that dream goes down the toilet.