The Hunt

My third summer on the Wee-Strom is quickly coming to a close, and after three years on the Strom, I am more convinced than ever that it really is a great bike. It's done everything I've asked of it, and when I've reached the limits, it's almost always been *my* limits, rather than the Strom's. I've touched the pegs in tight corners -- several times -- for the first time this year. I made it to the end of the "motorized vehicles allowed" section of the trail on Canyon Road. I took a ride way the heck back Petersville Road, and over the top of Hatcher's Pass. Suzuki really did a great job engineering this bike. Neither a sport bike nor a dirt bike, it nevertheless seems to reach a phenomenal balance between both extremes without overly compromising performance in either category.

Nevertheless, I found myself wanting a smaller, nimbler, lighter, more balanced (weight-wise) steed this summer.

To a large degree, this is due to my new interest in moto-gymkhana. I am quite fond of my Wee-Strom, so I really don't want to drop and damage it. However, accepted wisdom among those who've been doing gymkhana longer than I is that if you want to get good, you will drop your bike. You can't learn where the performance limits are if you don't cross them once or twice. I've come close a number of times, and so I finally realized that I'm eventually going to come up snake-eyes if I keep rolling the dice with the Strom.

Also, when practicing, I have found that I am frequently lugging the engine, unless I slip the clutch, but slipping the clutch wears it prematurely. And, I'm almost always riding the rear brake -- S.O.P. in gymkhana -- which has caused a considerable degree of wear in the brand-freaking-new Galfer organic pad I installed at the end of July. The OEM pad lasted two summers; the Galfer is almost worn out after two MONTHS. (To be fair, I hadn't done a good job keeping the brake piston clean, and I am reasonably sure it was sticking, meaning that it was wearing considerably faster than it should have.)

Because my Wee is my only bike, I found myself deferring maintenance that would take it down for more than just an evening. I commute to and from work, to the store...pretty much everywhere I need to go throughout the summer in Alaska. The riding season up here is rather short, so every day that the bike is down for maintenance, I'm losing riding time. For example, I lost a week of riding while waiting for replacement brake pads after the OEMs wore out this summer. I also have a wheel bearing that is going bad, but I haven't pulled it yet because I'm worried that once I start working on it, I might not have the bike back together for a couple of days. I've only got another two weeks to ride this year, so I am loath to lose even a couple of days' riding. Therefore, I keep hoping the bearing will last just a little longer.

Lastly, and related to the point above, I wanted a project bike. The Wee is great as-is. There are a few things I've thought about changing, but truthfully, it serves its intended purpose very well right now. Tweaking things in the ways that I've considered -- such as removing the fairing -- would require trade-offs that I don't really want to make with such a well-rounded bike. And, as much as I love tinkering on bikes, I like riding them even more, so as I've already mentioned, I don't want to spend the short riding season doing maintenance and installing upgrades.

The end result is that I found myself dreaming of something in the 250cc to 450cc range this year. Specifically, I wanted an old Honda CB like some of the bikes my dad owned back when I was a kid.

Yes, that's me and my dad back when I was about six years old.

Additionally, I also wanted a project, a bike that had a good engine and frame, but needed a little love :) In my mind, I envisioned a cafe/streetfighter styled, small-displacement UJM geared with a huge rear sprocket to maximize acceleration and allow me to do the gymkhana-thing without lugging the engine and/or slipping the clutch all the time.

Fortunately, I had a little cash squirreled away from the sale of the engine, prop, instruments and intercom out of the experimental airplane my dad and I bought in 2004. We got a wet, heavy snowfall late last winter, and by the time I got out to the airport to check on the airplane, the weight of the snow on the wings had snapped the fuselage(!). While I am saddened by the loss of the airplane, the silver lining is that the money I have raised by selling the parts from the airplane that are still good can fund my motorcycle project.

Spousal approval finally obtained :) I set out on the hunt for a suitable project bike. I pored over Craigslist ads. I found a Ninja 500 that had had the fairings damaged and subsequently removed, but at $1000, it was too expensive and wasn't a vintage UJM like I envisioned. Next, I drove out to Eagle River to look at an early '70s CB175 for $250 -- eventually down to $175 -- but it was smaller than I wanted, the top end had been removed from the engine, and the seller had neither title nor keys (alarm bells starting ringing at this point). I considered a beautiful, pristine '74 Suzuki TS185, but it was a two-stroke dirt bike, and at $800 was at the top end of my budget. Next, I drove out to the valley to look at a decrepit '74 Kawasaki 250 dirt bike, but again, I wasn't really looking for a two-stroke dirt bike, it wasn't running, the seller again had neither title nor keys, and it needed a *lot* of work. At $100, the price was good, but I passed on it anyway.

I really got excited by another '74 Kawasaki, this one a KZ400 with a rebuilt engine, for $300. Cosmetically, it needed quite a bit of work, but it was exactly what I was looking for. The ad was posted after I left for work at 8:00 that morning. I called shortly after noon and left a message. I called again shortly after 5:00 pm and got voice mail again. I called at 7:30 pm, once again talking to the answering machine. Finally, at 8:45 pm, a very sweet-sounding lady called me back. "I'm sorry dear heart, we've already sold it." (Yes, she actually called me "dear heart"...it was kind of odd, but, well, <shrug>). I cursed and moped for a day or so, then started searching Craigslist again.

Funny thing is, I kept coming back to this one ad over and over again. Another seller in Eagle River had a 1977 Yamaha XS750 with a hideous beige and charcoal seat that looked like an overstuffed sofa, a rather poorly done metallic blue and white sunburst paint job on the gas tank, and high, swooping '70s handlebars. I checked out the specs on the bike: shaft drive, so I can't change the rear sprocket to alter the gearing for gymkhana; physically smaller than my Wee-Strom, but 100cc bigger displacement; 512 pounds wet weight vs. 478 for the Wee...about the only two checkboxes this bike matched were cost ($500) and '70s Japanese bike. I called the owner anyway, and made an appointment to go check it out.

As soon as I pulled into the owner's driveway, I was interested. It was like the first time I met my wife -- something was there, something I couldn't define or explain. It just felt...right. Then, the owner fired the bike up for me and I was sold. That Yamaha triple had the most incredible sound. Loud, but not obnoxiously so, with a deep, bass rumble. Yeah...that's what a motorcycle is supposed to sound like! We did the obligatory looking the bike over, discussing things that needed to be fixed, dickering over price, and a loop around the block (during which I stalled the engine twice), but these were mere formalities. I already knew, this was my bike.

The laundry list of things that needed to be fixed was long. The tires were shot; the rear looked like a racing slick, and the front was significantly weather checked. After riding the bike home from Eagle River, about 30 miles or so, I found that the cord was showing through the front tire sidewalls! The front brake was 100% inoperative. The engine idle was all over the map, so low that it stalled on me at one intersection when I released the throttle, but idling at 3,000 RPM at another intersection. The starter button was missing, so the previous owner had been shorting out the contacts with a key to start it. When the engine stalled on the way home, I didn't have any keys but the single ignition key, so I had to bump start it to get going again (still not sure why the kick starter didn't seem to be engaging, since it works fine now). Two turn signals are broken, and then there's the aforementioned paint and seat that needs to be addressed. There's light corrosion all over the bike, and the rear rack needs to come off. The left rear-view mirror is missing, and the right one shows me a great view of my shoulders, but not much of the road behind me.

And then, there's the handlebars. I'm firmly convinced that Yamaha recruited the ghost of Torquemada himself to engineer the handlebars. Despite being just a touch over 6 feet tall, I am nevertheless not a particularly large guy, yet I felt like a linebacker flying in economy class on the way home due to the width -- or more accurately, the lack thereof -- of the handlebars. I literally had to scrunch up my shoulders to ride home, they were so narrow. And those graceful, swooping curves...yeah, they were apparently cleverly crafted to put your wrists in the precise location to most quickly induce carpal tunnel syndrome. The poor wrist angle coupled with a heavy clutch made it virtually impossible to feel the friction zone, and difficult (at best) to hold the heavy clutch handle against the bars at stop lights.

But that engine...Oh my, what an engine. It has torque out the yin-yang. Whether I was lugging it at 3000 RPM or had the engine singing at 7000, twist that throttle and the bike instantly responded. It had power to spare, and the sound coming from those twin pipes was like the Heavenly Host in chorus. Such sweet, mechanical music!

I can't honestly say that this bike is exactly what I was looking for, but I think it may turn out to be far more fun than I expected. I'm looking forward to the build. I've already spec'd out a boatload of parts, and created priorities for each of the items on the list. At the top of the list are things to get the bike road-safe, like tires, turn signals and brake fluid. Next are things to get the bike comfortable and reliable, like handlebars, oil and an oil filter. Third are the components and materials to address some of the more egregious aesthetic issues, like new paint and bar-end mirrors. The lowest priority, once the bike is rideable and at least minimally presentable, are the components that will shave weight, improve performance and/or really transform the bike from yet-another-vintage-UJM to my dream cafe racer/streetfighter, like K&N pod filters, suspension upgrades, a 3-into-1 exhaust, HID headlight, anodized aluminum brake and clutch levers, racing rear sets, etc.

Stay tuned...I'll keep posting as work progresses!

We're Numer Two!

So I was goofing off on-line today -- can't blame me, since it snowed last night, and there's no way I'm taking the Strom out with six inches of snow in my driveway, grrr... -- when I found this XKCD post. I love XKCD, but this one in particular got me thinking. How dangerous ARE the things that we do? To find out, I emulated XKCD's search, including things often considered to be "risky" (like motorcycling) and things considered to be "safe" (like knitting and blogging, lol) and compiled the results in a table, which I'll post below.

Okay, there are problems with using Google search results for "died in a _____ accident" to determine the relative dangers of various activities. First, some things are more sensational than others, so there will probably be more interest -- and therefore, more Google hits -- even if the less sensational items are more common. Second, the search has to be in quotes, but that means similar queries may have vastly different results. For example, "died in a motorcycle accident" returns many more hits than "died in a motorcycling accident" even though both queries are essentially the same thing...to a human (who can understand the context of both queries).

However, this isn't really intended to be any kind of valid, scientific research. Rather it is a somewhat interesting (to me, anyway) rough estimate of the risks that people take on a daily basis. Here is what I found:

Activity	Search Hits
Automobile	2,620,000
Motorcycle	1,040,000
Skydiving	215,000
Surfing	50,100
Airplane	48,800
Skateboarding	46,400
Elevator	39,200
Ice Skating	13,600
Blogging	10,100
Gardening	7,120
Camping	5,130
Knitting	3,910(!)
Walking	1,100
Toothbrush	5(!)
Dishwashing	1
Water Drinking	0
Web Surfing	0

Based upon these results, motorcycling is only half as dangerous as driving a car, but is four times as dangerous as skydiving! I think exposure might have something to do with these results, however :) I was also more than a little surprised to find such a high number of hits for knitting (3910!). Why, that's almost as dangerous as camping, and over half as dangerous as gardening! :P

First Moto-Gymkhana Attempt

I've been following a thread over on ADVRider.com about moto-gymkhana -- basically, low-speed drills that really test and refine the rider's sense of balance and coordination on a motorcycle. Riders who are really good at gymkhana weave around cones between 0 and 35 MPH or so, and at lean angles to make your average -- or even above average -- sportbike rider green with envy. A couple of ADVRider guys decided they wanted to give it a try themselves, so the thread is currently something like 15 pages of tips, inspiration and advice for those wanting to give it a try, too.

Like me.

Yesterday, after work, I decided to pick up some tennis balls to use as cones, draw up a couple of my own courses, and give it a try. In gymkhana, body positioning is important, but it's really hard to dissect your own body positioning while riding, so I set up my Canon Powershot on a tripod, laid out the tennis balls in the parking lot at work after everyone left for the day (an hour after everyone else left, grrr... but I digress) and shot some video of myself riding a really basic drill on my Wee-Strom. Here's the link.

I'm really interested in any comments, suggestions, etc. from anyone who reads this. I know I'm a n00b at this, so I won't get offended if you tell me I'm doing something wrong. I know I'm doing it wrong, and I want to learn how to do it right :) All I ask is, just go easy on me. We've all got to start somewhere, and this is where I am starting. I'll keep posting videos of my practice sessions, and hopefully, the improvement will become obvious :)

Phenomenal Bike Control

Dang...I wish I was this good!

Philosophy

"...I had travelled [sic] pretty widely in Canada and the United States, city and town and country, and I saw so many people every day, going about their lives, interacting with each other, and I realized that my overall opinion of them was...not high [ellipses Peart's]. So many men and women, young and old, looked and behaved in ways that seemed cruel..., petty, self-absorbed, self-righteous, and smug....I sometimes found myself sharing the dark view of humanity expressed by Roger Waters in Pink Floyd's Animals, in which he divided people into dogs, pigs, and sheep. While I would still have added another species, the few real humans who tried to look after that 'barnyard' and be nice to the other animals, I had to admit that a lot of people, maybe even most, did not behave very well toward each other." --Neil Peart, Ghost Rider

Keep in mind that Peart was in a bit of a funk (to say the least) when he wrote the passage I quoted above. I certainly have noticed that my view becomes ever more dismal when my mood turns bleak, and I rather doubt that this phenomenon is unique to me, so I have to cut him some slack for his pessimistic view of humanity, even though it is somewhat optimistic in comparison to Animals (which, I have to admit, was a great album).

But I had to stop and think when I read those words. Ghost Rider takes place eleven years before I started riding, so there is zero chance that he and I ever actually crossed paths while riding, but if he had...into which category would he have placed me? I've been feeling rather stressed lately, and my wife and daughter have recently begun asking, "Are you in a bad mood?" with disturbing -- and honestly, annoying -- frequency. Hmmm... I know I tend to get impatient with other drivers on the road. "Dang it -- the curvy parts of the road are why I took this route! Please stop slowing to a crawl at every bend and wriggle in the asphalt!" However, a friend and coworker once observed, "If you meet five [ahem..."buttheads"...] on the road, chances are you're one of them."

Ouch.

But what about the two guys in the Jetta Sunday while I was up in Hatcher's Pass? I could easily have just passed them and left them to their fate (a seized engine). After all, it wasn't my problem until I chose to involve myself with their misfortune. And, in traffic, I am far more likely to wait and allow someone into my lane than to blithely ignore them as I doggedly maintain my following distance with the vehicle ahead of me (even if I am equally likely to grouse about "rolling road blocks" in the fast lane at five under the speed limit and pacing the car next to them in the right hand lane). After all, actions speak louder than words...don't they?

I don't know. But "el Viajo Fantasmo" provided a good reminder that most other people -- those who are not a part of our individual "inner circles" -- only see us for a brief moment in time. In that instant, we have the ability to either bring light or darkness through our interactions with them. I certainly hope that Peart would see me as one of the humans, rather than as one of the pigs, dogs or sheep. Fortunately, I alone, have the ability, through the way I present myself to others, to influence what species of farm denizen they see in me.

Hatcher Pass

Back when I was lusting over a Triump Street Triple R, one of the things that swayed me away from a superbike and into a V-Strom was imagining the kind of riding I'd really like to do. The S3R was a sexy bike, no doubt about that, but when I was really honest with myself, I knew that the Triumph wasn't engineered with Alaska's frost heaves and gravel roads in mind. Now, 14,000 miles (and change) later, I am more convinced than ever that the Wee-Strom was a much better bike for me than the Triumph (although I still want to own an S3R...eventually :)

One of the trips that I wanted to make that helped steer me away from the Triumph was a trip over Hatcher's Pass, near Palmer. The beginning of the ride on the Palmer side of the Pass follows the Little Susitna River, a shallow, splashy creek that meanders through the valleys in the foothills of the Talkeetna Mountains. The Triple would be loads of fun here, as the road follows the curves that the creek has carved in the bedrock of the Talkeetnas. However, there is much more to Hatcher's Pass than the few miles of twisties along the Little Su. In fact, most of the road over Hatcher's Pass is gravel 1 1/2 lane. I had never driven the pass all the way through from Palmer to Willow, but I wanted to, very badly. Once I started motorcycling, I knew I had to ride this route on a bike. Unfortunately, a naked supersport is hardly the ideal steed for such a ride, and so this helped me decide upon the V-Strom, an ideal bike for both the paved twisty sections near the Little Su and the gravel stretch over the top of the pass.

Yesterday morning, July 8th, dawned bright and clear, although still rather chilly, even by Anchorage standards. Nevertheless, I donned my riding leathers -- no Kevlar-lined denim on this trip; I wanted full CE-approved armor for the exploring I had in mind -- and hit the road around 10:00. By eleven, I was huddled next to the fireplace at the Starbuck's in Palmer, sipping on a mocha and reading a couple of chapters from Ghost Rider by Rush drummer and ADV motorcyclist Neil Peart (a good read, though understandably melancholy at times) as I tried to warm up. About a half hour later, I was back on the road, and soon I was in the aforementioned twisties, behind a Subaru wagon, which was actually sustaining a much better pace through the curves than one might imagine.

As we approached the hairpin turn that signalled the road's departure from the Little Su, I greatly increased the spacing between myself and the Subaru. While the driver had done a surprisingly acceptable job so far, we were approaching the tightest turn on the road, and I wanted to have enough breathing room to enjoy it. The Subaru slowed, turned, and accelerated up the straightaway on the far side of the curve, and moments later, I followed, leaning the bike to the left, hanging off the side, knee out...and what is that rumbling I feel in my left foot? What is that horrid scraping noise? Did I just...uh...yep, I think I did. I've touched my toes to the pavement a couple of times when heeling the bike over hard on a sharp turn, but was the first time I had ever dragged a footpeg...at least on my Strom. I had dragged the pegs on my wife's S40 Boulevard and I had even dragged a peg during my MSF course, eliciting a thumbs-up and a smile from the ex-racer riding coach, but my V-Strom has much greater ground clearance than either of those bikes. I barely had time to crack a smile at (finally!) touching a footpeg on the turn when I reached a side road I wanted to ride.

Shortly before earning my motorcycle endorsement, I discovered another road for which the S3R is even less suited. Wa-a-a-ay back when my Nissan Frontier was just barely broken in, my two brothers and I packed up our backpacks and set out in my truck for an overnight hiking/camping trip in Archangel Valley. While it was a fun trip, at least for the two of us in the front seat (sorry, Nick!), I started daydreaming about returning to Archangel Valley on a bike. I thought that it would be even more fun on the Wee than it had been in my pickup.

I had no idea :)

The road itself is a narrow, rocky, pot-holed, winding trail that leads from the main road in Hatcher's Pass up to an old, abandoned mine. Rusty mining equipment and old mine shafts with beard-like tailings cascading down the mountain sides give mute testimony to Hatcher Pass's rich (in either sense of the word) history. However, today, hiking and exploring the mines was not foremost on my mind -- far from it. I was here to ride, and ride I did.

The road itself was relatively dry, although the bottoms of most of the potholes were filled with mud puddles. I splashed my way over, around and through the puddles, dodging the deeper, steeper holes, and weaving around the larger boulders that stabbed through the packed surface of the dirt road. Even with a nearly bald rear tire, I was able to comfortably maintain between 25 and 35 MPH...until I caught up with a 4x4 pickup picking his way through the minefield of granite and mud at more like 5-10 MPH. I paced him for awhile until we reached a slightly wider part of the road and he waved me past. Soon, I caught up with another 4x4, and then another. Wash, rinse, repeat.

I was picking my way around another mud puddle when I noticed something in the road. That's odd, I thought to myself. It looks like something peed on the road, but what pees BLACK? That's when I realized someone was having -- or was about to have -- a VERY bad day:

That wasn't pee -- it was motor oil. Someone had bottomed out, but they hadn't had the ground clearance to avoid a rock, and they had punctured the oil pan. I raced up the road, hoping that I could catch the victim before they seized their engine. A short distance later, I saw a VW Jetta picking it's way over the road, and sure enough, the oil trail marked it's passage around the obstacles on the road. Catching up to it, I could see the oil draining from underneath the car. I honked, saw the driver look up in his rear-view mirror and pulled up beside him.

"Dude, you're leaking oil from under your car. Did you bottom out a little ways back?" I asked.

"Yeah, but I didn't think I hit that hard," he replied. He pulled over, shut off the engine and looked underneath the car. He muttered a few choice words under his breath. "How am I going to get back out of here?" he wondered aloud. About that time, a truck that had just passed going the other way stopped, and the driver walked back up to where we were. The driver of the truck, the driver of the Jetta, and the passenger in the Jetta chatted for a few minutes, then the guy from the truck offered to give the two from the Jetta a lift back to Palmer where they could call for help. I continued on up the road after loosening the pre-load on my rear shock one full turn and letting about 5 PSI out of my tires -- something I should have done as soon as I left the pavement.

The rest of the ride up and back out of Archangel Valley was uneventful, but arguably the most fun I've ever had on my V-Strom -- and certainly the most fun I've had since last year's Denali Highway trip. By the time I reached the main road going over the pass, I was sweating and my back was mildly sore from stooping over to reach the handlebars while standing on the footpegs. I didn't care; inside my helmet, I was wearing a grin a mile wide.

After leaving Archangel Valley, I continued up to the summit of the pass, beyond Independence Mine, the farthest point I had ever gone. I didn't realize how close to the summit the mine was, so I was very surprised to reach Summit Lake within just a couple of minutes.

Yes, the date was really July 8th, and yes, there was still ice in Summit Lake. We received a record snowfall in Anchorage last winter, and while the rest of the country has posted record high temperatures, the summer so far in south-central Alaska has been unusually cool. I can count on one hand the number of days that I've had the insulated liner out of my jacket. I've ridden most days with my insulated gloves rather than my summer gloves so far. I've even had the heated grips on more often than not this year. Therefore, I wasn't surprised to see ice in the lake.

A short ways down the pass from the summit, I saw an interesting looking side road, and decided to see where it lead. Similar to Archangel Valley, this unnamed road (Google Maps suggests that it's Upper Willow Road, but it wasn't marked) was a narrow, rocky, winding road through what appears to be a glacial valley. This road, however, does not see the same traffic as Archangel Valley, and the rocks along the route are larger and looser than the road I rode earlier, and the road itself is narrower. I had a blast...until I caught a face full of tiny black flies while my visor was up, lol. The air blowing through my helmet was refreshing. The bugs blowing through my helmet, however...not so much.

This road is also shorter than the road into Archangel Valley, so I soon reached the end, and reversed course to rejoin the main road down the pass into Willow. Even though the road was in pretty good shape and wide enough for two cars to pass side by side (albeit, slowly), I found I was still riding at a, ahem, somewhat "accelerated" pace compared to the cagers around me. Many of them would pull to the right and wave me around them as I would catch up, a couple of them I passed when I saw a likely opportunity without waiting for a signal to pass.

Incidentally, if the guy in the cool, yellow, vintage LandCruiser happens to find this post, I apologize for revving my engine as I passed you. It wasn't intentional; my motorcycle dropped out of second gear and into neutral as I rolled on the throttle, an annoying bad habit it has recently acquired. On the other hand, to the dude in the Chevy pickup, weaving all over the road while holding a pocket-sized video camera to your head -- I sincerely hope the life you eventually end up taking doesn't belong to an innocent driver coming the other way, or to a passenger in your rig (hint, hint).

Finally, nearing the bottom of the pass on the Willow side, I encountered a broad, open vista spanning as far as I could see around me. I pulled off on the side of the road, retrieved my camera, looked through the viewfinder...and put it away. Just like on the Denali last year, I realized that such grandeur requires a far larger format than my Canon Powershot. There is no way to catch beauty on such a scale in a digital image; once again, I would have to be content with memories. Hmmm...maybe I just need to make another trip up the pass with my wife and daughter soon? :)

What is Adventure?

What does it take to make a motorcycle trip an "adventure?" If you look around the motorcycle market, there's no shortage of "adventure" or "adventure touring" motorcycles. In the three years since I bought my Wee-Strom, Yamaha has introduced the Super Tenere to the U.S. market, Triumph down-sized the (arguably sport-touring, rather than adventure touring) Tiger 1050 into the Tiger 800 and the Tiger 800XC, and even Honda is trying to get a piece of the action with two new "cross-over" models, even though they are more street bike than even the Strom.

All of this interest in "adventure" bikes begs the question, however: what exactly is "adventure touring?" Is a ride an "adventure" if you are only on a day trip, or must you at least be gone overnight? A weekend? Two weeks or longer? What about road conditions? Perhaps you must spend the night under the stars somewhere before you can honestly call the ride an "adventure?" Is the length of the ride the determining factor? Maybe one can only claim an adventure ride if it involves at least one international border crossing? All of these, I would think, have a bearing on whether or not a ride is an adventure.

Consider two extremes: "Jupiter's Travels" and "Dreaming of Jupiter" are two books written by bonified adventure tourer Ted Simon, documenting his two trips around the world by motorcycle. By any measurement one might care to use, these two trips are undoubtedly "adventures." At the other extreme, in "Alaska by Motorcycle" Dr. Greg Frazier tells the story of a couple who load their Harley-Davidson's onto the Alaska Ferry in Seattle, then try to buy "I Rode My Harley to Alaska" t-shirts at Anchorage House of Harley. That's not exactly the type of trip I dream about, but hey, whatever floats your boat. So where does the scale tip from an ordinary ride to an "adventure?"

Consider duration of the trip first. Earlier this year, I took a morning ride to a nearby 4x4 trail. This trail is steep, rocky and rutted. Furthermore, when I took my V-Strom up the trail early this year, I was stopped less than a half-mile up the trail due to snow:

The entire round trip from my house, up the trail and back, was less than an hour in duration, but I was pushing myself, and my bike, as hard as I dared. Was this trip an "adventure?"

Speaking of road conditions, is it possible to have an "adventure" on macadam, or must you ride on dirt at least once during the trip? If so, does a well-maintained gravel road count? Two-track? Maybe a ride doesn't count unless you are on single-track? If road conditions are the only qualification, then the hour ride I described above must surely qualify, but are road conditions the difference between an adventure and an average ride? Are road conditions even relevant? Even though most of the Alaska Highway is paved now, it seems to me that anyone riding from the lower-48 to Alaska on a motorcycle has certainly earned the right to use the "adventure" label.

But is that only because there are still gravel portions on the road, or is it that a trip up the Al-Can is a multi-day trip? Does a trip up the Al-Can even qualify? How much of an adventure is it for a couple on a GoldWing, sleeping in a nice hotel every night, eating three squares a day in restaurants and pulling a trailer with all of the necessities that they cannot live without behind them? To me, that sounds more like luxury touring than adventure touring!

Then again, maybe the same couple, on the same GoldWing would have more of a claim to the adventure moniker if they slept under the stars, eating freeze-dried camping food? In that case, does a pop-up trailer count, or must you sleep in a tent or bivy sack? But again, this definition fails to satisfy. A couple of weeks ago, I took my Wee-Strom for a season shake-down overnighter to Burma Landing. Although bad weather made for a rough trip -- I was pretty cold by the time I got home, despite heated grips and Thinsulate-lined gloves -- I would be embarrassed to call the trip an "adventure." I was still in my own back yard, figuratively speaking, even if I had to drive an hour and a half out of the way to get there!

One might claim that a trip isn't really an adventure unless you make at least one border crossing, in which case, the hypothetical couple on the GoldWing are set, and my trip to Burma Landing is not remotely an "adventure." However, even that definition is open to argument. Certainly riding from Deadhorse to Ushaia qualifies, but what about a ten minute ride from a German border town down the Autobahn to a French border town on a BMW S1000RR? Is such a ride more an "adventure" than my overnight trip on the Denali Highway in Alaska last year simply because of a single border crossing? (Okay, yes, simply riding an S1000RR on the Autobahn would be an adventure in my book, but that's not the kind of adventure I am talking about in this context ;)

Maybe the problem is that, in all of what I have written above, I am speaking in absolutes. That is, I am asking the question, "What factor determines whether a trip is or is not an 'adventure'" when instead, I should be discussing "adventure" in terms of degrees. Can I honestly say that the couple who ferried their bikes to Alaska didn't have an adventure, at least by their standards? Even if I would, would I still argue that point if I found out that they were 70 years old, and had spent their entire lives within 20 miles of the place of their birth?

Perhaps there is no line in the sand where one can say "this side of the line is adventure; that side is not." Perhaps it is all a study in shades of grey, instead. While I probably would not call my hour trip up the 4x4 trail nor my shake-down ride to Burma Landing "adventures" both trips certainly had characteristics of an adventure. To me, last year's Denali Highway trip seems to qualify, but would I stack that trip up as an example next to Ted Simon's, Greg Hedstead's or Alissa Clickenger's travels (answer: "no")?

Finally, does it even really matter? Ultimately, I don't ride for bragging rights. I ride to enjoy being out in nature. I ride to put away the cares and stress of my job, of daily life. I ride to go places I have never been and see things I have never seen. Not one of those things is in the least bit affected by whether or not the motorcycling community slaps the "adventure" label on any particular trip.