So, 2022...How did That Pan Out ?

 

Here we are, starting into 2023. So how did the taunt in the last line of my review post on 2021 pan out I hear you ask...?

"Roll on 2022......DO YOUR WORST!!"

Well, actually things picked up a bit. We still had rolling Covid restrictions as each State's Premier tried to fcuk with the Federal government's plan to get us clear of the pandemic (it was a political pandemic, not a health one it seems ) but they eventually became less and less restrictive once the population came to realise it was time to move on and stop the politicians playing politics.

I was still picking cherry tomatoes on a friends farm to help them out as their regular supply of pickers were still locked out of the country. It is hot, hard, backbreaking work that is hot. Did I mention how hot it is? Well, standing in a paddock in full sun in a Queensland summer is hot, m'kay?

We must have picked hundreds of thousands of these little buggers. This was just one morning's worth.... and it went on for weeks.....

I attended a rider training day in early January called "How To Keep It Upright" that was sponsored by QLD Police Service and hence only cost participants $50 to attend. Having been subjected to MUCH training for work over the last 20 years or so it was an eye opener at how unreceptive and defensive most of the other participants were. The organisers (who were not police) spent a big portion of the classroom session just trying to put people at their ease.

I definitely took something away from the day but it was more a refresher on things I already practice when on the bike and very much aimed at newer riders. It was certainly no California Superbike School day but I guess that is reflected in the price. Did I mention how hot it was doing the on-bike drills? No, well it was almost dangerously hot just standing around in all of our riding gear (and that is from someone who had been picking tomatoes all day in the summer sun for a few weeks and was used to it!).

Deano and I were planning on riding the Victoria Divide 550 in late February so I was trying to get some cycling fitness happening. This was a struggle as it was proving to be a very wet summer. At least it is warm here in Queensland!

Unfortunately, Deano contracted Covid early in the new year and it did a number on him. The lingering effect on his fitness meant we had to scrub the Vic Divide. Bugger - but I had some leave coming up, so what to do?

What to do? I set the Africa Twin up with new chain and sprockets, plus an automatic chain oiler then had her put through a 24 000km service in early February. All of this was in aid of a cunning plan that a mate at work and I had hatched to get our bikes to Tasmania for some riding, making the most of our bunches of days off work while the flying was still spasmodic. I set off southbound on the 7th of February with no particular route in mind, just a destination of Forbes to visit my Dad.

This ride would turn into a seven month epic!

  I jumped on the ferry in Melbourne and kept the bike in storage in Launceston and then later, Adelaide. I flew in on my days off (one of the few benefits of working for an airline) to "ride like a local".

This allowed me to see much more of Tassie than the average motorcycle tourist who maybe spends a week or ten days circumnavigating the island state. 

It.Was.Awesome!

My whole "Not A Midlife Crisis" trip, which includes Ride With GPS route maps, can be found at this link - 

Start here ......

...and just keep clicking "newer post" at the bottom left of each post. It is quite an extensive series of posts covering 20 000 kilometres of New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia rides.

As a result of all of this travelling to ride the Africa Twin my cycling was very much neglected. Combined with plenty of Tassie pub food, washed down with some fine beers, my fitness declined at about the same rate as my girth expanded. I was probably the most unfit I have been in 15 years and definitely the heaviest I have ever been. My Strava stats for the year back up my lack of exercise with only a lowly 2386 kilometres for the year. Less than a third of my normal output.

I did start pedalling much more vigourously from September onward as the motorcycle was finally home and Deano and I were going to have another try at the Victoria Divide in December. This would make the stats for the year look better than they actually were.

In May I rolled up my sleeve - quite literally - and did something I have been meaning to do for years. Giving blood is pretty simple and as much as I hate needles, I am thankful to be a very healthy person so the slight discomfort is easily bearable for this worthy cause. I even got a sausage roll and a coffee for my efforts!

I got a bit of a surprise mid year when out of the blue my daughter booked herself in to her Motorcycle Learners licence course! While I have always had a passion for motorcycles I deliberately steered the kids away from them while they were growing up. Sure, we did TONS of mountainbiking together and I did have an R1 in the shed but I barely rode that bike until they were in their late teens. I had basically left it up to them when they were old enough to make their own decision.....so she did and acquired herself a mighty CB125e (a great choice to learn the basics) and began to gain some skill and confidence.

It wasn't long at all (about 8 weeks) before she was dragging me along to check out a very low kilometre Kawasaki Z400 for her. It was immaculate and the price was right so now she had two bikes! 

Around this time I thought it might be prudent to grab another dirt bike for my son as he has shot right up and is far too big for the little TTR230. A very low kilometre SWM300R came up for sale and basically being a ~2012 Husky 300 design, thought it would be perfect for the price. So, now that we had two dirt bikes the kids were out at Willowbank MX park having a ball! (I may have snuck in a ride or two as well 😇)

Not surprisingly, Will was soon booked in for his motorcycle Learners course. Passing it with no problems, I had a slightly proud Dad moment when I took both my kids on a road ride! 😎

September saw a new mountain bike enter the fold and an old faithful move on to a new owner. I had the opportunity to purchase a well maintained Santa Cruz Tallboy at well under half retail price so I grabbed it. It is very different to my Cannondale Habit and might take a bit of getting used to.

Unfortunately, the Habit was moved on. I loved that bike and after six years and 6000 kilmotres off road it was hard parting ways.

Getting into the theme of trying new things, an Aprilia test ride day for their new Tuareg came up and I thought why not go for a look? My impressions were posted here but the day got me thinking.

Watching a few Tuareg reviews on YouTube, I came across reviews for the new Ducati desert X. This was to be Ducati's first proper foray into the adventure bike scene. I must say, it looked pretty bloody ugly but going by the positive reviews it was getting, I thought I might hunt one out for a test ride anyway. 

That test ride got me thinking....... and this thought process led me to considering thinning out my fleet. The photo below from November proved to be my last ride on my Tuono. I advertised it and a few weeks later it was on it's way to a new owner from New South Wales. No sadness on my part. It had been a fun bike and a good dipping of my toes into Italian bike reliability waters. I hadn't got frostbite or lost a toe....

The above test rides certainly got me thinking about where I want to go with my ADV bike riding. As much as I LOVE my Africa Twin, being the best bike I have ever owned by quite a margin - it did get me thinking about it's weight and how it carried it.

Hmmmmm....🤔

I rounded out 2022 with a couple of mountain bike rides with mates. I managed to catch up for a beer ride with Deano (he got Covid AGAIN so we had to cancel Vic Divide - again😔 but the weather was abominable so he did us a favour😏) where we possibly inappropriately chugged a beer as we watched them load some poor schmuck into an ambulance on our local mtb trails...

Goodbye 2022. 

You weren't bad but you didn't have much competition from 2020 or 2021..... I have a few plans in place for 2023. Lets see what pans out.

Roll on 2023!

Cheers.

Aprillia Tuareg 660 Test Ride

 

I recently had an advert pop up on the Facebook feed for an 'event" that was happening near me. Normally I just ignore these annoying ads but this one caught my eye. It was for the new Aprillia Tuareg AND it was for the opportunity to test ride in in my own backyard, namely the Mt Glorious area.

There was a small fee of $39AU attached for the privilege but to sweeten the deal one would recieve an official Aprilia hat and t-shirt. 

Free merch!! Or free test ride with cheap mech!!

Either way, it looked like a great opportunity to do more than the "lap around the block from the dealer's yard" that normally constitutes a test ride so I was IN.

The down side was that the test ride day was on a Saturday. The problem with that I hear you ask? Well, the Mt Glorious road is THE road that riders use that is oh so close to Brisbane and I avoid it like the plague on weekends as it is populated with too may dangerous wanna-bees and plenty of down right incompetent newbies plying the multitude of tight corners on this narrow strip of bitumen. Yep, dumb shit like this happens every day and quite often into the oncoming lane.....

Anyway, back to the test ride..... I left home at 9am on a soon-to-be-quite-hot Saturday morning and got across town to the start of the Mt Nebo/Glorious climb without issue. I had a good ride up the hill without anyone really getting in the way. (hey, I'm not fast on a knobbie shod Africa Twin but it is surprising how many bikes get rounded up on a ride) 

Arriving at the Mt Glorious cafe' I wheeled around to park up and it was busy! Aprillia had a big section of parking roped off for their demo bikes so I guess that compressed everyone into a smaller space making it look even busier. That is my Twin down the far left end.

I wandered down to the organisers and filled in the usual paperwork, collected my hat and shirt then grabbing a coffee sat down to enjoy the morning. I was there early so we had to wait a bit until everyone arrived and the 11am timeslot kicked in. 

Lots of nice backsides to look at.....

This was to be my steed for the morning. Number 2 out of 12. The yellow actually looked pretty good in the flesh and surprisingly my normal "go to" of red, white and blue looked a bit plain and ordinary in the flesh. Black and red was..well...black and dusty and red.

One of the ride leaders looked familiar but I couldn't place him. That was until the introductions started and it turned out to be none other than I.O.M. TT winner Cam Donald! Steve and I had met Cam waaaaay back in 2003 during a tyre buying stop in Melbourne during our Tassie trip that year and as a young up and coming Aussie racer he had impressed us with his down to earth, genuine manner. Fast forward 19 years and it was the same easy going, genuine bloke who gave us a run down on what the ride would involve and how to set up the rider modes on our bikes. 

I was impressed on two fronts here. First up was that we were going to get a taste of dirt by climbing The Goat Track (not as rough as it sounds but gravel none the less) from the Samford Valley. Second was how easy the rider aids were to set on the Tuareg. I had to read my Africa Twin manual a couple of times then fiddle with the switches to get the Honda sorted. Score for the Aprillia!

Saddling up I instantly noted how soft the suspension was and how low the seat height was. I could easily hold the bike up, almost flat footed, unlike my Twin. The clutch and brake levers were a bit goofy for my hands (rolled up too high) and would be the first thing I moved, rolling them forward for comfort.

Rolling off it was quickly apparent how low the centre of gravity was on this bike. Having just ridden the Twin up here I had a direct comparison of how nimble and light the Tuareg felt. It was very confidence inspiring.  All the bikes were shod with Continental TKC80 tyres. I have never used these before but from all of the good things I have read about them I was confident to throw the bike into corners on them (plus, hey, it wasn't my bike, right?!). They didn't disappoint but what did was being stuck behind some really slow riders. I couldn't get too sporty as I kept running up the back of the guy in front every corner we rolled into.

Stopping at the beginning of The Goat Track, Cam gave us a demo of the Tuareg's ABS and traction control systems by blasting from the sealed surface to the loose gravel while braking hard or accelerating hard. The bike remained very composed under the very skilful control of Cam but it was obvious that the latest generation ABS is excellent on the dirt and doesn't need disabling like older generation systems (my 2018 AT).

We saddled up again to try the bikes on the 3.1km gravel climb and this time I made sure I was the first bike behind Cameron. Partly to avoid the dust (I have choked on plenty of dust on this climb on my mountainbike) and partly so I wouldn't be stuck behind some super slow rider as many on this test ride were not dirt riders. 

Right away I switched the traction control down to Level 1, stood on the pegs and roosted around each corner, trusting the TKC 80s to do their thing. The Tuareg was instantly comfortable in the standing position as standard. I didn't feel the need for bar risers at all (2" risers on my Twin to feel comfortable).

The power output is far less than the Twin at low revs but once I got the engine spinning up around 4-5000rpm the bike took off, sounding great through the standard pipe. I think I would miss that low down torque of the bigger AT, especially loaded up on a long trip but then again, I guess one could get used to it. Like riding a Supersport 600 after a Litre sportsbike.

Where the Tuareg would really shine is in the snottier, tighter tracks that I will simply NOT take my Africa Twin. The Twin is fine for fast dirt road cruising or carefully picking your way along rougher dirt roads but I feel the Tuareg would be awesome in the snotty stuff with the way it carries itself. Having the fuel tank down low in the frame gets that C of G low. It would make the bike much easier to pick up after a spill and combined with the low seat height would inspire more adventurous exploration (IMHO-YMMV).

Thanks to Aprilia Australia for this opportunity to test ride the Tuareg in the real world. This just doesn't normally happen for us mere mortals, it usually being the realm of journos only. As an aside, these bikes were the same bikes the journos rode during the Australian launch of the Tuareg. Cam was along on that launch and said the bikes copped an absolute thrashing through the sand of Hattah National Park (where the Hattah desert race is held here in Oz) and stood up to the test with flying colours. He said he wouldn't have wanted to take any ADV bike other that the Tuareg or the T700 through there to give you some context of the difficulty of the riding and the capability of the bikes.

I have attached the MAD YouTube video review of that launch for your viewing pleasure.

So, is there a Tuareg in my future? 

Like any of the ADV bikes, there is compromise to be made between how much on road versus off road ability you want. A Tuareg would lure me into tougher off road riding for sure as I would be more confident of being able to handle it (and pick it up!) BUT I do ride solo quite a bit and being solo in riskier riding situations may not be the smartest option. I like the Africa Twin's mile munching and gear carrying ability a bit too much at the moment, plus I want to see how the Tuareg's reliability and dealer support network interact here in Australia. Aprilia dealers sure aren't on every corner....🤔

Cheers and thanks for indulging me.

Edit: this just came out -

https://www.bikesales.com.au/editorial/details/aprilia-tuareg-660-2022-bikesales-bike-of-the-year-winner-138518/?fbclid=IwAR3a-rV8frRpsPfv7JKMkmcSJlioBf8JYXPDv8q9DHwfOCiZYQAb8gt03qs

Post Script  - To highlight my concerns about riders on this road I followed a couple of riders down the hill. It took me several kilometres to get past the first bloke as I didn't want to be silly but he wouldn't make any room to let me past.

The second rider (on a SV650) was the same but much slower and again, I was stuck for several kilometres until we came to this flick left, then hard right, divided corner. Old mate was slow to flick left, then obviously got target fixation and very slowly rode onto the incorrect side of the road and was trapped on the oncoming traffic side of the barrier, all on a tight 30km/h posted corner! 🫣

VERY LUCKILY for him, there was nothing coming and all I could do was shake my head as I slowly rolled up the left side of him (I was on the correct side of the road).

He was going soooo slowly when he went onto the wrong side of the road that any amount of left steering input/left lean would have seen him back on the correct side of the road.

This was a massive reminder for me to STAY OFF MT GLORIOUS on weekends.