Motorcycle Trip Planning

Real World Schooling With Stayin’ Safe Training Tours : Southeastern Ohio has its share of fun roads with tons of twists and turns that rise and fall. Perfect for developing strategies for knowing where the road is headed even when it disappears from view. Photos by the author. A large number of motorcycle riders I meet have little idea of how to manage the risks of riding. Sure, they can operate a motorcycle well enough, but to ride a motorcycle well also means being really good at cornering and braking under pressure when the feces hits the fan—and more importantly, knowing how to avoid trouble in the first place. There are several ways to be a better rider, but the most efficient way is to invest in advanced rider training. In America, rider training typically means performing drills in a parking lot. While you certainly can learn a ton at 25 mph, you can’t really apply advanced skills and survival strategies when you’re confined to a small chunk of asphalt. That’s where on-street

Man on a VanVan Without a Plan : The Suzuki VanVan 200 evolved from the similarly fat-tired VanVan 125 introduced in 2003 in other countries. Clearly inspired by the 2WD Rokon, the lightweight runabout’s name sounds similar to a Japanese word that means “keep on going.” This scenic overlook on San Marcos Pass is normally an hour from my house. It took me twice that on the VanVan.   Photo by the author. Life begins at 70 mpg… Sitting at the end of my driveway, the VanVan’s headlight jiggling in time to the gentle thumping of the bike’s elfin 199cc single, a line from Bob Segar’s “Roll Me Away” popped into my head: “I could go east, or I could go west, it was all up to me to decide.” This could be called the Indecisive Tour—something about setting out on a VanVan 200 discourages planning. Moments before, I had completely changed packing strategies, since my minimal camping gear looked like a bear carcass on the back of the little bike. No worries, I would find suitably funky accommodat

2017 Supernaked Streetfighter Shootout! : Merry Christmas!  This holiday gift is brought to you by the staff at Motorcycle.com ! The FZ-10, Super Duke R, S1000R, and Tuono V4 1100 RR are machines with enough undiluted Superbike DNA to be elevated into their own special class well above and beyond more pedestrian “standard” or “naked” bikes. These are the Supernaked Streetfighters! The past 18 months have seen significant updates to three of our competitors and the funky-cool cross-plane cranked Yamaha FZ-10 is a whole new model that never even existed before 2016. Motorcycle.com sent her editors to attend the various press launches for each of these machines at points throughout 2016 and early 2017, so none of these bikes is completely unknown to us. This story however, marks the first time they’ve all met head-to-head for a full-on street and track shootout. Out of these four machines, precisely four of them are totally amazing sporting mounts. No, we really mean it this time, th