Finally after a winter with HUGE amount of snow it was possible to start riding! And I did it with 4 times riding in one week. The weather was already quite warm -not like I needed to put all possible clothes on me. First day ride was less than 100km like this:
First ride of the season
Second day I was checking one place where was flooding.
Ride to Kärkelä Ironworks area
Here is the short video of the place where the river was flooding! I made a riding video of this next days ride.
3rd day short ride
Riding to the border of Varsinais-SuomiSnow was mostly gone but lakes had still ice!The temperature was something like 10-13 degrees -so not too cold anymore!
And then on saturday I got three friends with me and we did already almost 200km!
I did this already 2 months ago but finally I edited the video how I’m making the BIG impovement to my bike… Changing the rear shock from the original Continental Air Damper to Touratech “normal shock”. I hope this can help you if you’re planning this change!
Eicma 2021 was in November but there was not too many interesting bikes. Now when we are already in 2022 it is interesting anyway to look the newcomers for this year.
1. Aprilila Tuareg 660 This bike is coming straight to the same category than Yamaha T700 so it will not be easy to find buyers… Or is it? The adventure segment is growing fast, more and more new bikers starting their adventures every day/ week!
80hp – 70Nm – 187kg – Seat height 86cm – 18 L tank
2. MV Agusta Lucky Explorer 9.5 This one is not coming to the stores yet in 2022. But it proves that all manufactures really are interested about this adventure segment. Maybe even more interesting is the little brother Lucky Explorer 5.5
125hp – 85Nm – 220kg – 85cm seat height – 20 L tank
3. Honda NT1100 It’s quite long time since Honda had an affordable big touring bike. This new NT 1100 will be filling the missing gap. It has the same engine than 1100 Africa Twin but after that pretty much everything is different.
100hp – 104Nm – 238kg – 82cm Seat height – 20,4 L tank
5. Harley Davidson Pan America 1250 This bike is been in stores allready for awhile and there is a lot of test riding videos of this bike! But it is so BIG newcomer and remarkable new model to the market. Everybody’s even saying that it is not bad at all! It is actually very good!! Harley Davidson has now an Adventure Bike!
150hp – 127Nm – 240kg – 79cm Seat height – 21,2 L tank
Took a short testride today. Even I knew this is going to be great bike I was still surprised! What an amazing bike! The engine is marvellous! It gives smooth power already from 2000rpm and it sounds very nice too.
Already OffRoading…
The suspension is totally with manual adjustments but it seems it made me very happy with the factory defaults (I’m 120kg’s!) And that is rare. I was also very happy with the riding position even when I was standing. Maybe I would add 2cm’s to the height of the handlebar if I would be the owner of the bike.
The bike doesn’t look very special… Except the spoked wheels are very nice!
This bike would be big enough for me and for my wife. The power is ofcourse much smaller than in XR but I think I could manage with it. I did find ONE thing I didn’t like! When you’re filling the tank the lid of the tank doesn’t stay up! So when you take the gaspump you have to lift the lid up with your other hand to get the gas to the tank… Not very big thing but it made me think how easy it would be to change this! One interesting thing was the rpm meter in the TFT-screen! There was 2 of them!!! One on the left side and then another on the right side of the TFT… It seems they had (too much) space in the TFT screen to put it there twice 😉
Today I took the testride with the S1000XR (New 2020 model). My wife was there with me so she could give some opinions about the rear seat and how the bike feels from her POV.
IceGrey BMW S1000XR
When you sit on the bike you can notice right away that the seat feels quite different. It’s more narrow and the edges are too sharp. Luckily I’m quite tall and my knees are coming quite high so I don’t feel this sharp edge almost at all. In my 150km testride I didn’t feel uncomfortable and I could ride longer trips easily!
#OneWorldOneXR
Then I notice the narrow handlebar. But it doesn’t bother me at all! Maybe I should’ve gone to some heavy traffic where you need to use the maximum steering… But in this kind of normal street riding it didn’t bother me (Even I like the wide bar of the old XR!)
Boxroad in Sipoo Finland
The bike feels maybe little bit lighter, it feels like it wants to take the corners tighter and faster -it reminded me about S1000R that I was riding back in 2014. All the buzz or vibration is gone from the handlebars but there was few times when I felt a little bit of buzz in the bike itself -somewhere around 4000rpm.
Spjutsund pier
Since I have owned already 3 XR’s it makes me think “Is this bike really so much better than my old XR?” The price of the new bike is about 4000 euros higher. Is it worth it? I think there is 2 correct answers to this question! 1) No it is not worth it! Keep the old one and you will be very happy with it! 2) Yes definitely! They made it little bit better, little bit more unique and little more nice in every way (except maybe the seat!)
Bike by the sea
My wife didn’t like the backseat of the bike. She thought it was too short and the handlers for her were too short also. They should go further behind the seat. One thing I found very interesting! There was 1 page in this new TFT screen where you can see the leaning angle of the bike… I think I would be staring this page only… all the time! Or at least when I’m riding in the curvy road.
It will be mine, someday!
Thank you Biketeam Vantaa for making this testride possible.
We don’t have a lockdown in Finland. We are allowed to go out but meetings with more than 10 people is not ok. There was only 4 of us in a beautiful sunny weather and almost +10 degrees celsius. This time I didn’t choose any difficult tracks… and I finally made a video of this interesting route:
Old railroad track
This was a narrow railroad in Finland and it stopped working in 1967. But the track has stayed and it’s kind of in use as a road. But for example now in spring it can be tricky if there is still snow (and there was!!) Unluckily my riding ended with the flat front tyre in Karkkila (65 km’s from home).
I was lucky that there was one big bike (KTM 1090 Adventure) so I could take a ride with him back home and then I picked my bike with my big car…
Triumph brought totally new models with 1200 twin engine. It has nice 90 hp -which doesn’t sound much but in this kind of bike it’s more than enough.
rrem
Even I didn’t have real knubble tires I felt the calling! “Go to the gravel! Go to the forest!” -It was shouting… And I did.
This is bike is definitely at home when riding in gravel!
It’s totally the best bike that I have ever been riding in the gravelroad! It is too heavy to take Off-Road but I don’t really miss that anymore. The seat should be softer and it should have better design. I could feel my ass wouldn’t like this after 200km’s!
Took a test ride of this nice bike last september. The first feeling was only about how great bike it was!! I had my wife sitting behind me and even without adjustments to the suspension felt great!
After 20-30 kilometers I was already thinking that this bike feels so great that I should change my XR to this… But then we took the narrow, bumpy and curvy road (Immersby road) and I started to think something else
Östersundom Churc
BMW XR is definitely better to gain speed after corners – The suspension is much better for 2 passangers – And XR simply makes you smile in every different situation… Tiger (only) makes you feel comfortable. Tiger is very nice bike! Maybe I should have tried the adventure version (800 XCA) and I would have found more positive things compare to BMW S1000XR.
But this road-version of the Triumph 800 Tiger is very good bike with very reasonable price and I can totally recommend it!
After very good sleep and breakfast we took a morning walk in a little bit wet streets of Nice. Rue de Rivoli was the direction about 2km’s away. There was MotorBikeTrip store where I had reservation for bike (3 days) -This was the bike:
BMW F700GS
I didn’t ride this bike too much before and I have to say that the suspension is not good enought for 2. But I tried to adjust the preload tighter so that it wouldn’t hit the bottom all the time… Then we changed the full riding gear and started riding!
It was still little bit wet in 500 meters high Col d’Eze between Nice and Monaco.
In Menton the beach Boulevard is called The Sunny Promenade -but we had a little bit of rain…
We were standing in the mediterranean beach for awhile and I made a video there.
From Menton we started to climb up to the Mountains. I have been riding here before but back in 2016 it was too hot! Now it was quite nice weather.
This bridge is a part of an old tramline between Menton and Sospel. Tram was in use from 1912 to 1930. This bridge is called “Viaduc du Caramel”.
We stopped at Sospel to take few pictures. This made me think how sad it is when every place is now closed. No open cafeterias or restaurants… These cities and villages live only in the summertime.
Climbing up to Col de Turini… Beautiful nature everywhere!
Up on the top of of Turini it was raining quite heavily and we were inside the cloud.
The visibility wasn’t too good!
Luckily under the clouds we could see some more… But the rain didn’t stop.
The steep mountain walls of this area are amazing… even on a foggy weather! This is Col Saint-Roch.
GoZa Mite 