Good Motorcycle Reading

I am still without a motorcycle and I am now in the northern hemisphere where it is too cold for me to consider riding for a while (although I hear some brave souls on the weekend taking off in the early hours).

So I am spending considerable time reading about other people riding over at the ADV site and lots of gear reviews over at Web Bike World.

If you have not visited either of these

The safest motorcycle helmet

I have mentioned it before but worth talking again it about. The UK Helmet Safety Assessment And Rating Programme called SHARP has been operating for some time now and has a large number of new and previous model helmets tested.

Some big name expensive helmets only score 3 out of 5 stars while some budget helmets manage to score a full 5 stars. It is an interesting site and even if you have a

Farewell Australia

  The open road beckons Relaxing by the water Rural vistas Superb Forgotten train station Country town charm Outlaws in the USA. We call them Bushrangers This is Australia And this is my last ride report on Australian roads for a long time.I have sold the CB1100 and I am relocating overseas permanently. I had planned a big farewell ride but weather cut it short. That’s the bad news

Photon Cruise control review

Despite my previous poor results with a Vista cruise control for motorcycles (which was really throttle lock device same as this is) I have decided to try another design since I have a large Australian tour coming up soon.

The Photon Cruise 2 is a small device that clips on to your handlebar grip and to engage you simply use your finger to press it forward on to your brake lever. (See the

Rear View Mirror

Looking back I have collected a few of the most popular reviews and may expand this a little if I come across other posts that I feel should be saved here. Airhawk seat cushion review Be seen Be safe BMW City Pants Grip Puppies Nolan N43 helmet So-Easy GPS case Vista cruise control

One day ride suggestions

I have collected some of my one day ride reports as part of a tidy up of the blog. Plenty of ideas here for places to ride from Brisbane or Gold Coast. Note some of the rides date back a little now but likely not much will have changed in these areas. Click the orange text below each photo for the ride report. A Buell in Texas A nice winter ride Afternoon escape Big Western Border Magic

Aprilla Caponord 1200 Review

  I had a chance to ride the new Aprilla Caponord today and came away very impressed. This is an interesting motorcycle in many ways. It has all the electronic rider aids that a top of the range BMW might feature plus more in a smaller and lighter and more sporty motorcycle. This motorcycle has a lot of clever electronics. It has two channel ABS and 3 levels of traction control to suit different

Gold Coast’s Best Motorcycle Roads

Including Northern NSW

In my many years of riding in South East QLD I came to best like the area on either side of the border with NSW. I have grouped the rides here under the title of Gold Coast as everyone knows that area but more correct geographically would be to say the  border ranges area.

The best riding is really just over the border. The area from there south to Byron bay and inland

Brisbane’s Best Motorcycle Roads

Note; some of these articles or at least some photos date back to the 90’s when I first started writing about alternative places to ride on other sites and were ported over to here. Since then the internet blossomed and in recent years has become awash with motorcycle travel information on blogs, forums etc. The suggestions here remain valid evcen if the descriptions might sound dated but I am

Malaysia Motorcycle tour

  I have just returned from my second motorcycle ride in Malaysia and am even more impressed.  Previously I rented a motorcycle in Singapore as a side trip to a bigger holiday however this latest trip was a bit impromptu, deciding just a week or so before to go somewhere and Malaysia came straight to mind. I flew direct to Kuala Lumpur from Australia with Air Asia. Scooters Rule in SE Asia, look

Using a GPS for motorcycle touring

Updated 2014If you are going to tour another country or even just another state by motorcycle then a GPS can really make navigating easy however there are a number of things to consider before purchasing and also some user tricks you should know.As of writing there is still only one brand that accepts user defined routes and has global detailed map coverage and that is Garmin. I am surprised that

5 simple ways to be warmer when riding this winter

I did a 1/2 day ride north this morning and noticed a lot of motorbikes out but most of them were parked at coffee shops with riders holding steaming mugs with both hands, crouched over, trying to get warm. Looking at all the expensive motorcycles I am guessing it is not lack of money that stops people from having proper winter gear but their desire to dress a certain way, to project a

Motorcycling Northern Thailand

  Update: the gps routes I have linked below have been altered slightly from the original ride. Just slight variation to a few km of days 2 and 3 to route anyone who uses them away from a bit of poor road surface and day 4 I have made a change to avoid the western ascent to Mt Doi Inthanon as that road was chopped up bad. Northern Thailand is a not mentioned every day when people talk about

Turning Point

Nice to see some sunshine. Lovely autumn day. I believe this might be only the 2nd ride (in Australia) I have done this year. That is mostly due to the weather. I have however covered considerable distance in other countries. Some I have already posted and one tour I am still to write about.

The delay is partly because I need to work on the photos I took from my iPhone which all came out

Motorcycling New Zealand North Island

New Zealand truly is a paradise for motorcycle riders. The south island gets a lot of press but I recently rode the north island and the riding was superb. As with my south island ride I used the Hema New Zealand motorcycle atlas to plan my route and plotted the GPS route in Ride with GPS and I convert my GPS track files to maximum 100 point routes using GPS Babel.   I rented a motorcycle for

Malaysia motorcycle ride

Update, read my 2nd ride in Malaysia starting from Kuala Lumpur HERE

Malaysia was a terrific ride. It kept surprising me in many nice ways. The people, food and of course the roads were great. But let's rewind.

I had previously planned a ride in Malaysia but cancelled it for a couple of reasons. I was traveling in Asia and decided to return to Australia via KL and rent a motorcycle for a couple

Restoring a pair of riding pants

I just dyed my old (first) pair of BMW City riding pants and now they look almost as good as when I first purchased them. Originally a charcoal colour they faded to a pale grey which did not look good but otherwise they still were in excellent condition. I purchased some charcoal fabric dye from eBay cheap and 30 minutes of soaking in hot water with the dye gave me an excellent result. The photo

BMW Airflow 4 Jacket review

I have previously owned three dedicated summer jackets but never been really happywith any of them. The first jacket was a $99 clearance bin item made by Dryrider that I purchased 10+ years ago. This was a very light weight item with minimal protection but maximum cooling. I expected to use it for a limited time until I found something better however I still have this jacket and was using it on

Go your own way

I think that was a motorcycle slogan once. I know I have said it before in this blog somewhere but today the thought came to me anew not recycled from the past. I was riding my old favourite loop into NSW via Mt Lindsey, Summerland way, Kyogle, Uki, Numinbah and was thinking what a great ride this is and I should call it, and todays post, old faithful. But that sounds like riding is not so

Removal of LinkWithin

This is off topic but I wanted to share to non readers of this blog seeking to remove LinkWithin. I have disabled the LinkWithin widget as I suspect it to be in some way malicious. This widget once installed seems to embed its code and the company will not supply any information how to remove it. That should ring alarm bells. Because I do not know if what I have done is safe or not I suggest if

Honda CB1100 long term update and info summary

  (Further update below) The new CB1100 is now a global model and no doubt that will bring many new sites with lots of information about it but in the mean time here is a summary from the CB1100 Facebook community page that I have run the last couple of years. I want to summarise the Facebook page since all older posts and therefore the bulk of information shared there is simply lost as it does

Holiday reading

My motorcycle tour for this years festive season was impacted by weather and personal illness so I ended up spending more time indoors than on the road. This allowed me to catch up on some reading, motorcycle touring books of course. And I will give a brief review on each. Leanings This is a selection, a ‘best of’ collection, of short stories by Peter Egan who writes for Cycle World, a North