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"I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move." Welcome to the Throttle and Roast Podcast. I'm your host, Niels Meersschaert. In today's episode, I'll look at two segments of motorcycling, adventure touring, and sport touring, and look at the differences between these bikes and the differences in the style of riding they're typically intended for. Finally, I'll look at if you really need to match your bike style with your riding style. And if you've ever wondered which style of bike is right for you, this episode will answer your questions on these two popular types.
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So we're going to start with going into a little bit of exploration on the various bike styles between these two segments. And I'll start with ADV bikes. Now ADV bikes, of course, are currently the most popular segment of motorcycling.
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This was really spearheaded in a lot of ways by the Long Way Around series with Charlie Borman and Ewan McGregor, which featured the BMW GS motorcycles.
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And that is still held up as being the gold standard when it comes to adventure motorcycles.
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But if we really come down to what fundamentally are ADV bikes, well, really what they are is they're street bikes with taller suspension and often some styling to sort of evoke the image, the image of a dirt bike.
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They are not dirt bikes. Let's just call a spade a spade. And that is I think the fundamental difference that you're going to look Dual sports are related to adventure bikes and sometimes it can feel like there's a little bit more of a gray area between these two segments. But in general dual sports are more dirt focused though they are still street legal. Whereas a dirt bike is for off highway use only an adventure bike is a little bit more on the street spectrum than a dual sport or a dirt bike would be. because of this most ADV bikes today have more than 700 cc's of engine capacity. Though there are becoming some options that have smaller displacement models available so you can get a small adventure bike so it's not exclusively the large engine although they are certainly the more common and or popular ones that most people sort of have as an image of what an adventure bike is. They often have more aggressive tires so they can work in areas that have reduced traction. So think of like a dirt road or any sort of a gravel road. They're going to work pretty well for that. And the other thing that you'll see with a adventure bike is that they'll have a high seat height and this is really to provide a little bit better ground clearance and this is why they'll have longer suspension travel. Now if we think about a sport touring bike these are unfortunately not quite as popular as they were in the past.
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sport touring look closer to a sport bike, but with a little bit more relaxed ergonomics to allow them to be useful for extended riding in a touring type of a situation. So a couple of good examples of this would be like the BMW r1300RT, Motoguzzi's V100 Mandelo, the Kawasaki ZX-14. These are a couple of the pretty common sport touring motorcycles. And while that sport bike that you might be thinking of has a very aggressive ergonomics and it might even have clip-on handlebars. Sport tourers tend to have a little bit less of that attack position. You're a little bit more upright on the bike and this can make it a little bit more comfortable for longer rides thus the touring aspect. Now, ironically, there are some ADV bikes that actually are some of the best sport-touring bikes on the market Now, Ducati's Multistrada is a great example of this, and it's really almost a sport bike on stilts. You have that DNA of Ducati, which has always been known for being a phenomenal sport motorcycle, but given a little bit of the taller suspension and the higher seating position of a typical ADV bike to kind of capture that essence but still maintain some of its sport chops. And of course, BMW GS line is also a really great option. They handle extraordinarily well, and they have plenty of power. actually argue that some of the more recent generations of the GS, certainly on the boxer line, gone a little bit more towards that sport touring essence and kind of gone away from some of the off-road capabilities.
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You'll see this certainly with some of bikes in terms of the weight gain. So, for example, the R1300 GSA is 33 pounds heavier than my old 2012 R1200 GSA, even with nearly a gallon less fuel. So, they've gained a lot of weight, which is not really great for off-road, but they've made it far more comfortable for touring long distance in a kind of sporty sort of style. So I think this is where some ADV bikes are feeling a little bit more like the sport tourers. And if you think of ergonomics, in general, if you are a tall rider, adventure bikes are a great option, because even if you don't plan on going off-road, the ergonomics tend to be more stretched out. You have a little bit more legroom, you've got a little bit more reach to the cockpit. It's just a bit of a larger feeling bike, and that can make it feel less cramped than tall riders will sometimes suffer from on a lot of other bikes. Now, on the flipside, for a tall rider, a sport touring bike, because of that more aggressive riding position, the pegs are going to be a little bit further up, so your knee angle is going to be a little bit tighter. They may start to feel a little bit more cramped for bigger riders. On the flipside, if you're a short rider, ADV bikes can be tough to flat foot because they have this higher seat height, which makes a lot of sense. If you're going to be going off-road, you want to have that ground clearance for off-pavement riding. but it can be a bit intimidating if you are a shorter rider. And this is where a sport touring bike might actually be a better option, because they can be had with much lower seat heights. this is, again, a very generalization across these bikes. One of the interesting things that has happened in recent years with some of the ADV bikes is they've started to become a little bit more of a sport touring bike in terms of the intended mission.
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mission. So it has the styling of an ADV, but it's really a little bit more towards a sport touring in that it is really great handling. It maybe only has street tires on it, not even any sort of adventure style of tire on the bike. It may have a premium suspension that's going to work really, really well for aggressive riding. And they may even have lower seat heights.
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And this is accomplished in two ways. One is that they actually physically make the height of the seat a little lower. the second is that they narrow the seat in the area where you're going to be sitting. So your feet can hit the ground a little bit simpler, again, helping make it easier for those shorter riders. So the question is, is an ADV or a sport tour a specific style of motorcycle or what you use it for?
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So let's talk a little bit about riding styles. Now, what is adventure touring? Well, pretty common typical description of it is it's a trip of mixed pavement and off-road riding. So, a good example of this in the United States would be the backcountry discovery routes. These are some wonderful routes that are put out that have really bringing you into that sort backcountry. You're getting off of the beaten path and oftentimes taking these, at best, seasonally maintained roads where the road surface is maybe not in great condition.
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It's probably dirt. It's probably broken up. It may have some water. That's been coming through and created some crevices, making it a little bit more challenging to get through, and in some areas, of course, certainly out west in the U. S., it can be very daunting because it is a high elevation. It's gonna be very loose terrain and you just have a lot less of the comfort, I'll say, that you'd have in a pavement situation.
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Now, if you're in Europe, the Trans-European Trail would be another great example of this.
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this is really meant to how do you stay as much off-pavement as possible and traverse through Europe. a lot of riders will often pair these mixed surface roads with camping as you're typically heading out to areas that are far more remote, and finding a hotel is maybe a little bit less likely. So if you think of sport touring, I really want to add in almost a third category here, which is almost the cruiser type of touring, because give a good juxtaposition because both cruiser touring and sport touring are pavement oriented.
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But I think the big difference that you'll find is for a lot of the cruiser style riders and cruiser touring, it will tend to be on the open highway, fairly straight roads. They're really about just making the miles and the distance, And this is where sport touring I think really differentiates itself is, it will tend to be on twisty and often at a bit more, how shall we say, maybe a spirited pace.
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It's not gonna be for the people who are just lollygagging around.
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It tends to be a little bit more aggressive sort of style. so when you think of this and you put together a route with twisty roads, it's probably more likely that you're gonna be using a sport touring or an adventure touring motorcycle for riding on that. Now, some riders will be a little bit less restrictive with the term adventure touring, allowing even a pavement only trip to be an adventure.And this is definitely true. And in many ways, adventure doesn't mean off pavement, as it's really just a trip where the unexpected could happen or where you're doing something that is outside of your comfort zone.
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But for this episode, I really wanna stick with the more, I'll say traditional definition, which is that adventure touring is really meant as that mixed road surface kind of an approach.
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So a common question that you'll see from riders who are thinking about getting a new bike in either sport touring or the adventure touring category is, do I have to match the bike and my riding style? see this quite often from forum posts from potential ADV buyers asking if they need to take the bike off pavement or have to have knobby tires. And then on the flip side, you'll see these cliche images of a completely spotless BMW GS parked outside of a Starbucks with not even a speck of dirt on them. They've probably never seen a dirty road whatsoever. Maybe even a gravel parking lot would have been a stretch for them. So you don't necessarily have to match the style of the bike to the style of riding that you do. And this is, I think where I think the true sport touring bikes have started to becoming a little bit less popular. And it's because so many riders are finding that an adventure bike actually works really well for sport touring.
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And if you have some rough roads that are near you, they don't have to necessarily be Here in the Northeast United States, of course, since we have actual seasons, it will get cold in the winter, freeze over, and then you get the expansion cracks that happen throughout all of the pavement all over the place.
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Well, having a adventure bike with the longer suspension travel will make riding along those roads a lot more comfortable. the suspension of the motorcycle is just going to absorb those road inconsistencies a lot better, and this is one of the things that, why some riders will choose to get an adventure bike, even if they have no intention of going off pavement with the bike. And there are some people, of course, who love the style of an adventure bike, even if they plan to never go off road. You probably see this a lot with some of the SUV in the car world.
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So, these cars were originally designed as something that was almost like an adventure motorcycle. They were intended to go both on pavement and off pavement as a vehicle. But you see a whole lot of them. It's almost the cliche soccer mom sort of scenario here in the U.
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S. where these SUVs like that BMW GS in front of a Starbucks has never seen a speck of dirt under its ever. the usage of an adventure bike purely for sport touring isn't the anathema that I think some people to believe.
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And you might even hear the term, a tall rounder, referring to a bike that's really a good all-around bike, but with tall suspension. And this is the thing I think that adventure bikes do excel at and why so many riders have been using them,not just for adventure touring, but for sport touring, or even what I'll classify as like cruisers touring, where they're just going along a at, you know, normal highway speeds, but relatively straight roads.
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They're just a really good all-around motorcycle. And this is why so many riders are choosing to buy an adventure bike, even if they're not going to do adventure touring. But I do also want to point out something that I think is a little bit of a downside of how we have started to subdivide motorcycles in all of these different segments and this sort of assumption in some ways that a motorcycle can only be used for its intended purpose or whatever you've defined as this category for it. Because if you think back to the original early days of motorcycling, most roads weren't paved, but no one was making like, oh, here's the Harley Davidson adventure bike in 1907. They just didn't exist.
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All bikes were meant to be used on these roads. And yeah, you didn't go as fast on a dirt road as you would maybe on a paved road, but they were fine. And to kind of give a little bit of an example of this, when you think of these early days of motorcycling and roads weren't what they are today, being perfectly maintained and perfectly smooth roads. I mean, I've ridden a sport bike on dirt roads before. It's okay. I mean, I'm not going to go on trails with the bike, but if you just happen to encounter a dirt road, it's completely fine. You can take bikes that are not intended for it onto the surfaces. Now, it wouldn't be bombing along at a really high speed on that dirt road because the suspension travel is much less. And therefore, if you're trying to do really high speed, it's not going to be able to absorb the bumps. But it doesn't mean you can't travel over And another good example of this is I was riding on my GS and I had a friend who was following behind me on a BMW RT. And we happened to encounter a road. We were just doing a fun ride and we got to a point where it was a seasonally maintained road. And I said to him, like, hey, I'm happy to turn around. We'll find an alternate route. He's like, no, no, no, it's fine. It's fine.
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We'll go. And so he followed me down this seasonally maintained road. And there was only maybe a mile or so where we had to ride on this. But there were certain ruts and things that you had to navigate around. But he still made it through on the RT. Now, we weren't, again, bombing at a high rate of speed. But you can ride a bike that is not an adventure bike on what most people would describe as an adventure road. I think this over specialization of motorcycles, I think has created a disconnect for people where they think that they have to have that bike that perfectly fits the use case of their intended riding. And while it can be better, it's certainly not a requirement. personally, I do love adventure riding and adventure touring. But I do wish that there were more sport touring bikes on the market as there really are in many ways a better option for most riders.
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Most riders don't need an adventure bike, and certainly if you're a shorter rider, the taller suspension of an adventure bike actually is a hindrance to you. So I really would love to see more sport touring motorcycles out on the market today. See, it's kind of why, if you look back on the episode when we looked at the R1300 RT, I actually really like that bike a lot. I think it's a great option, and they made it even a little bit more sport oriented than the previous generations had been just to kind of give that almost a transformer effect to it where it can really kind of it can go to full touring mode. But then, it can also get up on its haunches and become a little bit more aggressive riding when you want to. And that, to me, just gives the best of both worlds So let's wrap up. We explored both adventure and sport touring bikes. And we looked at the features and characteristics of each of those.
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We also dove into adventure touring versus sport touring as styles of riding. And finally, we looked at, do you really need to match your bike's style with your riding style? So my question for you this week is, what is your preferred style of motorcycle? And what is your preferred style of riding? Do you like adventure riding? Do you like sport touring? Do you like adventure motorcycles? Or do you like sport touring motorcycles? Share your thoughts through the text to show link in the show notes or leave us a voicemail at throttleandroast.com/voicemail.
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Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you next week.
