So, yeah, the trip mentioned in the last post happened. Kinda. After 4 days of riding in the hot sun blasted desert, and looking at 6 more days of the same, I pulled the plug. Many days have been spent in that region and retreading the same country knowing there wouldn’t even be shade to hunker in the whole trip dampend my enthusiasm. 10 days of hot desert riding has been done and enjoyed, but intentional misery has lost its appeal over the years. At least long term intentional misery. Short term it can still be a hoot.

There is a lot of freedom that comes from having a laissez-faire attitude towards trip planning – pick a general area and a few highlights to hit then weld it all togerher on the fly. The drawback is that if I do that in familiar territory, I tend to hit the same places out of familiarity which gives things a Groundhogs Day vibe. More point to point than free flowing exploration. I’ve gotten away with lazy trip planning due to the wealth of shit available to check out super easily and readily accessable by bike. Living in the west we are blessed with vast stretches of public land you can just go out and play in. A moment of silence to the back east brethren…

Another factor for big trip is being able to do long distances between cool spots is relative comfort. In my time with the T7 I have come to appreciate its offroad abilities, this thing fucking rips and is a very capable offroad machine. Its long distance tourability is less impressive, however. Yeah, plenty folks have done huge trips on them and they are more that capable of doing it, but I can’t say it was a whole lot better on the long haul than the ol’ Gen 1 KLR. The increase in power is the main benefit, but it’s still buzzy and has almost no wind protection which can wear you down trying to repeatedly grind out 4-500 miles in a go. And doing more big trips on a bike is what I’m into, there’s a lot to explore out there.

Not wanting to minimize the amount of riding I do or keeping it to shorter more putter in the dirt trips to accomodate the bike, or just grind out the misery to get to the dirty spots, I made the decision to become a 2 bike family.

So I bought this thing in August.

Yes, it’s a 2024 Honda Africa Twin DCT. An updated version of the bike I raged about on this very blog numerous times. Not due to how it rode, handled, suspension, or power, but the stupid DCT on it that just couldn’t not fuck up. I got a lemon and was happy to be rid of it.

And I missed it from the day I let it go, such a capable fun bike that, when the DCT was working, was nothing short of amazing which made it’s malfunctioning all the more frustrating.

I missed it so much I figured it would be worth it to give the thing another go and am happy I did. The updates, improvements ,and overall cleanliness of design incorporated into this 2nd generation is impressive. Having 100+ ponies between my legs again doesn’t hurt either, this thing fucking rips.

One might ask, “How the fuck can you afford to buy 2 brand new ADV bikes in 2 years?!?”, which is a valid question. The answer includes not being married or having kids, not owning a home or car or having any debt, and having a job I’m really good at where my boss just can’t help but throw cash at me to show his appreciation. Having lived the bulk of my life as a low income wage slave helped as well, I’m a thrifty fellow.

I’ve got a little over 3k on it so far and am quite happy with the thing. The winter has been mild so I ride almost every day as a commuter but have a short commute. This past year was crazy busy work wise with over 30k miles of air travel on top of maybe 10k of driving so moto adventuring was lean, but now that I’m more of a mucky muck with a staff that craziness is going to slow down. A little.

Moto camping will start in March the way things are looking and I’m going to incorporate the bike into some of my work travel when it will be appropriate. I’ve also not done much exploring here in WA as I typically head back to the familiarity of OR when I have limited time or don’t feel like doing a lot of planning and just want to burn miles. Effort is going in to putting together 1-3 day excursions around WA to get me into some new country and explore what the state has to offer. I’ve been aroud it a bit, but there is plenty new to check out.

One of the many benefits of my gig is that I get to keep any travel/hotel miles/points earned so I may do some cold assed February weekend trips and burn hotel points if camping has no appeal due to the misery factor.

So, the Twin will be the main pony. Big trips, slab trips, lazy trips. The T7 will be the dirt monster, shitty little mountain track ripper, mostly offroad trips and local forest road excursions. We’ll see. I may have a well kitted out T7 for sale soon but it’s also nice to have options.