Motorcycle tour and off-roading——On the comprehensive strength of long-distance riding and the control skills in motorcycle touring (Part 1)

Motorcycle tour and off-roading——On the comprehensive strength of long-distance riding and the control skills in motorcycle touring (Part 1)

Now, the proportion of motorcycle touring in the motorcycle enthusiasts is getting bigger and bigger. Countless motorcycle enthusiasts ride on the road, harvest the scenery and enjoy the joy of travel. However, not every trip can bring happiness. There are not only scenery but also hidden dangers on the road of motorcycle tour. And the root cause of the danger, in many cases, comes from the rider himself/herself...

In view of the dangers on the motorcycle road, combined with the rider's own situation, here will introduce countermeasures to avoid injury to the greatest extent. The focus is to increase your adaptability and resilience of bad road surfaces and improve your comprehensive strength for long-distance riding.


How much water a barrel can hold depends on the shortest board. This famous barrel theory also applies to motorcycle tours. Whether you can safely complete the motorcycle tour depends on your technical shortcomings. Many motorcycle tour enthusiasts who have accidents have been hit by "soft underbelly" on bad road conditions. Accidents on good roads are mostly caused by carelessness, and have little to do with the quality of riding skills. For example, many years ago, a well-known rider was on his way westward, and a construction area without obvious effective prompts suddenly appeared on the flat road, causing the motorcycle to crash and kill him. In this case, no matter how good the skill is, it is in vain, and the biggest security guarantee is to be slower, leaving enough time to respond to emergencies. The so-called "response" is just braking and decelerating.


Traveling on a flat road, slightly lower at a safe speed that can be achieved, slowing down in advance and preparing for braking when encountering an intersection with poor visibility, can maximize safety. However, emergencies on complex road conditions are often caught off guard, and the only remedy at that time is instinctive response, and the accumulation of technology at ordinary times will determine whether your response is correct.


In bad road conditions, it is not enough to be careful, and if you ride slowly, you will also have risks of falling. In a word, for riders who have long lived in urban and plain road developed areas, the lack of riding control skills in complex road sections is the biggest shortcoming of many people’s motorcycle tour, which has led to a large number of accidents, bringing travel and even life to an abrupt end...


In short, long-distance motorcycle tours will encounter various bad road conditions—potholes and broken roads in mining areas, gravel roads around the mines in the mountains, renovated sections where the road surfaces in the plains have been completely destroyed, flood-ravaged water-damaged sections, muddy dirt roads in the rainy season and so on. Even if you are a master of the moto GP track, you can only honestly reduce the speed when encountering the above road conditions. But even if you've only run a few off-road track or rally races, you can run like a fish in water here. Therefore, it is very necessary to master some basic off-road common sense in motorcycle tours, which is much more important than how to fully inflate the tires. "Off-road common sense" is actually the handling skills of off-road vehicles, and this is the "soft underbelly" of many motorcycle tour enthusiasts.


To be Continued...

(Reprinted)

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