My life is strange. How did I find myself here, on a motorcycle ride with journalists from famous motorcycle publications like Cycle World and websites like ADVMoto? But I’m getting ahead of myself.
It was a cold morning, 36ºF according to the van’s thermometer. That’s the coldest I’ve ever seen it, and being a Florida van it’s probably the coldest it’s ever been. I thought this was California… Bright and early, I drove from the hotel to Blackmore Ranch, a bit of a motorsports playground in the middle of Temecula Valley wine country. This was our home base for Kawasaki’s introduction of the improved KLX300, a small dual sport (on-road/off-road) motorcycle, to a small group of industry journalists. ADVRider, knowing that my winter home base in Quartzsite, Arizona was not far away, asked if I’d be willing to go. I said yes, which is how I found myself here, a guest of Kawasaki and hanging out with other well-established motorcycle journalists. If you’re interested in my review of the motorcycle, I’ll link to it here once it’s written and published. Here, I’m going to focus on what the experience was like behind the scenes.
I took advantage of a bagel and a carefully calculated amount of coffee — enough to wake me up and keep me warm, but not so much that I would need a bathroom during an inconvenient part of the day’s rides. They gave us a short presentation about the motorcycles and laid out the schedule for the day. We’d spend the morning riding the standard KLX300 on mixed surfaces, mainly dirt. We’d return to the ranch for lunch, then spend the afternoon on the KLX300SM, the street-focused “supermoto” version of the same bike. Then we geared up, chose one of the fleet of identical neon green motorcycles to ride, and headed for a small motocross track on the property.
The biggest surprise to me about the event is how much time and effort goes into making professional photos and videos of us riding these bikes. Of all the time we spent on the bikes, I’d say we spent about half the time actually riding, and the other half doing photo shoots. My first experience on the KLX300 would be hoofing it around a motocross course, something I’ve never done before in my life. Fortunately, I didn’t embarrass myself too much. At least one journalist had even less dirt experience than I did, so I wasn’t alone. It was easy to tell who the real dirt riders were, the ones doing awesome jumps who were probably born riding dirt bikes. Me, well, I didn’t look as awesome, but I did manage to not crash, and I even caught a little air myself on occasion — all part of the difficult job of thoroughly testing the bike, of course. I can’t believe I get paid to do this.
We had a few photo shoots in the OHV area. One was deep in the woods. Another was up and down a big hill, with amazing scenery and some big whoops at the bottom. On the way out we did another photo shoot along the road just outside the OHV area. I can’t wait to see the pictures that came out of this and the motocross track.
Then we rode back to the ranch and had some yummy tacos during an hour-long lunch break. I ended up talking about ham radio with one of the other journalists, whose callsign I noticed on his license plate. Interestingly, about half of the journalists ended up asking my opinion about vans throughout the day, being a bit of an expert on them since I live in one. Not all of them were looking to do the camper van thing, since they’re quite useful for transporting a bike inside, but one of them did have a Ford Transit with a Maxxair roof vent. I gave him a Smokey Da Van sticker for his collection.
This skoolie parked in the garage gave me some ideas as well…
I took off some of the layers I’d put on in the morning, checked on Lister, and let him roam around outside a little bit. I felt bad for leaving him cooped up inside the van all day, but at least the temperatures made it safe to do so. My roof vent on automatic mode did its job, remaining closed in the cold when I left, but opening and turning on the fan at some point while I was gone when it warmed up.
The afternoon was a repeat of the morning, except on the KLX300SM, the supermoto version. A supermoto is basically a dual sport that has been converted to strictly street use. It has smaller wheels, street tires, different gearing, and a suspension tuned for the street instead of the trails. This trend started with people converting their existing dual sports, but manufacturers have gotten into the game with models like this. I never understood the appeal of this, so I was looking forward to not knocking it before I tried it. I have many years more experience riding on pavement than dirt, so I was looking forward to that aspect, at least.
As before, we started on a track on the grounds of the ranch, in this case, a go-kart track. Initially, they sent us out for a few practice laps to get a feel for it, but then they let us keep going, and the photographers walked around the track getting action shots. I’ve actually done a few track days and raced cars for a while, so I was in my element here, hopefully looking good for the pictures. I wasn’t racing or chasing fast lap times, but going a brisk enough pace to get the bike leaned over a bit in the turns so it looked good. There were no crazy stunts or jumps involved this time because that’s not what this bike is for.
Then we rode into the nearby town for a photo shoot while circling a block. Unfortunately, traffic and stop lights made it difficult for us to give the photographers the clear shots they needed, especially as the lights bunched us all up when we were supposed to spread out for individual shots. We did the best we could.
Then we took an hour-long ride through the canyons of the surrounding area. This was one of my best rides ever. I’m not exaggerating. I had to focus on the road and not the epic scenery, especially as journalists tend to maintain a rather brisk pace. On the pavement, I kept up just fine, which one of my veteran motorcycle journalist friends told me afterward, “That’s no easy feat.” He would know!
It was here that I finally understood the supermoto concept. It reminded me of my Mazda Miatas — low power, high revving, good suspension and brakes, and extra grippy tires. I was at full throttle quite a bit, much of the time well under the 55 mph speed limit that California posts on roads like this whether you can actually maintain 55 or not. It was a total blast.
We stopped at a pull-off in the middle of a series of sweeping turns for another photo shoot. We established turnaround and staging points on either side, then one-by-one ripped through these corners for the cameras. I probably made the bike look a bit better than I did on dirt since I’m a pretty good road rider. As the sun sank behind the mountains we headed back to the ranch, arriving just before it got dark. We squeezed every bit of daylight we could out of the short December day.
At this point, the people who were also making videos for their respective websites had a chance to shoot them. ADVRider doesn’t really do video these days, so I didn’t participate in this. I definitely participated in the jerk chicken wrap they served us for dinner. After a bit more chatting, I thanked everyone from Kawasaki and then headed back to the hotel. I took Lister for a rare walk after dark. The parking lot was lit, and he’d been cooped up inside all day. He didn’t just want to explore but went for an actual run, which I had to walk quickly to keep up with. He deserved it. It was only 6:00 pm when I went back to my room, but it felt more like 9:00, as busy as the day was. I took a hot shower to relax some aching muscles, and because I could. I did pretty much nothing for the rest of the night, tired from the day of fun.
Kawasaki should send me the photos in a couple of days, at which point I’ll write the article for ADVRider. By then I’ll be set up at Carolyn’s place in LA, recovered from this day, and off the emotional high I’m on right now from having such a good time on these bikes. I do need to be objective as I write about them.
Smokey Da Van 