Adventure motorcycles appeal to the spark of the swashbuckling cross-continental wanderer in all of us. They make us feel like we can take a week off from the day job, throw a few pairs of jocks in a backpack and disappear into the wilderness, the topography as our undulating playground, our knobby tires dancing over riverbeds, rocks, desert sands and grassy fields.
We would fly through the air, you and I, wind whipping our dust trails into pretty vortices as we choose the perfect spot to land our rear wheels. We'd wheelie our way grandly across quiet pastures and fling rocks at frightened but understanding bunnies by extravagantly powersliding around corners. We'd scramble up the sides of breathtaking mountains, pausing at the tops to pull our goggles off and gasp at the magnificence of this green Earth we've just been ripping up.
Or we might leave our adventure bikes rotting in the shed, fallow thoroughbreds, started and polished weekly, commuted on occasionally, sitting there sadly reminding us how hard it can be to find that week off in a world of deadlines and responsibilities, children and mortgages. But that's not the fantasy KTM wants to stoke, so instead of hiring me to star in their video they gave Chris Birch a call.
Chris Birch, eight-time Enduro champion of New Zealand. Winner of Red Bull Romaniacs. Dakar racer. Erzberg competitor. One of the world's foremost experts in making giant motorcycles tango like trials bikes.
Birchy, as we'll presume to call him, lives like we want to live, running adventure rides at home in NZ and all around the world. He rides like we want to ride, leaping, sliding and fluttering across gnarly terrain as if his wheels aren't even touching the ground. He looks like we ... Actually, we're happy enough with the way we look, he's been out in the sun a bit. But boy can he ride, man and machine melding into each other in a spectacle of pure mastery, whispering a kinetic language to each other nobody else can hear.
You too could ride like this, whispers KTM. You just need a KTM 790 Adventure R Rally, the one with the super-sweet long-travel XPLOR suspension. That, and a few pairs of jocks and a bit of practice, and this could be you. Would you really rob yourself of that chance, however slim, by not buying a KTM 790 Adventure R Rally, when KTM 790 Adventure R Rallies are things you can have in exchange for mere money? What on Earth else would you do with that money that's better than this? Have you no spirit? Are you that dead inside?
These are hard questions to answer, friends. But the below is a very easy video to watch, and I hope you can enjoy it without feeling too conflicted about the whole thing.
Source: KTM
