All Wheel Drive

What if your front wheel worked as hard for you as your rear wheel? Offroad riding is all about finding and utilizing traction. When your rear tire is slipping and sliding, you're generally not making much in the way of forward progress ... but what if the front tire was pulling you through those slippery stretches? What if it wasn't just planted in the corners, but was actually digging in and motoring you through? What great feats of riding could we mere mortals accomplish then, eh?

Others have tried to create 2WD dirtbikes, but for the first time, this company, Christini, looks to be making the technology practical and -- more importantly -- affordable.

Edited (2-28-07) to add: The Christini All-Wheel Drive motorcycle has competed favorably in a number of enduro and GNCC events, including the Red Bull Last Man Standing melee in Bulcher, TX where it was one of less than a dozen to even finish. As with most new technologies, when you see this doing well on the racing circuit, it's only a matter of time before the technology becomes affordable and readily available to the public.

There's a Bear in the Air

Yesterday several of us gathered for another urban dual sport ride. Starting near Guthrie, we followed the backroads and river to downtown OKC, then turned north through Bricktown and home. This trip we were very careful to stay completely legal - no riding through closed areas, no going down one way streets, staying off railroad tracks. That didn't keep us out of back alleyways, empty parking lots, empty construction zones, or other fun dual sport riding areas.

What it did do is get the OKC PD on our tail! Bill Dragoo has a fun story of our ride. Truth be told, we didn't do a thing wrong. The police have been trying to nab some "taggers" or people who are spraypainting public property in Bricktown, and they thought we were "it". I think the end result was one helicopter about about 15 patrol officers chasing after us. The officers said they were chasing us, but we just didn't know it! Never heard a siren, never saw anything but the helicopter at the end, they just couldn't keep up with us in their patrol cruisers. We never broke the speed limit and actually were riding pretty tame, but our dual sport bikes could go places they couldn't go.

In the end my officer apologized for bothering us and told us to have a good time!

Check out Bill Dragoo's story of our adventure in downtown OKC.

2007 Triumph Tiger

Curious about whether the totally redesigned Triumph Tiger has any dualsport left in it? There's an excellent article on how it rides at Motorcycle Daily.