Innholdsfortegnelse for July/August 2024 i Motorcycle Mojo Magazine

Since its introduction, the 390 Duke has become KTM’s “bread and butter” bike outselling all other KTM models. Aside from being a great performer in its category, there’s another reason it’s KTM’s biggest-selling bike: in markets where 125s dominate, it is considered a big motorcycle. Because of this, it has received some big-bike changes for 2024, getting a slew of improvements and tech that you’d normally see on bigger-displacement motorcycles. As we discovered riding it along mountain roads just outside of Almeria, Spain, the 390 Duke has also grown up in the process. THREE GENERATIONS The KTM Duke celebrates its 30th anniversary this year. The 390 Duke isn’t that old, having been introduced in 2013. That first-gen 390 was followed in 2017 by the redesigned second generation, which remained mostly…

As the mighty Columbia River makes its remaining 1,200-kilometre journey from the southern edge of British Columbia to the Pacific Ocean, the river sinuously meanders through landscapes rich with natural beauty, culture, and history. From my home in the Okanagan, on the Canadian side, I find myself every year being summoned to load up my ride, rendezvous down the street with my fearless and highly skilled riding partner Jon, hop over the 49th parallel into Washington state, and criss-cross portions of the plateau that cradles this powerful and important river system. One specific area within the Columbia plateau I often dial into my navigation is the Colville Reservation, which offers incredibly scenic and adventure-filled rides. Comprising an area of 1.4 million acres (roughly the size of the province of Prince…

When my daughter was home during summer break from Dalhousie University, she, for the first time, expressed interest in getting her motorcycle licence. Her opinion of my motor-cycles over the years has been somewhat muted, so I was quite surprised and enthusiastic hearing her plan to take a rider training and safety course upon her return to Halifax in the fall. I may have promised to buy her a Vespa if she passes the test and gets her licence. Anyway, the prospect of my daughter becoming a rider prompted me to start planning a trip from the Toronto area to Halifax. I had ridden a similar route with my ex-wife about a decade earlier on an R1200GS and had really enjoyed the green hills of Vermont, the twisty roads through…

BMW R 12 NINET BMW’s first R nineT was released in 2013 to celebrate the company’s 90th anniversary. Now BMW has replaced that classic roadster with the stylish R 12 nineT. We travelled to Malaga, Spain, to ride the new model north into the Andalusian Mountains. ST. LAWRENCE HISTORY RIDE Lake Ontario’s shoreline is rife with a history that is easily accessible to the motorcycle rider. Self-professed history buff Curtis Nickel embarked on a history tour with a few riding buddies to discover some of Upper Canada’s fascinating past from Canada’s first capital of Kingston to War of 1812 battle sites.…

DUCATI SCRAMBLER SPIN-OFFS It seems that springtime is the right time for motorcycle designers to exercise their drawing skills, and the folks at Ducati’s design centre did just that. Centro Stile Ducati, the Italian firm’s design centre, located inside the factory in Bologna, Italy, revealed two new Scrambler concepts at London’s Bike Shed Moto Show in late May. The CR24I is a modern café racer design featuring a frame-mounted fairing that incorporates styling cues from the fairings of the 1970s Ducati 750 SS and Pantah. It’s more of a modern interpretation of those classic fairings, with streamlined lines flowing almost seamlessly into the gas tank. A Monster-like removable seat cowl covers the passenger seat, which Ducati claims “recalls the classic ‘panettone’ saddles of 1970s sports bikes.” The more interesting concept,…

HUMOROUS CARICATURES I am enjoying your publication immensely for many reasons but what moves me to write on this occasion is the work of Dean Foster. His caricatures accurately and thoroughly illustrate the subject of the columns while consistently being humorous and projecting a sense of fun. Riding after all, should be fun. Clinton Smout’s May 2024 column (Roadside Repairs and First Aid) is notable for the detail work and the excellent use of outrageous exaggeration. The car battery, “X”-style lug wrench and five-gallon water bottle are brilliant details. What sells it, however, is the oxy-acetylene kit precariously bungeed over the swingarm. As I mentioned when we spoke at the CNE show, one reads a magazine for the articles but subscribes for the columns. While Mr. Foster’s work isn’t a…

Two hours of riding upriver had not narrowed the Columbia in the least. Interstate-84 hugged the south shore as cargo ships, cruise ships, barges and sailboats skimmed a surface so wide that they could happily ignore one another. Rounded hills of tawny grass like a lumpy threadbare rug rose on either side of the gorge. And my sense of their size only shifted when I spotted a kilometres-long train inching its way along the far shore. These mountains dwarfed all human activity. Even on my quite-comfortable Suzuki V-Strom 800DE, it was time for a break. The exit for Pendleton, OR., led to a once-Wild West boomtown filled with saloons, opium dens and brothels. From 1928, when twenty-something Stella Darby opened her “Cozy Rooms,” until it was shut down in 1967,…

The older photo is of my father riding an early 1930s BSA. The photo was taken outside Montreal sometime in the early 1950s. My mother told me that he and a friend spent a lot of time gallivanting around southern Quebec on the BSA before he settled down and got married. I’m the rider in the newer photo, on my 1975 Honda CB400F that I restored in 2020 during the Covid lockdown after it had sat idle for over 34 years. I originally bought it used in 1977 at McBride Cycle in Toronto when I was a university student. At the time, my father tried to convince me that motorcycles were very dangerous. I discovered this old photo of him two years after he passed away — what a sly…

The Canadian motorcycling scene has lost another great. Max Burns passed away on June 10, 2024: recurring pneumonia eventually got the better of him after a COVID infection. Max leaves behind his lifelong partner Jackie, son Justin, daughter-in-law Kym and granddaughter Ariel. In the late ’60s/early ’70s, Max played guitar in a band while attending the Ontario College of Art. In 1979, he moved to Northern Ontario and began writing in 1980, which, in his own words, paid him for having fun. He wrote articles and books on a number of subjects from searching for the best butter tarts, to motorcycling, to designing and building docks, to the secrets of off-the-grid septic systems. In the motorcycling world, Max was best known as a columnist, contributing editor, feature editor, motorcycle test…

If you were to ask me before this experience what my favourite GS model was it would, without hesitation, be the R1250GS, of course. It’s a big hitter in the adventure category and one could argue that its capabilities are hindered by its weight. But I’ve always preferred the big boxer over BMW’s midsize offerings because of its low centre of gravity and bottom-end torque. Even for a short-statured rider like me, standing tall at 5’ 5” on a good day, it would be my weapon of choice. I’m allowed to have opinions and I’m also allowed to change my opinion as I know more and new experiences shift my already stubborn views, and that is exactly what happened when I rode the new BMW F900GS in Spain. It’s important to…

“IT’S NO WONDER CHOOSING THE RIGHT MOTORCYCLE OIL CAN BE CONFUSING” Let’s do the impossible right now and decide on the very best engine oil for your motorcycle. Engine oil is your motorcycle’s life-blood. It has multiple roles, including lubrication, cooling, sealing, cleaning, corrosion protection, and noise reduction. With everything that is going on internally in the engine, it’s no wonder choosing the right motorcycle oil can be confusing. I always knew it was my destiny to own a motorcycle. I clearly remember the day my dad and me brought home my new rocket: a 1968 Yamaha YJ2 with its 60-cc single-piston-pounder engine with state-of-the-art oil injection system. In those days, learning about my rip-snorting two-wheeler was limited to bugging the mechanics at the local motorbike shop or picking through…