Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/127811
ADVENTURE By Cameron Coatney PhOtos By Kinney Jones wenty-one years. Glass shattered here and there on our over-400-mile dual sport loop as our team of crack(ed) editors crashed and thrashed the heaviest bikes on the rockiest trails. Looking back, it was a miracle only three mirrors were lost. Still, it was enough - that's over two decades of hard luck. No more Vegas, no more Laughlin and surely no more $100 chips falling out of the sky at the Hard Rock Hotel (to Personal Watercraft nlustrated Associate Editor Jeff Hain on our summertime cruiser ride. Lucky guppy). Considering the manner in which we attacked our recent two-day dual sport jaunt into the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park and surrounding areas, a trio of smashed mirrors doesn't seem so bad since those were the only things we managed to break (aside from a couple of inner tubes - do two flat tires count for anything besides scarred knuckles?). But that's not saying we didn't try for more carnage from the crew we had assembled. The Cycle News staff had a dual sport issue on the horizon and we needed a nice little dual sport story to accompany it. Ideas flew around the spacious editorial cube befo.re we decided on a two-day dual sport adventure into and around Anza-Borrego in Southern California. Hotel reservations were made at the exquisite La Casa Del Zarro Desert Resort in Borrego Springs for our one night of lodging, and then we started arranging our dual sport mounts for the ride. After a few calls to manufacturers, we were set up with five bikes covering the whole range of compromise that a dual sport bike inevitably is: a 1997 ATK 60505, a 1997 Honda XR650L, a 1996 Kawasaki KLX650 (which is what Kawasaki will be selling in '97), a 1996 KTM 620 LC4 RXC (the electric-star~ '97 model is still a few weeks away) and a 1997 Suzuki DR650SEV - the premier dual sport bikes from each of the manufacturers. We would have liked to have included a Yamaha, but since the passing of the XT600, there isn't an open-class dual Anza-Borrego Dual Sport Ride (Above) This photo wasn't staged, we actually were lost. (Below) It's steeper than it looks and that's Personal Watercraft Illustrated editor Jeff Haln breaking the DR650's mirror. sporter in the lineup. We know of this bigbore dual sport Yamaha sold in Europe that we'd just love to see offered over here.... True to their strong dirt-bike roots, both the ATK and KTM come fitted with tires much more suited to off-road use than highway criJ..ising. The ATK uses a Dunlop 0905 at the front and a Dunlop 0903 at the rear, while the '96 KTM comes stock with Michelin APlOs front and rear ('97s get Pirelli's excellent MT21s). So while both of these bikes have dirt-worthy, street-legal tires, the other bikes don't,. and are rather fitted with something that resembles, well, an aggressive street tiJ;e. In the asphalt realm, these naturally work very well, providing good grip and quiet operation. And sure, they'll work for plunking around mellow trails and fu;e roads, but they can become dangerous at higher speeds and on steep downhills. Wanting to be prepared for the worst possible conditions and figu.ring that it would be much easier to negotiate smooth asphalt with knobbies than rough traijs with near-slicks, the rest of the bikes - the Honda, Kawasaki and Suzuki - were fitted with Dunlop's newly DOT-approved K139 front tire and 0903 rear, all of which were hand mounted by yours truly. (Now thiit's a good time, especially those 17-inch rears ~ on the KLX and DR) On the morning of the ride, the Orange County crew of Editor Paul Carruthers, Managing Editor Mark Hoyer, Assistant Editor Cameron Coatney and Personal Watercraft illustrated (CN's sister publication) Associate Editor Jeff Hain met up in Irvine and blasted down Ortega Highway (74) to Interstate 15 and headed south down into Temecula. Ortega was fun, to say the least, as we were OOing on a cold morning on cold knobby tires doing our best Scott Russell imitations. Somehow we made it to our meeting point with Associate Editor Kit Palmer and photographer Kinney Jones, who both hail from Redlands, for a quick breakfast. The days leading up to the ride were nervous ones for most of the participants who were wondering just exactly where we would be going on this ride, and during breakfast concerns were expressed. Which trails? How much street riding?