The latest issue of Bike magazine features a nice looking article on well known adventure bikers Dan Walsh, Nick Sanders and Charley Boorman in a bar- in Barnes – talking about, not surprisingly, biking off around the world. If you read it, however, you have the strange sense that the three are not actually in the same room. Either this is the way it is edited or the three just did not get on with eachother. Boorman is articulate, for example, I learnt for the first time that he describes himself as a failed actor who was doing painting and decorating work to pay the mortgage before the popularity of the Long Way Round series gave him a new career and, presumably, a significant boost in income. But the others are perhaps better at gritty determination than at chatting to journalists in a pub in leafy Barnes. Nick Sanders is particularly uninteresting! From watching one of his free videos I wasn’t entirely surprised. On that vid you can see him totally un-understanding about the life of a solitary barman that he comes across in a lonely bar in some desert country and apparently completely uncurious about him. It seems that its the physical and personal challenge of covering vast distances on a bike that is the centre of his activity – which is one version of travel I suppose. I wonder if he drove around Staines a huge number of times whether it would have the same effect.
(Disclaimer: I’ve barely taken my beloved motorcycle off the end of a tarmac road so I take my hat off to this trio in the courage and energy department).
An taster of the interview is on the Bike website at http://www.motorcyclenews.com/Bike/latest-issue/

its not often that a motorcycle review says much more than the obvious, mixed in with predictable helpings of enthusiasm. Reviews from OneWheelDrive.net, a, or maybe THE, Canadian bike adventure site break this pattern with detailed reviews of bikes and other kit by people who can write and see the funny side of owning a large motorcycle, collecting useless belongings to do with it, and then writing about them. So here’s a snippet from a review of the bike I own. Strangely, Neil Johnston says exactly what I have noticed (apart from the geography-specific stuff):

Normally the Trans-Canada highway between Vancouver and Hope is an exercise in mind numbing tedium. Sisyphus, finding himself in our modern age, would likely have his sentence of eternal uphill boulder rolling commuted to following two semis slow racing down the One. On the R1200GS Adventure though, that inevitable constipation of traffic seems not to be a problem; I’ve never been on a bike where traffic so consistently surrendered the left lane. It’s easy to credit this to the R1200GS Adventure’s sheer road presence. Later, I put the Adventure up onto its center-stand with ease, and wonder how BMW pulled that off when my “little” Honda VFR is more of a struggle? Looking over the Alpine White color scheme and black plastic tank panels it dawns on me that this look, that from the side harkens back to GS Dakars of old, really looks suspiciously police-like in drivers’ rearview mirrors.

From: http://www.onewheeldrive.net/2006/05/15/bmw-r1200gs-adventure-a-is-for-adventure-thats-good-enough-for-me/