2006 BMW K1200GT – Lord Vader, Your Bike is Ready

Past the 7000RPM mark the 2006 K1200GT’s engine spins up with a guttural ferocity and a growling primeval engine note serving notice to whatever the posted limit is that it’s about to be thoroughly trounced.  That sound and the acceleration it represents gives the newest bike in the BMW K series some serious X-factor.  Normally…

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Snow Day: The R1150GS

Blame the weather; an early March dump of snow in Vancouver is near unheard of and put our regular bike testing plans on hold.  Sipping coffee and walking along the beach it was easy to eye the glistening downhill slopes of Cypress Bowl and buy into a lie that so many Vancouverites have perpetuated through…

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2006 Suzuki GSX-R 600: Own the Highway

The 2006 Suzuki GSX-R 600’s engine howls like a horde of banshees in the throws of heat as we blow by the parked “unmarked” police cruiser.  I’m pushing my luck this third time past the same dark blue sedan.  The first two times I made a pretense of being legal, but both the cop and…

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MAD Maps Adventure America: Best Road Trips Volume 1

San Francisco-based MAD (Motor Adventure Destination) Maps, Inc.’s Adventure America: Best Road Trips Volume 1 is, as their press release puts it, “a consolidation of the company’s regional maps onto on national map”.  We have another description for it as we sit on the cusp of a new riding season plotting and scheming this year’s…

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2006 Suzuki V-Strom DL 1000: Dubious Styling, Valiant Spirit

Last time we saw a visage such as this it was likely being chased by villagers brandishing pitchforks and torches.  Yes, the V-Strom 1000 is an ugly Frankenstein’s creation of components, but it’s powerful, surprisingly agile, and underneath its dubious styling is a valiant spirit capable of carrying you to the some of the more…

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Continental Road Attack – Watershed

The rain is torrential, the light at 4:30PM absent and traffic apocalyptic, as if one of the four horsemen, plague most likely, had become a herd of mindless lemmings.  Despite the lashings of rain and the abuse of horns, I decide to lane-split my way onto the Lions Gate Bridge, a bottleneck that is to…

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Axio Hybrid – Coolest Pack since the Rocketeer’s

Not since the Rocketeer slipped on a jet pack has a backpack this cool and well designed for transport graced a human’s backside.  Of course the transport in question is a motorcycle, and the backpack a stash for your everyday commuter needs, but past those qualifiers the statement still applies to Axio’s Hybrid.

2005 Ducati 999 Monoposto: A Life Less Ordinary

This morning, it seems, someone swapped my regular of dose of Raisin Bran with a big bowl of stupid.  The scrape of the knee-puck is official notice; I’m being an idiot and my actions are heroic only in the bench-racing retellings.  This is November, above the fog layer it is clear and cold, and the…

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Another Perspective – Photos By Justin Mastine-Frost

Above the fog’s ceiling the weather is crisp, cold and clean, a pure reward for those braving November’s inclement assaults on the west coast’s concept of winter. The Multistrada 620’s engine thrums in the bike’s lanky chassis, looking as odd in this environment as any other. From the waist up the Multistrada 620 is a…

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2005 Suzuki Boulevard C90T: The Chrome Giant

Kicked back in the chair of a Whistler coffee shop with its trademarked mermaid logo, she and I look on across the parking lot at the 2005 Suzuki Boulevard C90T.  The bike handily filling a majority of the parking stall, it stands out glaringly, and even now men stop to point and watch – you…

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Ducati SS1000 – Soul of the Track

Kevin Davis from Ducati Canada is waxing poetic about the Supersport 1000 DS, “It’s a really good track bike.  I was doing 240kp/h down the front straight, that’s more than enough.”  Not being conversant with Race City’s track, and even less so with Ducati’s Supersport series I nodded, then got on with analyzing the vague…

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