Free Let's Ride by Sonny Barger Page A

racing that was popular at the time. Today these are commonly called “dual sports.”
    Dual sports are usually dirt bikes that have been modified with lighting and emissions equipment that make them street legal. While dual sports are heavier than their dirt-only counterparts because of their additional equipment, they retain varying degrees of off-road capabilities. The most extreme examples—like the dual sports from KTM, Husqvarna, and some of the other European manufacturers—really are dirt bikes with headlights and oversized mufflers. They retain most of the off-road capabilities of their dirt-bike brethren.
    Part of the reason dirt bikes perform well on dirt is because they have extremely long travel suspensions. A street-bike suspension only has to face potholes and the occasional road debris; in the worst instances, a street-bike shock or fork seldom has to compress more than a few inches. Dirt bikes have to cope with much greater impacts. Motocross and supercross racing has evolved into an extended series of high jumps, with the bikes flying twenty to thirty feet in the air; their shocks and forks compress a foot or more when the bikes land, so they need a lot more travel.
    The extreme dual sports, the ones that are practically ready for off-road racing straight off the dealer floors, also have long-travel suspensions. This is great if you plan to do double and triple jumps with your motorcycle, but the drawback is that it makes the bikes ridiculously tall. Try climbing up on a KTM dual sport in a showroom sometime; just make sure you have someone beside you to catch you if you fall, because you’ll be lucky if even the tips of your toes touch the showroom floor.
    The extreme dual sports also have many of the same other drawbacks as dirt bikes, right down to the vinyl-covered fender protectors that pass for seats. Since dirt-bike racers usually stand when they ride, the seat, such as it is, exists mainly as a pad to keep the rider from bumping his or her ass on the fender. It was never designed as a place to sit. These dirt-bikes-with-lights are okay if you plan to do serious off-road riding, but they aren’t great choices for practical street bikes.
    The extreme examples aren’t very useful for anyone but an off-road racer who has to ride his or her bike from trail to trail on public roads, but the bulk of dual-sport machines available today do make pretty good choices for first bikes, provided your legs are long enough to ride them comfortably—although they aren’t as tall as the extreme versions, they’re still tall enough to pose a problem for a lot of riders. Just throwing a leg over one can be a challenge if your inseam is less than thirty-two inches. Sitting that high gives you a commanding view of traffic, but if the seat is so high that you can’t hold up the bike securely at a stoplight, the height can become a safety issue. I once had a vertically challenged rider fall onto me when he dropped his tall dual sport at a stoplight. He couldn’t get his foot down securely and went tumbling over, almost taking me with him.
    More reasonable dual sports usually range in size from 400 cc to 650 cc, and these have more than enough power to keep up with traffic. They are light, maneuverable, and generally inexpensive to buy, operate, and insure. Plus they’re relatively simple so you can do most of the maintenance yourself if you have any mechanical experience at all; and if you do need to hire someone to work on them for you, the costs will be a lot less than for other types of bikes. Most of them have little or no bodywork that needs to be removed to change oil and tires or adjust valves, and because they only have one cylinder, they only have one set of valves to adjust. Since they have spoked wheels, most of them still use tube-type tires, making the repair of a flat tire a relatively inexpensive proposition, too.
    If you have any interest in driving off the beaten path, if you don’t mind not