Marampa Motor

I have not been able to do much motorcycle riding in Japan this year. The weather has been cold with rain for months. Last year was apparently an odd one with low rainfall but this one seems wet so far. Seems in Japan there normally is no dry season. I made a small graph representing a year of averages (click to enlarge). Basically winter season is too cold to ride due to snow and ice. Then as

I finally made it to Koto Kinabalu to try some motorcycle riding in Sabah. Last time I was heading there I got food poisoning in Philippines and went back home. Fortunately this time round I arrived well and brought my mate from the Philippines along. It�s just an hour away from Manila but so different. Since I have had this ride planned for a long time it was a a snap to organise. I had my

I was on my way to Borneo from Thailand but was picking up my mate who lives in the Philippines on the way to ride Borneo with me. My other mate who had just ridden in Thailand with me wanted to come to visit our mutual friend living in the Philippines so we ended up with a small reunion and being all riders we decided to try for a ride together but there really was no time to do anything decent.

This post is the first part of a recent trip riding 3 countries in SE Asia. The other areas I visited were the Philippines and Borneo, Malaysia which I will follow up on shortly. I have already toured the northern mountains of Thailand twice and was not initially planning to return this Christmas however a opportunity arose to meet up with my long time ride partner from Australia first in

Came across an excellent site by the New South Wales government promoting safety that also has a nice section about the best roads to enjoy riding in the state of NSW. So refreshing to see compared to the strong anti motorcycle government across the border in Queensland. Do take a look at it here

I had an idea to do a ride in Indonesia for a while now but have been side tracked a couple of times before getting there. Mentioning I will ride Indonesia and everybody seems to say �oh Bali� but IMO that is almost a different country within Indonesia. Focused on money with expensive resorts for those who seek to be whisked from airport to luxury hotel room. Phuket, Boracay and Bali are just not

Seems my rides in Malaysia are popular and people continue to ask where to rent a big bike in Kuala Lumpur. One answer is The Big Bike Shop in Puchong. I have rented there and they are good guys. They have a variety of rentals, helmets and jackets too. I took a Kawasaki ER6N pictured here. Unfortunately their web site still seems to be offline. Jump on Facebook where you can find them and send

Seems a long time since I have been for a ride but that ends in a couple of days when I touch down in Northern Thailand to ride the superb roads there. I will be renting one of my favourite bikes again, the Kawasaki ER6N. Nimble and all day comfortable with more than enough power from it�s 650 twin. Nan district, Northern Thailand Hopefully the air will be mostly clear unlike the last time I

Including Northern NSWIn my many years of riding in South East QLD I came to best like the area on either side of the border with NSW. I have grouped the rides here under the title of Gold Coast as everyone knows that area but more correct geographically would be to say the border ranges area. The best riding is really just over the border. The area from there south to Byron bay and inland to

I have collected all my older posts about roads around Brisbane on this page. Gold Coast and Northern NSW roads can be found here. Please note many of these posts are old and lack content. Some date back to the 90�s from my old home page site when I first started writing about alternative places to ride and were ported over here. I have neglected this part of the blog not thinking anyone was

Updated 2014If you are going to tour another country or even just another state by motorcycle then a GPS can really make navigating easy however there are a number of things to consider before purchasing and also some user tricks you should know.As of writing there is still only one brand that accepts user defined routes and has global detailed map coverage and that is Garmin. I am surprised that

I did a 1/2 day ride north this morning and noticed a lot of motorbikes out but most of them were parked at coffee shops with riders holding steaming mugs with both hands, crouched over, trying to get warm. Looking at all the expensive motorcycles I am guessing it is not lack of money that stops people from having proper winter gear but their desire to dress a certain way, to project a

I think that was a motorcycle slogan once. I know I have said it before in this blog somewhere but today the thought came to me anew not recycled from the past. I was riding my old favourite loop into NSW via Mt Lindsey, Summerland way, Kyogle, Uki, Numinbah and was thinking what a great ride this is and I should call it, and todays post, old faithful. But that sounds like riding is not so

At last a weekend where it was not thunderstorms. About time the weather came good and today it brought everyone out for a ride. Had no real plan and decided to retrace some of my last ride that I had to abort due to rain. Over Currumbin and zig zag around via North Arm to avoid Murwillumbah, then went to see how the view was from Baker Road on such a clear morning. And I was not disappointed.

I went for a 1/2 day ride over the border ranges today to do some thinking and again noted Saturday to be a more relaxed ride without the usual Sunday distractions. Now is a great time to visit this area as there is still many trees in Spring colours. (as at date of this post) Always a scenic ride it is made even better when all the Jacaranda trees create a purple roadside carpet. The