Late last year in October I sold the Honda VTR250 so I could upgrade to a larger motorcycle. I enjoyed the motorcycle tour back in March 2012 and hope I will be able to do a few more of these. I also had fun on the off-road parts of the tour so my next bike had to be more capable of doing these kinds of rides. I was looking at adventure tourers and the Honda Transalp and BMW 650gs were possible upgrades. My problem is my height and adventurer tourers are not low due to there nature of be able to go off the beaten track. I looked at wide variety of bikes and the Suzuki DR650 seemed the most capable offroad bike compared to the others and was very cost effective It had a high seat height compared to the 650GS but the seat is narrow which allowed me to just touch the ground. The suspension also sags a little when sitting on it. The DR650 is also relatively lite for 650cc bike and compares similarly to the old vtr250 in weight. This provided me some assurance as a shorter rider. So in the end after taking a few for test rides I made up my mind and bought a second hand 2008 model with 710km on the clock.
The video above is the first long distance ride on the bike with some dirt roads. I really like the upright seating position which is especially good when commuting. It feels competent off road, which currently not the case for the rider! but that will come.
