#JohnBurns

We saw a bunch of Honda X-ADV scooters on our pass through Rome a few weeks ago, and felt jealousy. When American Honda invited us to ride a new minimoto last week, we hoped against hope… alas, it was the Navi. For the new year, we can be even more covetous, as Honda Europe now has an ADV350 that’s bigger, badder, and cooler.

Who could forget MO‘s exclusive first test of the Kawasaki H2 SX SE way back yonder in 2018? Some of us would like to forget the first couple minutes of the video, but we maybe got carried away, and were forced to wax poetic by what a fantastic sport-touring conveyance that bike was. Is. The supercharger (just as we re-learned with the Z H2 in last week’s big nakeds comparison) imbued that bike with midrange torque far beyond what you’d expect from its 999 cc displacement – 89 lb-ft at the wheel – as well as truly nostril-flaring horsepower – 172 at just 10,300 rpm. Superb suspenders, electronic aids, long-days comfort, and outstanding Rivermark fit/finish put us over the top. It all made very short work of picking MO‘s Best Sport-Tourer of 2018.

We’ve loved the Kawasaki Versys 650 for a long time. Maybe too long? For 2022, the midsized Versatile System gets a bunch of upgrades to boost it into the modern era – electronic cruise control being not one of them. Perfect for all you who eschew modern comforts.

You really haven’t lived until you’ve been on back of a big-bore Vespa driven by a blissfully unaware person who just got her motorcycle license, pounding semi-floatingly over the expansion joints of an LA freeway at top speed on those tiny tires. Say, does the front end feel a bit light up there? No, that’s just our spirits, dear.

We’ve all been there. You want a new motorcycle, but you’re scared a Grom might be a little too much for you to handle. A man’s got to know his limitations, as Clint Eastwood famously said (but he also meant woman, child, and all other people however they identify).

The main beauty of Sardinia is the almost complete lack of Sardinians, which makes it hard to explain why the twisty roads that connect the villages on the Mediterranean’s second-biggest island are so perfectly maintained. The new Aprilia Tuareg 660 is up for all of them. There’s a lot of second and third gear work in there, which the optional quickshifter makes quick work of, and even the occasional first-gear corner when the fur is flying – also not a problem.

When is a pair of street motorcycle gloves worth $240? When you know they’re going to last a good long time, that’s when. If these new 4 Stroke 2’s are going to hold up as well as the 4 Stroke Evo originals I’ve been wearing for about the last decade, then 240 bucks is probably a bargain. I’ve got more than a few pairs of cheaper gloves that grew holes or fell apart over that ten-year interim – including some lesser Daineses – but then I’ve also got some cheaper ones that have held up really well.

We were kicking candidates back and forth for this year’s MOTY awards, when somebody threw out as a possible Best Standard the Honda NC750X. Hey wait a minute, I’m the only guy around here who ever liked the NC! Maybe my stately mature influence is rubbing off on the kids at last? For me, it was love at first ride of the original NC700X, way back in 2012. By then, I guess I’d been subjected to enough compromising positions on exotic high-maintenance motorcycles to appreciate the NC’s practical advantages and comfort – and I wasn’t even doing any of the maintaining.

Dear MOby,

You know what they say: It’s more fun to ride a slow motorcycle fast than a fast motorcycle slow. Yet another example of conventional wisdom baloney. It’s actually more fun to ride a fast bike fast, or even a medium-fast one. I’m pretty sure that’s why they keep building faster motorcycles all the time. Heck, you could argue faster bikes are also safer, because power can get you out of trouble just as easily as it can get you into it (once you’ve learned to ride, that is). And power can launch you out of corners, instead of incentivizing you to cling to every mph when you’re diving into them the way slow bikes do when ridden in packs of MOrons. Have you seen a Moto3 race? They’re faster mid-corner than the Moto2 or MotoGP bikes.

We already loved the sporty, overachieving little RC 390, but word just in from Austria tells us we’re about to love it even more. Looks aren’t everything, but they’re a lot, and nearly every body panel has been redrawn to better resemble KTM’s MotoGP racer. Weren’t we just wishing for something other than orange the other day? Two new color schemes include a classic KTM blue/orange.

It was just about a year ago when we sampled Triumph’s reborn Speed Twin for the first time on home soil, in a two-bike standoff against a way-more-expensive optioned-out BMW R nineT. At the time, we were slightly underwhelmed and had to rate the new Speed Twin second, by a hair.

Don’t look now, but the field of naked bikes slotting in just below the 1000cc mark is starting to rise – and we’re all the better for it. Maybe the OEMs have figured out that those big beasts in the upper echelons of naked bike performance are just too much for the more sensible among us. They’re too big, too fast, too powerful, with too much electronics, and too much of a price tag. For those of us still with a desire for naked bike fun, but at a slightly more moderate pace, we bring you the assembly of motorcycling you see before you.

By Peter Jones

I learned about a new-to-me thing this week in a fun Facebook discussion: Oppositional Defiance Disorder. This affects lots of kids who are so fed up and angry about being criticized for a thing, that they keep on doing that thing just to own the criticizer, even though they know the thing they’re doing is wrong and bad for them. Before psychology, ODD was probably best expressed as cutting off your nose to spite your face.