Total Motorcycle Community Forums

I am posting this for the benefit of guy's who may not know what to do, here is the story.

My friend and I and the 2 Goose decide to do an overnighter in a small B&B that I know out in the middle of nowhere.





No kidding we can ride these kinds of roads for 100kms and not see another vehicle.

I was working from memory and took a left turn instead of a straight and at 160 kmh the tar disapeared. No warning signs, the heat shimmer off the road blurred everything ahead and the road went from tar to a dust road. We were about a 100 metres when we realised what was happening, The ZX12R behind me had about a 300 metre gap and he saw the dust come up off my bike and had a little more time. We both knew not to panic and that we had to ride it out and not jam on brakes . It took us a good 500 metres for us to slow and stop safely. I thought my buddy was going to crap me out for taking the wrong turn but as he drew next to me he lifted his visor and shouted, " that was fun lets do it again"

Although we were pretty calm about the whole thing, we both realised that it could have been worse, we were moving, both had pillions, full panniers and backpacks. Our experiance helped us and in turn we hope we can pass this on.



Here you can see where the road ended.

Moral of the story, do not panic, do not slam on brakes, use brakes gently and take your time to stop.

Sure your buddy thought it was fun, but how did the Goose take it?

By the way, that's exactly how all the roads in Arkansas end. Get just a bit away from where visitors of the state will be passing through and WHAM, cheapo state gov't pulls the road right out from under you.

good thing the road didn't completely end! Make you want to get a dual-sport so you can travel those kind of roads. And the far hill in those first two pics looks awfully a lot like a nice jump on a bike

The really great thing about the girls is that they are experianced too. My mate is an ex racer and his Goose is only too happy that he is not on the track any more but she knows how well he rides and she is a great pillion. In fact she is the only one outside of my family I would trust on the back of my bike. My Goose likes to ride on the track as my pillion and her favourite track is the world famous Kayalami track where SA holds the GP's. We are a couple of lucky lads for sure.

We get roads like that around here too.

Gee maybe BMW should think about making a K1200GS just for you guys

That would be one wild dual sport.

that road in the first pic looks like a good place to test out the top speed on the K1200 (it think it tops out around 300kph ). Of course in Africa there could be an elephant or other large animal in the middle of the road over the next hill.

I have had full out on my K1200S, with the Goose on the back and the speedo showed 290, but true speed must be less than that. The good thing on those roads is that you can maintain 230- 250 for 30-40 min stretches at a time, the bad part is we chew the hell out of our tyres.

I hate it when that happens. Particularly when you're enjoying a nice, straight, deserted piece of blacktop by exercising your engine's horses I've had this happen a couple of times on unfamiliar roads and all you can do is grip the tank with your knees, grip the seat with your butt, relax your hands on the bars and hope nothing scary appears in front of your front wheel as you coast to a stop.

Every time this has happened, I've wondered if it would have been too much trouble for the highway dept. to put up a simple sign that says "Pavenment Ends".

flyn you guys get it worse in AZ too. You could end up with that deep soft sand at the end of the pavement. I remember that crap from when I lived there. Or there was sand/slickrock mix at the end of the pavement. I remember going through 3 sets of tires a year on my mountain bike riding slickrock in the canyons, the stuff is like sandpaper.

Those look like better roads than we get in the US too. Our backroads tend to be in really bad shape.

viewtopic.php?t=6783

Have a look at this thread, we have some really good roads.