The Baked Beans Tour 2022 - The Bikes

 

Doing a tour like this requires the proper bike. Sure, many riders will tell you that you can do it with anything, and although this may be true it is certainly more enjoyable with a well-adapted machine. 

For my buddy the choice was obvious. He rides a Triumph Tiger 800 XC nicknamed Hobbes. He bought that bike a couple of years ago with the purpose of touring with it, and that is what he has done! Last year he did a 1 month tour around Europe as his first big ride, and with the bike properly set up for such a long trip with all the necessary panniers and a comfort seat, he was well used to it for this year. It is a perfect touring bike as it is nimble and has just the right amount of power. 

As for me, I had the choice between my trusty Honda CB 1100 or my Triumph Scrambler 1200 XC that I bought last year. It was a pretty simple choice given the roads I was expecting to ride. The Scrambler is ideal for these conditions with the large wheels and superb Öhlins suspension. Add to that the fact that I'm not getting any younger, and it would be a lot easier on my knees. For packing, I had a magnetic tank bag to hold my essentials, and my buddy had made some space in one of his panniers for some more stuff. As it turned out, it was even better than expected!

The Baked Beans Tour 2022

 It has been far too long since I contributed something here on Anger Management, and don't believe for a second the rumours that this is because I have not been angry for a while. It's basically down to your run-of-the-mill laziness. Well that, and I have not really come across anything I felt like writing about... until now!

This summer a very good friend of mine from Sweden was doing a motorcycle tour across Europe and on his stop over to see us we had agreed that we would do a mini motorcycle tour together. The idea was to try and plan a nice ride over four days, and I set myself some pretty strict objectives for the route planning. In a nutshell, these were:

1. No highways and avoid other major roads to the extent possible
2. Ensure that the distance each day was around 250 km and that riding time would be about 6 hour
3. Include some legendary mountain passes in the Alps
4. Visit the Mediterranean for a swim

It took me a while for the planning, but in the end, I came up with something that I think really was able to meet the requirements, and allowed us to have an outstanding time.

The map for the four days looks like this:

Now you may wonder about the name of the tour. My buddy suggested it, and given the intense heat we experienced over the four days of riding, it really did seem appropriate!