This is a farewell to one of the enduro riding trails where I cut my dirt riding teeth. Conveniently located off Highway 99, the Cheakamus Canyon trail offered excitement, challenge and just a hint of danger. Inevitably, it’s been dumbed down as part of the Sea to Sky Trail, connecting the communities from Squamish to D’Arcy.

YouTuber HalfThrottle has an adventure bike sentiment that we can probably all get behind. Sure the video happens to be about his KLR, but we all have our bikes and if we’re lucky they hold a special place in our hearts and take us on grand adventures.

I don’t like salesman Jack much; my inner voice has dubbed him Jack, short for “Jackass”. Despite my introduction including I’m a former BMW R1200GS rider, he’s walked me over to a bike that, “would be perfect for me.” It is a KLR 250. A 250. I repeat, a 250. So what’s delivered me into the hands of the sexist now HOLDING THE HANDLEBARS FOR ME? As if I, a girl, couldn’t possibly hold the meagre 250 up by myself.

Given my resume marks out about five years as a storyboard and comic book artist, it’s nice to gain insight into how an artist like Icon’s Lukas Ketner found success in the motorcycle industry. From his penning of Icon’s “urban” helmet design and promotional materials you’d expect a tattooed badass, what you find in this video is rather different and insightful.

@Shuether on Twitter asked, “@NeilJohnston do you know if any of the KTM XC-W 2t series are plateable in AB or BC? The [Husky] WR300 is, so it would be an awesome trail weapon!” I didn’t have immediate knowledge of the issue so we quickly e-mailed the Insider for an answer.

Against our better advertising sales judgement, we’ve been honest about the problems we’ve encountered with our Ducati Multistrada 1200 S Touring (MTS 1200). As an eternal optimist though, I’ve felt a swell of anticipation …

The first review of our first Amazon Kindle Single, “Last Chance to Ride: Fish Lake”, is in, and if the printer were working I’d frame it. An Amazon’s Kindle Single is a short eBook, and potentially the salvation of long-form journalism as magazine’s continue to slide into decline. How they work and the opportunities they offer both writers and readers are quite brilliant, and point to the future of independent journalism.

Allow me a moment of cynicism. Perhaps, I’ve reached a point of over-connection through my Twitter, FaceBook and ADVRider accounts, but do we really need another social network to divert our attention from riding? …

I finally believe the press that the Canadian motorcycle industry is swirling down the drain of an economic downturn. The symptoms of an ailing industry have increasingly affected Canadian online media as motorcycle companies close regional offices, as press fleets dwindle and tension over perceived damage to test bikes increases. For those of us publishing on the web exclusively, the situation has worsened, as Rob Harris of CMGOnline.com, points out in his editorial CMG Call to Arms, which reveals the massive cash injection of Canadian print publications are receiving from the Harper Government to assist their move from print to the web.

A Chilcotin lake poised to be destroyed by a mine, that is ironically called Prosperity, that intends to fill it with rock waste and use as a tailings pond. An “easy” dirt road ride across British Columbia gone wrong, due to thousands of downed trees. These are the makings of “Last Trip to a Lost Lake” our recent article in the March issue of Cycle Canada (on stands now). Of course, there’s a story behind the story.

Slab City, “turn on, tune in, drop out”, this is a place to get at least one of those right. Gaining its appellation from the concrete slabs remaining from the flattened and abandoned WWII Marine Barracks Camp Dunlap, the slabs play host to hippies in shanty-town shacks, octogenarians RVs and hermits with a social life. But, the most notable resident is a man building a technicolor dream mountain.

Fuel; complain about paying for it, but not having enough is when it becomes a real pain. Especially in backwoods BC, where choosing the fun routes means gas stops are few and far between. By far we mean further than a KTM 690 Enduro R’s 12L stock tanks will carry you. Enter the Rally Raid Products UK Tank Kit, or the 9.5 litre solution for extending the range of our KTM 690 Hard Adventure R project.

After hefting the Honda Varaderos through the Baja, I came to a conclusion – I hate big bikes in sand. Of course, taking the back way out of Slab City is what you’d expect of a desert; sand and deep sand at that. The surprise? Perhaps, we’ve been too quick in dubbing Ducati’s Multistrada 1200 S Touring “the Princess”.

BMW stuntman Chris Pfeiffer heads up a hill on a G450X, a BMW sponsored bobsled heads down the hill thanks to gravity… all on the same track. What could possibly go wrong?

We’re in a bar, because if you’re going to kick off a series called “Road to Ruins” it needs to start in a bar. A properly seedy bar, one in a town where dreams haven’t just been dashed or faded, they’ve been bludgeoned to death and their corpses dissolved in a toxic stew.

While filming our upcoming adventure series, Road to Ruins, Kevin Miklossy captured this stunning shot of the Ducati Multistrada 1200 S at Slab City in south-eastern California.

Sometimes names stick, and if bikes have a temperament then our BMW R1200GS Adventure and the Ducati Multistrada 1200 S Touring have earned theirs. So, respectively meet Wolfgang and the Princess.

72 Hours, 3 days; waiting in anticipation it can seem an eternity, but three days to ride from Vancouver to Los Angeles? That can seem all too brief. And the deadline? The will call at the Wiltern for a sold out concert of Florence and the Machine. Conspiring against me the scheduling deities are cramming the ride with a border crossing, two business meetings, and pesky biological needs; eating, sleeping and washroom all taking time from a 2,048 kilometer direct route. So, it’s Neil and the Machine, a R1200GS Adventure, versus Florence and the Machine.