I miss my scooter. I really do. No, not the little red push-along thing I had as a kid, but the 650 cc Suzuki Burgman I had as a big kid. Now, before you click off thinking, “I thought this was an ADV site. I don’t want to hear about a lame scooter,” bear with me, because adventure comes in many forms. Sometimes, riding a machine that seems ill suited to the task can add a little spice to the exploit.
In a lifetime of motorcycling, my friend Norm has had literally hundreds of motorbikes – everything from thousand-cc crotch rockets, big, lazy sport tourers, oilhead, airhead and brick BMW’s and just about everything else in between. Until very recently he used to swap bikes with the same frequency that some of us change our underwear, but sooner or later, yet another Suzuki Burgman 650 would appear. To the best of my knowledge he’s had five or six of the things.
Turns out the Burgman is a decent little tourer, even two-up! Photo: Nick Adams
Like many motorcycle snobs I regarded scooters as being a lesser breed of machine, suitable only for urban use if you couldn’t find anything better. Growing up in the UK, I’d had a series of unreliable, pathetically sluggish Lambrettas until I graduated to “real” motorcycles. But I knew Norm had ridden across Canada on one of his Burgmans, and it was his mount of choice when we rode up the James Bay Road (now renamed the Billy Diamond Highway). So one day, at his insistence, I gave one a try.
Surprised? You bet! It was fast. It handled. It had good brakes and, after getting used to having nothing between my knees, was hugely comfortable and spacious. When my wife rode with me, I couldn’t even feel she was there, and the extra weight had virtually no impact on performance. Cash changed hands and soon there was a big, blue Burgman in my garage.
We had been talking about heading from Ontario to explore the Avalon Peninsula in Newfoundland, but since she doesn’t care for grinding along four-lane highways, she flew out to St. John’s while I rode the scooter. Cruising at 120 kph at 4500 rpm was effortless, with bags of power for overtaking and by the end of the first day I was in Fredericton, New Brunswick—1122 kilometers from home. Two days later, after the seven-hour ferry ride and another 1542 km, I was in St. John’s.
How far would *you* ride a scooter? And would you include the unpaved wilds of northern Quebec and Labrador? Image: Google Maps
To say the scooter was the ideal machine for our two-week tour of eastern Newfoundland doesn’t really do it justice. It was a serene, effortless way to travel, but eventually it was time to return home. I left Chris to fly again, but instead of heading back down the dreary Trans-Canada Highway once more, I headed north, caught the ferry across to Labrador and hit the Trans-Labrador Highway. As I left the ferry dock, three riders, carrying spare tires and decked out as if they were about to head across the Sahara, cut me dead.
Although the race was on to pave the road, at that time there were still long stretches of gravel between Port Hope-Simpson and Happy Valley-Goose Bay. Tricky on the scooter? Not at all. Despite the Burgman’s 15-inch front and 14-inch rear street tires, it handled the gravel perfectly well. I had no interest in racing along at highway speeds, but I wasn’t dawdling either.
Between Happy Valley-Goose Bay and Labrador City, the road was fully paved, so whether I was on the latest ADV bike or a lowly scooter made not a scrap of difference, but once south of Labrador City, there were still long sections of gravel, some loose, some hardpacked, but nothing that upset the Burgman. While riding long sections of unpaved road, regardless of which bike you’re riding, there are usually one or two buttock-clenching moments when the front wheel starts to wash out or the rear starts to slide. I can’t remember a single moment when I’d wished I was on a more “suitable” bike.
Tough work, but someone’s got to do it. Photo: Nick Adams
On one of the loose gravel sections south of Fermont, I rounded a corner to see a young guy on a V-Strom parked at the side of the road. I stopped, as you do, to make sure he was OK, but he was just taking a break, and, as I soon discovered, was on a lengthy “lifetime adventure” from his home in Czechia. While we chatted, Jakob kept staring at the Burgman, eventually saying, in that annoyingly perfect English so many Europeans manage, “We have these in Czechia, but nobody would think to take them on journeys like this. Perhaps to the seaside once a year….”
Their loss. These big scooters are capable. Good on the highway. Comfortable laden with passenger and camping gear. Perfectly manageable on unpaved roads. I wouldn’t want to venture too far down proper off-road trails and tracks – there simply isn’t enough ground clearance or suspension travel – but for the uses to which most motorcycles are actually put, it works perfectly well.
I’m not suggesting everyone rush out and buy a scooter. If there’s any point to this rambling, it’s this: you can have adventures on any bike. It’s just a matter of leaving your preconceptions and prejudices at the door and riding what you have. Sometimes, the perfect tool for the job isn’t really. Would the latest ADV bike with electronically managed, long-travel suspension, traction control and a gazillion horsepower been a better companion? Faster? Certainly. Safer? Possibly. More enjoyable? I’m not convinced about that one.
Adventure isn’t a place, a destination, or a foreign country, it’s a state of mind. You don’t need the “perfect” bike for your bucket-list trips. The one you have is probably all you need. So what if it’s a bit unreliable. Take tools. So what if it wasn’t designed for unpaved roads. Take it easy and have fun. Go anyway. That’s where adventure lies.
