Last year, at least 4 BikeMe members bought KTM Superduke 1290s. This is the review they should’ve written, ages ago. Instead, they’ve been selfishly basking in the glory of this motorcycle all this time, keeping their mouths shut and their keyboards dry. Well they can hide this secret no longer because What a bike. What…. a fucking….. motorcycle!

I got to ride Daz’s 1290 in the Snowy Mountains recently. I rode it from Cabramurra to Khancoban, a distance of 70KMs, 90% of which is tight and twisty mountain road. I cannot think of any bike better suited to this kind of road than the 1290.

I don’t usually immediately feel comfortable on a bike and start going fast. Even on the Tuono, it has taken me a while to get comfortable with it, playing with suspension settings etc. But the 1290, I got on it, thought I’d take it easy and then immediately proceeded to float the front wheel in second gear at a Hundred kilometres an hour. I throttled off at an approaching corner and suddenly realizing I was going a lot faster than I thought I was, slammed the front brakes hard. The bike pivoted around the contact patch of the front tyre threatening to lift the rear wheel, the front forks shook a little and I thought I’m going to lose the front on the first corner I hit. Fuck! But the bike settled, turned into the corner effortlessly and I laughed in my helmet like a loon.

I have written about my obsession and subsequent disillusionment with the previous generation SuperDuke 990. The 1290 somehow manages to improve on every aspect of the 990 while still keeping its heritage intact and being unmistakeably, a SuperDuke. The power and torque on this monster is ridiculous. 1st gear throttle wheelies are so 1990s. 3rd gear roll-on wheelies, now that’s what this bike brings to the table! I gunned it out of a tight bend in 2nd gear, saw a short straight ahead, short-shifted to third and snapped the throttle. Wooooaaaahhh, down boy! I was not prepared for that, at all. Forget traction control, wheelie control or launch control, this bike gives you adrenalin control! It’s like the throttle is connected straight to your adrenalin gland and a twist of the wrist is like squeezing the gland directly to squirt pure adrenalin into your blood stream. It guns out of corners with an intense connection to the tarmac. Despite the phenomenal torque, I never felt like I would break traction on the rear. In the wet it may be a different story but the throttle works both ways eh?

While we’re on the subject of throttle, it was immediately apparent that the throttle response is much improved over the 990. The 990 had immediate response but I found it a bit too snatchy, especially on rough roads. The 1290 is spot on. There is no lag when you twist but it’s not always trying to get off a leash. In fact, the smoothness of the whole drivetrain was refreshing. While the 990 was slightly agricultural, the 1290 is refined. The suspension is another area of vast improvement in my opinion. Sprung softer than the 990, the suspension is more compliant and soaks up real road surfaces much better while still providing excellent damping for hard riding. The front gets lively (and that’s how you know it’s still very much a SuperDuke) but it’s on the exciting side of lively, not the alarming side. You still sit right on the front wheel with a commanding position over the bike and the road. The turn-in is instant just like the 990. The cockpit is nicer though and the electronic dash adds to the feeling of modernity and refinement. It’s a comfortable bike too, more so than my Tuono. In fact, in every aspect, this is a better bike than a 2007 Tuono. There are few bikes I would say that about despite the Tuono being 9 years old. But the SuperDuke is clearly a generation ahead. The only place the Tuono gets one over the 1290 is mid corner stability on sweepers but then that’s just pure geometry. Not that the 1290 is unstable or anything but the Tuono essentially has the genes of a sportsbike while the 1290 has those of a Gorilla crossed with a meerkat.

When we stopped to refuel at Khancoban, Daz said it has a 300KM range and he didn't need fuel. I said I'm not giving the keys back, lets keep riding.

A bike that performs as well as it looks? 

When the final finishing touch on the 1290 SuperDuke was applied at the Austrian factory and the covers were taken off, the engineers stared at it for a long time and racked their brains to think of any way they could make this an even better bike. In a flash of eureka they realized that the only way to improve the 1290 was to add more Daz. So they went out and did just that.

I’m not a terribly competitive person by nature. I have no burning desire to be the best, the fastest, the hardest, the biggest. This is probably the reason why despite being amongst the top 5 junior Lawn Tennis players in the country (India) at age 14, I was never able to take the leap to turn Pro. I guess if you want to be a professional sportsperson, you need to have the desire to beat people, to want to be the best, to have that killer instinct to do whatever it takes to WIN!

It’s not that I never had it. Sometimes I did. I have come back in matches from 5-0 down in the final set, saved match points and made a miraculous recovery to win. But those were special and rare moments when something clicked and I was able to hyper motivate myself to actually care about the result of the game. To care about NOT LOSING. Usually I was happy to just give it my best shot and accept the result either way.

When I ride a motorcycle it’s the same, whether on road or track. I’m just out to have a good time, race my mates for fun. Sometimes I’m faster, other times they’re ahead of me. I ride at my pace and will not be drawn into a pace that’s faster than I’m comfortable with.

But sometimes, just sometimes, I get drawn into a death race. Where 2 gladiators face each other with jousting sticks and charge at each other. And both parties know that neither will give an inch or flinch, to the death.

It happened on the Snowy Mountains Highway while I was following Daz. Daz was doing about 150 and I was following him comfortably, enjoying the ride, the scenery and the feeling of contentment one gets while riding with close mates. Then Daz started pulling away. I happily upped the pace too as the road was smooth as silk, traffic was non-existent and visibility extended a long long way as the road snaked its way over the rolling high country approaching Kiandra.

But Daz’s charge was relentless, he kept winding on that throttle and soon we were well into the 200s. Now, I don’t often do those speeds on the road as there are so many unknown factors, the scariest and likeliest of which is wildlife, which can jump out of nowhere in your path. Or mechanical failure. I once saw a mate’s bike flung into the air along with him and his pillion. They both landed hard and one of them lay motionless in the middle of the road for a very long time. It was mechanical failure. The nut holding the gearbox shaft had come loose and the rod moved outward, locking the chain. It was instant and devastating. They were doing 80Kilometres an hour. If that happens to someone at 250KMPH on a road, bits of them could be harder to find than the wreckage of MH370.

As these thoughts floated in my preoccupied head and the pace reached the mid 200s, I was about to pull the pin and back off. Let Daz have his victory, there is always beer to drown my shame in. But then Daz made a mistake. A mistake so innocuous that he wouldn’t even have realized it’s a mistake. It’s an action every motorcyclist makes a hundred times a day without it being a mistake. But on that day, in that instant, it was a mistake. Daz looked in his mirror.

Now, every motorcyclist worth the rubber on his wheels knows what that means. If the guy ahead of you is doing 250KMPH and he knows you’re chasing him, when he looks in his mirror he does not have your safety in mind. He’s not checking to see if your headlight is working or your indicator is inadvertently on. He’s seeing if the size of your balls is expanding or diminishing. If your commitment to the death race is pure and complete or half-hearted and ill-formed. He is checking if he has broken you.

In that instant while Daz is looking in his mirror,  I imagine the beginnings of a smirk appearing across his lips as he sees the Tuono’s twin headlights start to recede in his mirrors. And something flips in my head.

Not today. I am not losing today.

Fuck You. It’s fuckin ON now muthafucka!

For the next 15 minutes we both test the upper limits of our bikes and our abilities and Daz tests the fuck out my commitment. But I stay strong. Everytime he looks in the mirror, the Tuono’s lights shine big and bright. If something unexpected happens we’re both going to jail, or hell. But I’ll be fucked if I flinch first.

We surf the ragged edge of the human experience for longer than many people will possibly experience in a lifetime. And those 15 minutes are a quantum leap in my understanding of my motorcycle, of Daz, of the Snowy Mountains, of myself. I realize that I can concentrate longer, dig deeper and fight harder than I thought.

It’s in moments like these where we extend ourselves beyond our immediate capabilities, that we grow. It’s when we stretch ourselves beyond what our mind tells us is possible, we win.

Because the ultimate race is not with anyone else. It’s with ourselves. It’s not to be better than anyone else. It’s to be the best YOU can be. And that race never ends.

It’s always a race!

There is a special kind of butterfly that flutters in my stomach the morning I leave for a BikeMe run. This butterfly is big, restless and noisy. It’s no ordinary butterfly. Just as a BikeMe run is no ordinary motorcycle trip. There is a hint of madness, a sense of impending Armageddon, a suspense hanging heavy and low like mists over a rainforest valley. You never quite know how your day is going to pan out on a BikeMe run. There’s no set route, there is a starting point and a destination. And you make it up as you go along. You don’t know how many people are going to turn up. You may be alone or there may be 50 people. There’s no hand holding for the slow or the infirm, the herd travels at the pace of the fastest, not the slowest. As you head out of your home in the early dawn, in your heart you know that something spectacular is going to happen on this run. You just don’t know where, when, how and with whom. But you don’t want to miss it when it happens.

I started the trip with Daz and that set the tone for the weekend. Daz is one of those really fucken hardcore people you read about on the internet, except he's real. Nothing fazes this man. He will ride a thousand miles with you in the middle of the night just because you asked him to. He will ride the pants clean off the fastest bikes on the planet. But he also has the ability to sweet talk the sternest, cuntiest cop out of giving him a ticket for exceeding the speed limit by 200KMPH. And as you lie in a gutter, stupefied by alcohol, he will quietly clean the puddle of puke around and on you. And he will do all of this with an unassuming smile, in a matter of fact kinda way like he’s making tea. They say anything can be improved by adding more Daz. I concur. Daz and I destroyed some roads this weekend – Snowy Mountains Highway, Cabramurra Road, Granya Gap, Murray Valley Highway, Elliott Way. We chased each other all over the high country at the limits of our abilities, never more than a few feet from each other’s back wheel.

On Granya Gap, in the shadows of a setting sun. Daz is leading me by 5 feet at manic pace and we’re both leaned on the edge of our tyres around a blind left hander when a rabbit runs out 5 feet from his front wheel. We both hold our nerve and our lines, with not the slightest hesitation we plow straight on and he misses it by inches. A lesser rider would’ve panicked, stood the bike up or grabbed the front brake, likely ending in disaster for one or both riders. It takes a lot of confidence and trust to ride with someone at those speeds, so close and for so long. But I’d do it any day with Daz.

I met the world famous racing commentator and incorrigible womaniser, Boon. He had promised to autograph my chest if I beat him on the Granya Gap so I took along a special brown marker that colour matches my nipples so he can use my left one for one of the O’s in his name. With a carrot like that dangling in front of me, it should come as no surprise that I ended up beating him on the Granya Gap.

Talking of beating, I finally met Dougall this weekend. Or Mr. Systema. Systema is a Russian Martial Art invented and used by the spetsnaz for hand to hand combat. Dougall is an expert practitioner and teacher of this most interesting fighting technique. Actually, it’s more than just a fighting technique as Dougall explained and demonstrated to a few of us. To say my mind was blown as he brought people (including myself) to their knees with a slow motion movement and then made the pain disappear leaving a feeling of mildly euphoric well-being, is like saying there is some possibility of a bear shitting in the woods.

Of course I was stoked to ride, drink and break meat with my brother Boris once again. Boris rides strong and hard regardless of which motorcycle he’s riding. On various occasions, I’ve followed him at very high speeds through all sorts of twisties on an Indian Chief, a V4 Tuono, a ZX14 and a Triumph Rocket3. He always rides the same. Strong and hard. He doesn’t care that he’s on a 400KG cruiser and there’s a Panigale behind him. He will try to beat that Panigale till the last breath in his body. Is Racing, of course. On the early stages of the Snowy Mountains Hwy this time, there was Boris on the Rocket3, Scott on the Panigale and me on the Tuono. I followed Scott for a bit then went past and sat behind Boris for a while. I like to follow people closely but this time I couldn’t. Because the mega fucken torque of the Rocket was uprooting gravel from inside the road. Yes, Gravel locked and held in place by solidified tar was being rudely ripped out and hurled from the back tyre of that monster bike! And the sparks! Every tight corner Boris was leaning the bloody thing so far over I’m surprised he had any foot pegs left at all after the weekend.

Dan, the creative genius behind the ground breaking BikeMe videos is a man with long femurs and vulnerable feet. He’s hardcore in his own way doing some big, high speed Ks on a KTM 690 Adventure with dual sport tyres, waving like a sock in the wind. But apparently he doesn’t like being crash tackled by a stealthy darkie, all but invisible in the dark night. Who knew?

I was fizzed beyond repair to meet the southern clan and those mad fuckers from Team SCR. So much laughter, so few fucks given, such high speeds.

So…TumbaRumba did not disappoint. I met mates, old ones and new. Rode roads, old ones and new. Discovered myself, the old one and new. For events like these are an education and a regeneration as much as they are a celebration. And it all starts and ends with Motorcycles.

Here's some pics from the trip in some random order.