Tag

Arizona

Browsing

Our man Scott Jones was out at the Arizona Mile recently, with the American Flat Track racing, doing what he does best. Shooting the fourth round of the season, Scott got to document the resurgence we’ve seen in American Flat Track racing.

As usual, his photos are outstanding, and we hope that we will see him at a few more AFT races this year. Above, a pack of AFT Twins riders chase down Brad Baker. Check out the other photos, after the jump. -JB

Back on the road again, and this time I’m out in Arizona with Yamaha North America, riding the recently updated 2016 Yamaha FJR1300 sport-tourer.

Tomorrow sees our group leaving Phoenix and heading up into Sedona, where the red earth and picturesque mesas should make for an epic backdrop to our full day of riding.

For those who don’t know, the FJR1300 is a model that Yamaha has been slowly evolving each model year, instead of making punctuated improvements every few years. This makes it a surprising machine for press launch, but it also happens to be an important one for us to evaluate.

The sport-touring segment is surprisingly hot right now, with 17% growth in the past year, thanks mostly to the Yamaha FJ-09. There are some who think that the sport-touring market is dead, supplanted by the adventure-sport category, yet for some veteran riders, the ethos of the Yamaha FJR1300 is ideal.

The big news for the 2016 model year is the addition of a new six-speed gearbox, which should make highway speeds a bit more friendly. We will also be keen to tryout the suite of electronics on the base model FJR1300A, and experience the electronic suspension on the FJR1300ES, both of which were on the 2015 models, but are new to us.

As usual, I will attempt to answer questions regarding the 2016 Yamaha FJR1300 from the road. We will have two days of riding on the machine, so that should be ample opportunity for A&R to get acquainted with this venerable sport-tourer, and give you the skinny on its qualities.

As before, if I don’t know an answer, I will try to get a response from the Yamaha personnel that are here with me in Arizona. So, pepper away.

You can follow our thoughts on the bike live via FacebookTwitter, and Instagram. You can also try searching for the hashtags: #FJR1300 for the thoughts of our colleagues as well.

The days are winding down now, with today being our last real day of this Broventure (tomorrow we make the long arduous trek from Las Vegas back to Santa Barbara). Our agenda is simple: go see the Grand Canyon and stop at the Hoover Dam.

It’s raining this morning, naturally, and a weather front is coming in behind us. This wouldn’t be much of an issue, except we have to back-track our way from Flagstaff to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. It would seem that we cannot escape the rain.

The trails and trials of Moab are behind us now, and all that remains is the long ride home, back to California. For as much “what if” planning that went into our preparation for this trip, we are surprisingly unscathed by our off-roading and touring adventures thus far.

I mean, Tim probably has a hairline fracture or severely torn ligament in his right wrist — a reward for an epic bike-before-body save on the Super Ténéré — but he continues to get punches on his Man Card by soldiering on with little complaint. Overall, our spirits are good.

Getting some greatly deserved slumber, we awoke to see that the rain has not left us from the previous day. It is coming down in waves, and making the process of getting out of our sleeping bags and tents a very undesirable prospect.

We have roughly 500 miles of riding planned for the day, as we plan to back-track out of Moab to get onto SR-95 South — our last great riding route of the trip. The excursion is a bit out of our way home, but all reports suggest it to be another epic ride, and for bonus points it will bring us close to the Grand Canyon, another sight Tim and I were hoping to see on this Broventure.

But before we can do that, we must first say goodbye to Moab, with its pantheon of geological wonder, and the trails and road that we navigated to see them.

It is a good thing that Tim has roughly a decade of experience in what can be only described as my “lucid understanding regarding the passage of time.” Or to put it another way, when on Thursday morning I said, “I want to be on the road by 8am,” what I really meant was 11am…ehh, maybe 11:19am. So much for our early start out of Las Vegas, and any hope of avoiding the brain frying heat, but our spirits were high, and ultimately, our timetable is self-imposed.

Getting on the road, the miles went by considerably fast…as least as fast as they can when it is again 104 degrees outside. Despite this though, we just couldn’t overcome the setbacks created by our late departure. Instead of the 270 miles to Bryce Canyon, we had to settle for a much shorter 180 mile trip to Zion — not that we are complaining though.

Moab, even the name sounds as foreign as its landscapes are to a city slicker like me. You see, there comes a point where you can only pound so much payment on your daily two-wheeled commute before you have to get away from it all…and with San Francisco currently undergoing its Bridgepocalypse, the timing seems right for Asphalt & Rubber to get a little dirt on its riding boots.

The truth is that I have wanted to go the parks that flank the Moab, Utah region since my early Boy Scout days. Once I got a car, it went on the short-list for road trip destinations; when I got a 4×4 it became the target for a four-wheeling adventure; and of course when I got a motorcycle…well, you get the idea. I have never made the trip happen though, but all that is going to change next week.

Just as Scott and David get back from Silverstone, covering what should be a very entertaining British GP, I will be embarking on a eight-day, 2,000+ mile, Santa Barbara to Moab and back, motorcycle trip. Like most of my foolish travel adventures, my college roommate Tim, a long-time riding buddy and occasional A&R helper, will make the adventure with me on two trusty steeds: a BMW R1200GS and Yamaha Super Ténéré.

Arizona is considering a bill that would allow Arizonian motorcyclists to lane-split when traffic is stopped. The proposed bill should make motorcyclists happy and help relieve some traffic congestion; however all is not well in the Grand Canyon State. After the proposal of bill HB 2475, the local ABC affiliate went to the streets to ask citizens what they thought of the proposal, and the reaction they got was not a positive one.

Arizona Motorsports Park, the $6 million, 155-acre, 16-turn, 2.23-mile racecourse outside of Glendale, Arizona, has won a crucial legal verdict from the Arizona Court of Appeals. The appellate court has ruled that the race track detrimentally relied on a permit provided by the county to build their facility, and is therefore entitled to continue using its property for racing events.