Dirt & Trail Aug2020

People from the coastal areas, farms, small towns,
other cities, other countries and possibly every other
place in the entire universe might thoroughly disagree,
but Jo’Burg is a truly lekker place. We have no sea, no
newsworthy scenery, no long-standing history, and our
architecture is mediocre at best, but it is a great place
to live.
The people are some of the friendliest on earth,
there is a plethora of good places to wine and dine,
anything you need – even at 2am on Christmas Day – is
available and it has a feel-good vibe. People might not
believe me, but when you’ve lived here your entire
life then everywhere else, even with towering heights
of magnificence, seas of aquamarine delight and
buildings aged in splendour, feels somehow lacking.
Don’t recommend it to friends from abroad as a
place to visit on their holidays – Cape Town takes
that honour – but as a place to live and work, there is
nowhere finer.
With that said, it has one massive drawback – snow.
Or the lack thereof. There was a particular lack of
powdery, white gold while I was growing up. I would
lie atop my bunk bed in my room staring lustfully at
my Calvin and Hobbes comic (I was a nerd) and their
adventures aboard their toboggan and then looking
hopelessly outside at the sunny, winter landscape and
the heartbreakingly mild temperatures. This has left a
psychological hole in my existence, one I intended to fill.
The news broke on a Thursday morning, as
shivering blue hands held a cracking newspaper
aloft. The headlines were unmistakable: “Heavy Snow
Warning This Weekend!”
I checked my calendar and found it to be full of
important things that needed doing, so I buried the
calendar in the yard and phoned KTM.
Team Orange has joined the ranks of small
adventure providers with their 390 Adventure, a bike
that triggers the question: what took you so bloody
long? The 390 Duke has become a legend in its own
right, and the adventure equivalent can only be good.
Despite this, the 390 Adventure has also joined the
ranks of other small-capacity adventure machines
receiving criticism and ridicule from “real” adventure
riders who see them as some sort of gimmicks built
out of recycled toilet paper in Indian sweatshops.
Weirdly, to these people, the 390 Duke is excellent, and
the 390 Adventure somehow isn’t.
Flying in the face of social media idiocy, the 390
Adventure flew down the R57 with the smog of
Sasolburg shrinking ever smaller in the horizon behind
it, and the vastness of the Free State growing mightier
ahead. The bike was cruising merrily between 130km/h
and 140km/h, a fact that was doubtful when I first
picked the bike up. Through Joburg traffic, it felt plucky,
but it seemed to get revvy as it approached 120.
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