RUST Magazine: RUST #50

ADVENTURE
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anyone be coming up on me fast –
unlikely as the 1290 travels at a fair clip.
I don’t particularly like riding at night,
and especially not in the wet. The rain
sems to lift the spilled diesel, which you
can’t see, and after one momentary
slip in a roundabout I was on high alert
and really eased my way around them
for the rest of the ride, much to the
delight of the BMW drivers who carved
into them like they were playing Gran
Turismo, oblivious to the grip issues a
motorcyclist faces.
I had a tank bag and roll bag across
the rear of the KTM. If I was on a 690
that would make things cramped, on
the 1290 neither gets noticed, you could
load this beast up with four-times as
much stuff plus a pillion and it still
wouldn’t register – that’s one of the
beauties of the big ADVs. That said, this
is the R model – the rufty tufty action
bike – so the one-piece saddle isn’t that
generous to pillions, there’s a sense of
compromise there. There are probably
also Hardparts options, so all is not lost.
THE MORNING AFTER
The 1290 was in the driveway. So was
the pressure washer and a bucket of
hot and very soapy water. Oh, and a
bottle of Muc Off just to further ease the
strain. It still took three repeats of the
rinse-wash-rinse cycle to get the 1290
acceptably clean. An hour later when it
had dried I could see there were still so
many parts I had missed. But the clean
up isn’t that difficult. I appreciated the
50
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