We all love to pretend to some degree we’re someone or something else. In my head when I’m riding dirt, I’m blasting around like Shane Watts. I think this is a good sort of pretending, as it can give you some confidence in your ability. Or it might not, I don’t know your situation. The pretending folks seem to shoot to the moon with is with regards to their glorified street bikes…..AKA “ADVenture Bikes”.

Surely we’ve all seen the pictures of BMW R1200\R1250GS’s been blasted around offroad, or Chris Birch taking KTM’s latest and greatest super ADV bike through what is seemingly a Hard Enduro training course. We all understand that this is all Sales & Marketing, yet folks seem to get confused about the one simple fact: These bikes are glorified Street Bikes, with Paid riders Abusing them.

If you actually use your super jumbo ADV bike as shown in any of the advertisements, and think that you’ll have such great success, you’re in for a world of hurt. You ARE going to break things on the bike. Your stock suspension is going to be INADEQUATE. You are also going to be dealing with more repairs than had you bought the right tool for the right job.

It’s very easy to fall into the trap that these bikes are setting for folks too. They take a base street bike, rake it out a bit, add some 21\18 (or 19\17) spoked wheels, add an extra inch or two of suspension and presto change-o, you’ve now convinced the public that a street bike is a race spec enduro racer. So now you just gotta glance over the tiny fact that these are ~600# bikes. Yes. 600#. And that’s before you go full ADV and bolt on every pile of protection bits, which will likely bend or break, or cause more damage in a simple fall.

So what can you do about it? You can either lower your expectations to an acceptable level of realism. Buy the right tool for the right job. Or whinge about it on the internet like a 12 year old who isn’t getting their way. It’s as easy as that. Don’t expect the glorified street bike Adventure Bike to be 250# enduro in the dirt and conversely, don’t be surprised if that 250# enduro isn’t that comfortable blasting a 500 mile day on the highway.

Be dreamy about riding for sure. Just don’t be stupid.