Adventure Rider Radio – Motorcycle Podcast

In 2003, Bryan Jones and his wife, Max, joined a guided motorcycle tour through Cambodia , expecting a challenging but well-run adventure motorcycle trip through jungles, villages, and remote roads. What they got instead was something very different — aging bikes, a guide who kept disappearing, and a journey that quickly became unpredictable. 🔗 Show Notes & Links: Find photos, links, and reso...

In December 2019, Lisa and Simon Thomas left their motorcycles and gear in the United States, planning to return after a short trip home to the UK. More than six years later, those bikes are still there — and their lives have gone in a very different direction. This episode lives in the space between what was planned and what actually happened. We talk about building a life around long-term travel...

Cody Weber and a small group of experienced motorcycle riders set out on a planned day ride near Green River, Utah , traveling through canyon country, dry riverbeds, and remote desert terrain. The ride appeared well prepared: riders who knew each other, a route that seemed manageable, and time taken beforehand to organize motorcycles, gear, supplies, and navigation. What unfolded next isn’t unusua...

In Kevin Staples’ mind, there was always a point where the trip would end. He didn’t expect to get through. The goal wasn’t success — it was simply to go far enough to say he’d tried. To ride up to the wall, touch it, and be told to turn back. So he kept doing exactly that. Showing up. Asking the question. Taking one more step, fully expecting it to be the last. That isn’t how it played out. By th...

For many motorcycle riders, this time of year isn’t about motion or miles—it’s about reflection. About looking back at where we’ve been, the choices we made along the way, and what still lies ahead. The road doesn’t always demand constant movement. Sometimes, the most important moments happen when things go quiet—when we take stock, reconnect, and remember why we ride in the first place. Wherever...

Slow-speed skills matter — especially on heavy adventure motorcycles. But if that’s where your training stops, there are real situations where it starts working against you. Because sometimes control doesn’t come from crawling — it comes from the right momentum at the right time. Clinton Smout from SMART Performance Centre joins us to talk about what happens when the trail gets rough and the bike...

Riding a motorcycle through Laos pushes both nerve and skill—potholes big enough to swallow a car, sudden water crossings, deep mud, and even the possibility of an elephant stepping onto the trail. A team from Rally for Rangers , led by Steve Zuschin , recently tackled these extreme conditions as they crossed Laos to deliver new motorcycles to frontline Rangers. The ride blended rugged, technical...

Fogging is something most motorcycle riders just put up with — cracking the visor, wiping it, trying to manage it on the fly. But it’s more than an annoyance; it’s a visibility problem, and visibility is safety. What many motorcycle riders don’t realize is that there are real solutions, not myths or quick roadside fixes, but tools and technologies that actually work when you plan ahead. In this ep...

On this episode of DEEP TROUBLE … two motorcyclists head to mid-Wales for a weekend of trail riding on the historic Strata Florida. It’s November, it’s wet, and Strata Florida is known for its water crossings. The plan is simple — get out, ride the lanes, and finally tick this legendary trail off the list. But as you’ll hear, conditions in the Welsh hills can change fast… and what starts as a stra...

In 2022, long-distance riders Wendy Crockett and Ian McPhee set out to break a Guinness World Record for the longest motorcycle journey completed in a single country. Their plan: ride to all 50 U.S. state capitals in alphabetical order, linking them into a continuous route. It sounded simple on paper, but almost nothing went the way they expected. Mechanical failures, illness, a cracked frame, a v...

This Rider Skills episode is a practical guide to roadside motorcycle tire repair for adventure and dual-sport riders . Instructor Clinton Smout shares hard-earned methods for plugging tubeless tires, patching or replacing inner tubes, breaking and seating beads without a shop, quick leak-finding, bent-rim workarounds, and true limp-home repairs. We compare compressor vs CO₂, talk what to pack (pl...

Some riders are planners, while others seem to thrive amid chaos. Israel Gillette fits into that second group. He grew up in Tennessee, working in his father’s cabinet shop, and somehow that evolved into a life that has taken him between Romania, racing, carpentry, and motorcycle riding across continents. When we featured him on the show in 2023, he’d already experienced his share of close calls —...

What started as a nine-day motorcycle trip through Bosnia, Croatia and Slovenia took a sudden and serious turn. Riding the TET, Philipp Amann and his friends were well into their journey when one of the riders fell ill but insisted on continuing. When he made the decision to turn back, his friends chose to ride with him, unaware of how quickly his condition was deteriorating. It’s a story about go...

When the life she’d planned took an unexpected turn, Kathleen Perry had to find her footing again. The quiet retirement she and her husband had imagined was gone when he passed away — so she reached back to something she’d set aside long ago: a dream to wander. She set her sights on three places — Prudhoe Bay, Ushuaia, and Nordkapp — three dots on the map. And to connect those dots, she would ride...

Near the end of a month-long motorcycle ride through Spain, Mark and Lisa Schubert set out for what should’ve been an easy final day through the Pyrenees. But as they climbed higher, a mild forecast unravelled into chaos — winds strong enough to stop their motorcycle mid-corner, trees down, and power lines snapping. What follows isn’t a story about recklessness or bravado, but about how easily ord...

Thinking about downsizing your adventure bike? In this episode we test the waters with a Suzuki DR350—what it really takes to turn a lightweight, simple machine into a workable mini-adventure bike, the choices (and costs) that actually matter, and a few surprises that show up on both pavement and dirt. We start with durability—mirrors and signals, featuring the Doubletake Mirror origin story with...

ADV-X in Canada turned out to be far more than just another riding event. By the end of the first day, faces were caked in dust, grins were everywhere, and the sense of camaraderie was undeniable. From trail-side fixes and overnight repairs to long mountain days, it was passion in motion—riders looking out for each other and a crew ensuring no one was left behind. Combine a world-class terrain wit...

Modern motorcycles aren’t just machines anymore—they’re equipped with advanced technology. Ride-by-wire means your throttle hand communicates with a processor instead of a cable, and that computer considers wheel speed, lean angle, traction, braking, and more before deciding how your bike responds. With ride modes, you can adjust your bike’s personality for pavement, gravel, mud, or rain—varying p...

We all choose our motorcycle riding gear for comfort, style, and weather protection — trusting that if it’s sold as motorcycle gear, it must also keep us safe in a crash. But how much of that trust is based on proof, and how much is just assumption? This week we speak with the head of one of the world’s only independent labs that secretly buys gear off the shelf, crash-tests it, and publishes the...

When everything is perfectly organized—routes mapped, fuel stops planned, meals and beds guaranteed—it feels effortless. But the truth is, no matter how tidy the plan, the real world always gets a vote. On short rides, those small interruptions are easy to patch over. Stretch the miles across countries and weeks on the road, though, and the little things start to compound. That’s when the first ca...

Chris Birch returns to Adventure Rider Radio with insights from his brand-new Everything Adventure video training series. This is a deep dive into how adventure riding and training have evolved in the last five years. Chris explains why fundamentals like bike setup and body position matter more than flashy skills, how modern ADV bike design is changing the way we ride, and why so much of what ride...

Damian (Demon) Rowley spent 35 years riding motorcycles professionally in London —first as a courier, then as one of Virgin’s elite “limo bike” riders, trusted to ferry celebrities and executives through the city’s relentless traffic. With over half a million miles behind him, Damian shares the toll of crashes, injuries, and burnout, as well as the moment he realized he needed a change. At 50, he...

Chris Birch - What Works, What Doesn’t, And How To Select The Moto Gear That’s Right For You When it comes to adventure riding gear , the options are endless—mesh, laminated, vented, lightweight, heavy-duty. With so many choices, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. What matters in riding gear? How much protection is enough? And what trade-offs should you be aware of? To get clarity, we turned to Chris...

Fifteen years on the road—and no major disasters. Elsebie and Michnus Olivier of PikiPiki Overland share how they’ve dodged mechanical meltdowns, sketchy border crossings, and costly mistakes while traveling by motorcycle —including one tense moment in Sudan that could have gone very wrong. Is it luck… or a skill you can learn? 🔗 Show Notes & Links: Find photos, links, and resources related t...

Elisa Rosales lay on her back, head spinning, gasping for air. Her bike lay a few feet away, right where she had dropped it. Darkness pressed at the edges of her vision, and she fought the pull to let go, to drift into sleep. The ground beneath her was cold; she was cold. This was her first motorcycle adventure. She and her husband had set out from Argentina, bound for Arizona, but that destinatio...