Category Archives: The Plan

Getting closer…

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I finally seem to be closing in on a bike – hurrah!

I have found a fifteen year old Suzuki Marauder 250 being sold by a motorcycle shop in the city of Granada, about fifty kilometres from where I live. Buying a motorcycle (actually, doing just about anything…) is more complicated here in Spain and my low level of Spanish doesn’t help. However, I think I’m sorted and I hope to collect it next week.

I have been to take a look at the bike and it doesn’t look too bad given its age and the fact that it has done 40,000 kilometers. It has a few lumps and bumps and someone has tried to cover up corrosion by over-spraying it with silver paint, but otherwise it seems reasonable, the tyres are good and it has no obvious leaks or other issues. Most importantly, it feels great – not as small as I expected and really quite solid. The seat seems very comfortable and the footrests are well forward for rider and passenger, leading to less stress on our elderly knees.

For those who aren’t aware of it, the Marauder GZ 250 was launched in 1998 and it has a 249cc, SOHC, single-cylinder, two-valve, air-cooled engine which produces just 20 horsepower. The engine is taken from the GN 250 which was first built in 1981 and it uses a single carburettor and chain final drive and is mounted in a cruiser type, twin-shock frame with a single disc brake at the front and a drum at the rear. All pretty basic engineering then, but that’s just what I wanted. The engine has a good reputation for reliability, it’s said to be capable of around 75mph and, more importantly, 80mpg, but we’ll see if it can really do either of those things with two people on board.

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Not the actual Marauder I have been looking at, but virtually identical other than for a back-rest.

It also seems comfortable for Julie on the back – an important issue because she’ll be there for most of the long journeys. I did buy a bike many years ago, a Laverda 750S, which was great with one person on it, but basically useless with two – I won’t be making that mistake again! The Suzuki also comes with saddlebags and a backrest, the two accessories I wanted for touring.

The total price is €800 which includes the cost of using a lawyer to draw up a contract for the sale which comes to €130-150. So, the bike is actually costing around €650, not a lot of money and well within our budget. Buying a motorcycle in the winter here in Spain, as in most places, means that prices are good especially from motorcycle shops which are struggling to maintain cash-flow. It should also mean that if we do decide to sell it later, we should be able to get our money back.

Now that I may be close to actually getting a bike, I’m feeling very nervous indeed. I haven’t ridden anything bigger than a scooter since 2013 for one thing. For another, I’m wondering if the whole notion of touring on a 250 is just silly? Well, there is only one way to find out…

Minimalism in motorcycling

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I went to see a motorcycle in Granada yesterday (a 2004 Suzuki Marauder 250cc, as you ask) and I was immediately reminded of how long it has been since I sat on a motorcycle and how good it felt! I really can’t wait to get back on the road again…

The Suzuki felt bigger and more solid than I had expected, and very comfortable for myself and Julie. It’s on sale for less than €1,000 and the price includes a set of panniers, a backrest and the transfer fee (here in Spain, if you buy a used vehicle of any kind, you have to have a legal agreement drawn up between the buyer and seller by a lawyer) so it’s certainly a possibility…

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This is the Suzuki I was looking at yesterday…

However, actually looking at a bike made me think about how we’re going to fit minimalism and motorcycling together? Like the Pirate Code, minimalism isn’t a set of rules, it’s more a philosophy for approaching your life. But how does that translate to two wheels? That’s what I want to talk about in the next couple of posts.

When I first got into motorcycling, a 750cc bike was pretty damn big and traveling at anything over 100mph felt like an adventure (especially on one of my Nortons). Over the years, I went through a number of very high performance motorcycles and I can still remember in those pre-speed camera days of the mid 1980s (sigh…) watching in amazement as the needle on the speedo of my Kawasaki GPz900R buried itself against the stop at somewhere north of 160mph.

But, I don’t want to do that anymore. Spending almost five years living in South East Asia and in some areas with awful poverty has made me think more about how I use the resources of the world. And anyway, as I get older I no longer want to travel everywhere at warp speed. I actually enjoy ambling along and enjoying the smell of the wild rosemary at the side of the road. I like to listen to the sound of the world as I ride rather than just hearing the tearing scream of wind on my helmet.

Which is why I want a smaller bike. And I want something simple, partly because that will help to use less fuel but also because I want to be able to maintain (and fix if necessary) the bike myself. And I want a used bike because that costs less and buying used is a kind of recycling. Keeping an older bike going and even refurbishing it may mean one less new bike on the road.

But I also want to go touring for which I want a bike that will be able to undertake even long journeys without my having to worry if it will make it. That effectively rules out anything very old or even vintage – I started my motorcycling life on British bikes of the 1960s and 1970s. I loved them, but even I couldn’t claim they were reliable. I once wrote an article for a bike magazine titled Choosing a British Motorcycle from the 1970s and it consisted of a single word: ‘Don’t!’ (though strangely, the editor seemed uninterested in publishing it…)

So, I won’t be looking at any BSA Bantams or lightweight Italian bikes because I don’t find anything amusing about oil leaks and comedy electrics. The bike I choose will almost certainly be Japanese because there are lots of them around, they’re cheap, they’re good at really basic things like keeping oil on the inside of the engine and if they do go wrong, part are easy to find.

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That’s a BSA Bantam. If you can rescue one of these and go touring on it, you have my complete respect. But that’s not what I want to do because I want to be able to focus on the trip, not the bike.

If possible, I want a 250cc bike, because that seems a reasonable compromise between the ability to carry two people and fuel consumption. I’ll probably go for some sort of cruiser style because that offers good comfort for two people. Does that really represent motorcycling minimalism? I suppose the most important answer to that is, it does to me. And that’s really what minimalism is about – deciding how to do more with less in your life.

That might simply mean going for a smaller capacity bike. Or a used bike instead of new. Or, if you have the ability you might choose to take an old nail that’s on its last legs and give it a new lease of life, meaning that all the time and resources which went into creating it will actually deliver more miles traveled. Minimalism means what you want it to mean, in motorcycling or any other part of your life.

See also: Magical Thinking and Motorcycles

What is this minimalism thing anyway?

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Minimalism is a movement which began, as so many of these things do, in the US. The short version is, it’s about getting rid of stuff. The stuff that we seem to relentlessly and almost unconsciously accumulate as we go through life.

It’s easy for it to seem that having stuff is essential, especially having the latest, coolest stuff.

The sad truth is that most of us have far more possessions that we will ever really use, and we often discard things that are perfectly good because of a perception that having a newer thing will somehow make our lives better.

Julie and I got a head-start on the whole idea of discarding things about six years ago when we decided to sell our home in Scotland and go travelling. We sold or dumped every possession other than those we could fit into two suitcases. And do you know what? It felt good. Really good. Once we had got rid of all the things that had seemed so important, it was finally possible to focus on what really mattered.

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That’s Bagan, in Myanmar. Amazing place. We were lucky enough to visit a couple of years ago on an electric scooter.

After periods living and working Vietnam, Thailand and Myanmar we’re now (sort of) settled in Spain. And we still don’t have many things. When I started to think about getting back into motorcycling after a five-year hiatus, we agreed to try and extend the same philosophy into biking.

I don’t think you need the latest motorcycle to enjoy touring. I don’t think that you need tyre-shredding performance to enjoy travel. I think all of us can probably do more with less. And that’s what this site is really about. Motorcycle travel that’s as simple and basic as it can be and costs as little as possible, because debt isn’t fun either.

You’ll notice that these are things that I think… I don’t know for certain because I haven’t tried yet. Perhaps this time next year I’ll be looking for a full-dress tour bike with a radio and satnav and perhaps Julie and I will be dressed in matching designer motorcycle gear. Perhaps, but I suspect not.

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Touring, minamilist style – a few years back, I bought this Honda XL500R for less than five hundred pounds, re-furbished it and took it on a mammoth trip round Europe. This pic was taken during during a late evening visit to the race track at Spa in Belgium.

Because just like life, motorcycle touring is a journey best done with as little luggage as possible. When you stop thinking about all that stuff, you can actually take the time to enjoy what you’re doing.

If you want to find out more about minimalism, you might want to take a look at this website: https://www.theminimalists.com/minimalism/

The Journey Begins

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Thanks for joining us!

‘In a car you’re always in a com­part­ment, and be­cause you’re used to it you don’t realize that through that car win­dow ev­ery­thing you see is just more TV. You’re a passive ob­serv­er and it is all mov­ing by you bor­ing­ly in a frame. On a cy­cle the frame is gone. You’re com­plete­ly in contact with it all. You’re in the scene, not just watch­ing it any­more, and the sense of pres­ence is over­whelm­ing.’

Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

I love touring on two wheels. I have ridden in most European countries as well as my home in the UK and I have even managed a little riding in South East Asia.

To me, a motorcycle is the perfect way not just to see other parts of the world but to experience them. You can smell the tang of the forests and feel the chill as you climb high mountain passes. Of course, you can experience these things when walking or cycling too, but a motorcycle allows you to travel through large changes of landscape in a relatively short time, and it’s probably that aspect which I enjoy most of all.

I can still remember the first time I saw the Alps in the distance, like a bank of dark clouds on the horizon. Two hours later, I was there, in the midst of twisting roads over precipitous drops and spirit-lifting vistas. That experience provided a feeling of fulfillment, of being there in that particular moment that is sadly lacking from much of everyday life.

But here’s the thing: I’m getting older. Soon I’ll be sixty. This doesn’t just mean stiff limbs and new aches and pains, for me it has also brought a different view of the world. I still like to travel but speed and power just don’t interest me like they used to. The idea of having the latest, biggest, most hi-tech bike not only doesn’t excite me any more, I actually find it a little dull.

Which is what this site is about. I want to explore the possibilities of touring on a small capacity motorcycle while consuming as little of the world’s resources as possible. I plan to find an elderly bike that won’t cost much to buy and which will probably need a little care and attention to prepare it. Then, I want to see if I can use it to explore parts of the world which I haven’t seen.

I’m lucky in that I won’t be doing this alone. My wife and I have been together for almost thirty years and we both still enjoy the challenge of travel. She’ll be coming with me and giving the view from the back seat.

Together, we’re the Motorcycle Minimalists and I hope you’ll come with us on some big journeys on a small bike.

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