The KLR 650 Chronicles: One Person’s Life with a One-cylinder Motorcycle

This story was originally published in Cycle World magazine.

On a sunny Sunday, my friend Tom rides me to Los Gatos on the back of his KTM 950 Adventure. In my pocket is a fat wad of 30, $100 bills. The plan is to return with two motorcycles. It feels nice to have the cash pressing against my leg, an insistent reminder of good things ahead.

My plan is to buy a used Kawasaki KLR 650, located on the Internet. Lately I have begun to fancy going to the desert with Tom to explore the many hot springs and abandoned mining camps, and perhaps sample a little Patron while the campfire casts a blood-red glow on the dust-covered bikes.

But there are other reasons for the purchase. As a kid I’d spent seemingly endless, joyful hours on a succession of single-cylinder dirt bikes. Now, with the inevitable inertia that pulls us towards the things of our youth, I want to ride off-road again. It seems that those things that tugged at our emotions 40 years ago are, in fact, the same things that tug at us today. This applies to cars, motorcycles, women, and other scarcely suppressed passions. In any case, I needed a dirt bike.

I also have a simple need to broaden the ridable landscape. Here in Northern California we have some of the best paved motorcycle roads in the world—but we may just be exceeding our carrying capacity. I love the turbine smooth growl of my Honda VFR 800, and our Bay Area paved roads. Problem is, so does everyone else. Enter the KLR.

The goal is to re-enter riding at its core, with an elemental, single-cylinder motorcycle. And it has me wondering: what if I were restricted to the big single for every type of riding: touring, commuting, road riding, even two-up. Can one person survive on one bike?

Time to find out.

KLRs, like Volkswagen Beetles, are the preferred vehicles of the great unwashed: pragmatic transportation known to withstand prolonged and callous thrashing. Cheap and basic, tens of thousands have been produced since being introduced as the KLR 600 in 1984. Displacement was upped to 650cc in 1987, boosting output to a meager 44 horsepower—modest by any standard, but especially considering that contemporary sport bikes of similar displacement are producing nearly three times as much. The vaunted KLR underwent a host of small changes for the 1996 model year, but was otherwise unaltered. (Yielding to the demands of a faithful audience, Kawasaki finally introduced a new version for the 2007 model year.) Otherwise, the only significant change to excite the KLR faithful in recent years has been a switch to red paint.

Despite the modest spec sheet, the KLR is capable of prodigious work and mileage, and is a common choice for around-the-world trips, harrowing ventures into rebellious countries, and even more harrowing trips to the corner store in Anytown USA.

At any time, a dozen KLRs are available on eBay for under $4,000. Entire companies have devoted themselves to aftermarket parts for the utilitarian bike, and Internet blogs hum and chatter deep into the night exchanging half-truths about KLR adventures and “high-performance” modifications.

In perhaps the ultimate nod to utilitarianism, the U.S. military has embraced the KLR. Called the M1030B1 Dual Purpose Military Motorcycle, the bike has been modified to ensure it could happily ignite a cloudy mixture of diesel fuel siphoned from a truck somewhere in Kuwait or Darfur. The bike reportedly gets more than 100 miles per gallon.

With dual-sport tires, the KLR is a capable commuter. With knobbies, it can be horsewhipped into amazing off-road antics, despite its weight and limited suspension travel (by contemporary standards). Even the cockpit is decidedly pedestrian, and looks as if a designer abandoned the job halfway through, leaving a tangle of exposed wires and pot metal brackets behind the diminutive fairing. As if to accentuate its utilitarian origins, the KLR’s predominant color is a sickening pea green.

Common modifications include upgrades to the anemic front brake, lights, racks, and most of all, lots of brackets and sheet metal to protect vital organs from the inevitable effects of bad riding and gravity. This includes brackets for the water pump, radiator, lights, rear master cylinder, crankcase, and muffler. A full complement of such protection would add quite a few pounds, thus ensuring its own usefulness in the event of a crash.

KLRs are the favored mode of escape among disaffected 40-somethings who have little money or time but a strong desire to be elsewhere. Anywhere.

“In 10 days I’ll be homeless, riding the globe with all my possessions packed in my saddlebags,” reads one Internet blog. “It’s a lifetime dream of a world ride. Better late than never!”

The intrepid traveler’s bike: the lowly but reliable KLR.

“As long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to go to the Arctic Circle,” reads another account. “I figured if I didn’t just go, I’d never make it, so I went. Twenty days, five states, four provinces and 6,500 miles later it was done.”

His vehicle: the anvil of dual-sport bikes, a KLR.

And so I find myself joining the ranks of the disaffected, people caught up in the great tide of commerce and civilization, all heading in one direction—who suddenly dart from the pack, stop bathing, visit places no one has heard of in horrific weather, probably fall down a few times, eat bad food or none at all, scorn telephones, experiment with facial hair…and generally have the time of their lives.

So, at a time when responsibility should be pressing down like gravity, I find myself riding a plodding, single-cylinder motorcycle into uncertain terrain. With this bike, I am opting for simplicity, and to invest energy in one good thing. Or maybe there’s more—the need to wear something out, or wear something out in me. To see what kind of mileage is possible, on the road and in the mind. Maybe even break a few things along the way, just for my own edification, and perhaps to make them stronger for the remainder of the trip.

Seems like more and more often, I am faced with the kinds of decisions that pit imagined pleasure and heroics against good judgment. Tequila figures prominently here. A night spent among friends in pleasant consumption of the agave sports drink seems like a very good idea over the phone, but often ends badly and with bitter recriminations on the home front. Not good.

And so it was when Tom called to invite me on the semi-annual Ridge Runners dual-sport ride. In the mind’s eye I see myself doing feet-up slides through difficult sections and keeping pace with guys half my age. Competing against this dreamy image is the visage of off-trail excursions, limbs bent at unnatural angles, and the all-too familiar waiting room at the local emergency facility, where I have a passing familiarity with the magazine titles.

Naturally, I decide to go on the ride.

In a kindly effort to save me from my own exuberance, Tom convinces me to put some more aggressive rubber on the big green bike: Pirelli MT-21s. They look suitably knobby and confidence inspiring. As a result, I begin to look forward to the ride.

But that night, at 1 am, I am staring blankly at the ceiling, with an enduring mental image of myself flying over the handlebar, arms and legs perversely forming some facsimile of the letter “W” (or the letter “D,” for dead). Fortunately, before this crystalline vision of myself meets the ground, I wake up.

I run these things over in my mind. By 2 am I have made my decision: no ride for me. I fall back asleep secure in this strange paroxysm of good judgment and newfound ethic of self-preservation. Finally, in my mid-40s, maturity has overcome the impulsiveness of youth! The next day, I tell Tom about my happy decision.

“What, you don’t trust me?” he says flatly. His tone scares me a little; I wasn’t prepared for such a frontal assault. “Do you think I would take you if I didn’t think you could make it? You have to go.” I sense my maturity and good judgment eroding, like so much roost. Self-preservation, apparently, will have to wait. Ridge Runners, here I come.

The club, it turns out, is a loose confederation of old farts and has-beens, which of course makes me feel instantly at home. It is however, a far more official event than I had ever imagined, with maps, a sign-in, and in the ultimate nod to our litigious society, a liability release. Incredibly, they have been conducting the semi-annual ride since 1965. It seems that, for the day at least, I am to be an honorary member of a venerable tradition. Since I am just getting back into off-road riding after a long absence, I feel a little like an imposter, as if I’m attending a reunion of the 10^th Mountain Division without ever having been to the Italian Alps. I can claim no such history in warfare or in motorcycling.

If that weren’t enough, the director pulls a three-foot-high trophy out of his truck, etched with the names of winners. Besides each name is the victorious brand of motorcycle. Inscriptions for the last two decades include three-letter abbreviations of the usual suspects: KTM, KAW, SUZ, YAM, HON. But as I run my finger further down the long list on the towering trophy, other names surface as if out of the primordial mist: MAI, BUL, PEN, TRI, and even GRE for Greeves. Atop the well-worn trophy is a small plastic motorcycle. Fittingly, it has bent forks from some frontal impact with, say, a light fixture or doorframe. I begin to wonder if this is a metaphor for what I will experience over the course of the next few hours. The only saving grace is that what was once a race is now a poker run. Supposedly, speed is not a factor.

Adding to my obvious gap in ability and experience is the fact that I have one of the largest, heaviest motorcycles in attendance. The KLR, with its vast tank and elephant-ear appendages, positively dwarfs the anorexic 250- and 400-cc motocross bikes assembling in the parking lot—machines that have lots of titanium baubles and are carefully half-filled with gas for lightening purposes. My own reflexive pre-ride ethic is to fill my tank completely. Thus, I am carrying a portly 20-pounds of excess ballast on the already heavy bike. Joy!

Tom and I are the first to leave the parking lot and before long we’re crashing through the underbrush. In a good omen, I manage to get through an “A” (more difficult) section successfully, while even Tom is forced to turn around. Years of mountain bike riding and racing serve me well. Or at least, keep me from crashing within the first mile.

For the duration of the ride I feel an indescribable happiness at simply being in the woods on a motorcycle. I’m exhausted, but I get through it OK. The big green bike does just fine, and as far as I can detect with a quick inventory, I am whole in body.

Back at the start/finish, only the poker game awaits. I have a lifelong aversion to cards, which means I am so stunningly ignorant of poker that I do not even know how many cards to draw. By watching others, I learn that this number is five. I draw a phenomenal three twos, and leave happy about the ride and indifferent about the cards.

Later, Tom calls to tell me that I have, through some brilliant mix of ignorance and luck, won the whole damn thing. A masterpiece of underachievement, just like my ride that day. The new guy fumbles his way through two hours of trail riding and emerges with the (admittedly meager) spoils. Poetic justice served in its own random and inexplicable way.

Thus, I get to have my name etched in the three-foot-high trophy alongside those of the many people who actually can ride (or did), dating to 1965:

GEOFF DRAKE: KAW

How could I ever sink so low as to take that hallowed spot with such a meager hand? Easily and without compunction, that’s how. At my station at life you take your small victories and don’t ask questions. History proceeds in its own inimitable way. Good judgment and an excess of tequila notwithstanding.

I spend a Saturday morning performing the obligatory modifications I make to seemingly every motorcycle I own, which is to add warmth and carrying capacity. In addition to installing heated grips, I add handguards for the inevitable tipovers that will result as I make forays into off-road riding after a 30-year hiatus.

I also perform what I am told is a rite of passage for any KLR owner: replacement of the counterbalancer chain tension, affectionately known as the “Doohickey.” Rumor has it that the Doohickey is the Achilles heel in this anvil of a motor—the tiny, fan-shaped item can apparently break with catastrophic results. (Envision a thumbnail-size piece of metal adrift in the crankcase.)

Frankly, I’m not so sure that Doohickeys carry the grave consequences that have been attributed to them. But they are an integral part of KLR lore, rippling across Internet blogs until they have acquired significance out of all proportion to their actual mechanical importance.

“Did you replace your Doohickey?” says one erudite KLR owner to another, exuding an air of hard-won knowledge. “Yup,” comes the all-knowing answer. “Got the CNC piece.” It’s the secret handshake of KLR owners everywhere.

And now, after two hours in the garage, I’m in the club, and can go forth with confidence. Even better, I can now feel a mixture of pity and disdain for the great unwashed majority of KLR owners who do not share the True Knowledge and ride in blissful ignorance of the Doohickey. Proceed at your peril!

Or not. Given the great hordes of KLRs now happily circulating the globe with bone-stock Doohickeys, the joke may in fact be on those of us who are $200 and two hours poorer, but have a nifty CNC piece in the bowels of the motor. On occasion, too much knowledge is a handicap. I’m thinking maybe there is a lesson in all this: Sometimes it’s better to do less Internet research and more riding.

One thing I’ve noticed with this bike is the anomaly of speed. For most people, power and speed are synonymous. For me, on the roads that are my natural terrain, these things share an inverse relationship—I’m faster on the small bike.

One Sunday morning, Tom, Ted and I head for the hills of the San Francisco Peninsula. Ted has been riding sportbikes for decades and it shows. He is remarkably facile, making the simplest things look easy and outrageous at the same time, sliding sideways toward the gas island, doing clown tricks straddling the tank with his thighs, traveling vast distances on the back tire, and generally going at warp speed. He is childish, irresponsible, and so reprehensible as to make me jealous. And great fun to watch. It’s his natural home. I always struggle to keep up.

But today I am showing him a wheel, seemingly without trying. I am braking later, bumping happily over rough spots, smiling when the rear tire skips sideways on a dirt patch. Fun!  The same stuff on my VFR? Terrifying! It’s that pleasure of smallness again.

We turn onto Alpine Road, a nominally paved thoroughfare with copious potholes and mud, and dirt spread strategically across apexes as if to produce the greatest likelihood of a crash.

I’m having fun this day, leveraging the big bars on the KLR, pressing the bike down, squirting the back sideways a tidge in the greasy parts. It’s coming easy, for once. The greatest challenge on this greatest of roads is to keep from gawking at the distant horizon, where the shimmering Pacific pokes occasionally through the trees.

When I emerge from my reverie long enough to have a good look in the rear view mirrors, Tom and Ted are both gone. Jeez, that’s never happened before. And in this case, it happened without trying. Maybe that’s how it usually occurs. I wouldn’t know.

We stop for gas at the accustomed spot on the coast highway near Pescadero. “Hey, I couldn’t believe how you were flying down that road,” says Tom. I’m not harboring any illusions—both of these guys can dust me on any road of their choosing, and have. But inside, I’m gloating over the ability of an industrial single to put the hurt to a couple of litre bikes—if only for a few minutes. It’s the ironic victory of the right weapon engaged in the right battle. Giants sometimes fall.

Size and its byproduct, power, are not always the solution.

Today I strapped on my new, custom-fit tankbag, put some energy  bars and other essentials inside, and went south, to Big Sur. My goal, besides the obligatory $5 latte at the Nepenthe café, was to do two roads ideally suited to the one-lunger: the 10-mile dirt Coast Road, and the serpentine Palo Colorado Road.

It’s fresh after a storm, and the Coast Road is greasy in a fun sort of way, eliciting a comfortable but not scary amount of movement in the back wheel upon acceleration—a perfect classroom for a re-entry rider on a big single. My pace is laughably slow, but fun—the KLR is thriving in these conditions, and so am I.

I stop once, in a redwood grove, next to stream that’s so clear I am scanning it from 30 yards distance for the silver flash of trout. Though I’ve had the KLR only a short while, this ride is confirming that my intentions for it are sound. I’m viewing it as an escape hatch from the increasingly hot cauldron of Bay Area traffic. And it’s working.

The parking lot at Nepenthe is full, as usual, but there is always room for a bike. As I maneuver the KLR into a spot on tiptoes (I’m 6-foot and it’s still a stretch), I see a graying oldster (hmmm, I resemble that comment) eyeing the bike. Even before I yank my earplugs, he is peppering me with questions. What do I think of a KLR vs. a BMW F650? Suzuki DR650? I give him my continuum theory, about how some bikes do one thing extremely well, while others straddle the middle and do many things passably. In this schema, the BMW is on the pavement end of the continuum, the DR650 at the dirty end, and the KLR sitting fat and happy in the middle—like me.

Suddenly, I notice the guy is looking me up and down, and I realize that my bike and leathers are covered with a fine patina of Big Sur mud.

“Looks like you’ve been having some fun,” he says. Indeed.

At Nepenthe, there are 50 or so tourists, speaking a host of languages and snapping photos with the abandon that has accompanied the digital age (no more film or development costs!). I take my $5 latte and elbow through to the railing to contemplate infinity. It’s no wonder Big Sur exerted such a gravitational pull on poets, artists, and the brilliantly mad. The view from the cliffs and the ocean beyond elicit some delirious cocktail of vertigo and awe. Big Sur may have inspired Robinson Jeffers to cast a skeptical eye on our species and its effect on the world, but right now I am positively stupid with happiness. After all, there is a KLR in the parking lot that happens to belong to me, I have no obligations this day, and Palo Colorado awaits.

The potholed, muddy road is sufficient obstacle to prevent the whordes of RVs that usually populate such places. I park at the campground and take the short walk to an overlook. The view is spectacular from the cliff, a sort of Roman Coliseum of peaks, culminating in the exposed Pico Blanco, at 3,700 feet.

I want to linger, but my chronic back injury is nagging me. Suddenly, I realize that the way to take in this view is to just plop down on my belly and hang over the cliff edge. Flocks of birds alternately dive and catch thermals. I’m catching my own thermal of the psychological kind. I’m feeling stupid with pleasure. I’m covered with mud down my front from lying in the dirt, so I look a bit stupid as well. A state of harmonious stupidity unique to the alchemy of motorcycle riding and spectacular country. All of it, enabled by a simple and somewhat primitive motorcycle.

I find I am spending more and more time on the KLR. I enjoy the sit-up-and-grin riding position, the languid feel of the bike. But there’s another reason the bike is so enjoyable: It never laughs at me. There is nothing about it that says go faster you wimp. Lean farther. Accelerate harder.

The fact is, the KLR offers the singular pleasure of enforced slowness. There are no challenges to my supposed manhood. I go slow. I look around. I am happy.

I think most classic bike riders, and many cruiser enthusiasts, appreciate their machines for the same reason. When it comes to riding prowess, we are collective underachievers. Things like an 8,000 rpm rev limit, skinny tires, and a spark-throwing centerstand have a way of tempering one’s exuberance. Kind of like a longtime friend who keeps you from doing the tequila shots before you end up with a lampshade on your head, or in jail. It’s for your own good.

Hey—we all like to ride on the edge of our envelopes. It’s just that many of us have elected to reduce the size of the envelopes.

In August a group of us leave the air-conditioned northern California coast and head across the central valley in 100-plus-degree heat. Our goal: three days of trail riding and camping in the southern Sierras, most of it at 7,000 feet or higher. KLR country.

The bike seems to labor under the weight of a full tank bag, saddle bags, cooking gear, tent, sleeping bag, and food, falling into corners alarmingly due to the high center of gravity. The KLR seems particularly unhappy on the fast, straight, open roads that approach the mountains, hunting and wandering at any speed over 70 mph. The fresh knobbies offer an additional element of excitement when passing 18 wheelers, the bike squirming alarmingly. The KLR is stunningly capable in so many situations. This just doesn’t happen to be one of them.

After a few hours of this, I’m thankful when Tom suddenly angles off the pavement, into the dark woods. For most of the morning I follow Tom on his Honda Trans-Alp, and Calyn on his KTM 640, trying to mimic their body movements. It’s coming back.

Then, on a particularly steep, rutted pitch, I commit the classic rookie mistake, fixating on the very thing I want to avoid. Sure enough, the front wheel goes exactly there, into a deep, wheel-eating rut. For a second it seems like I can gas it out, but then the bike begins a sickening and inevitable lurch to the left.

It’s a slow-motion crash, not likely to cause any damage—right up until the moment that the bike and gear fall squarely on my ankle. I free myself from under the mess and bounce up. It takes only a minute before I feel my ankle pressing outward against my boot, swelling quickly.

I’m devastated—not by the injury, but by the prospect of having to turn back on the first day of this long-awaited trip. I conduct a few rudimentary tests. The ankle seems to move OK, and I can put weight on it without too much difficulty. I decide to press on.

Shifting is a distinctly painful exercise, but the level goes from white hot to merely excruciating in the space of an hour. I consider this a good sign. The scenery is tonic enough, as we pass numerous meadows and waterfalls, all against a stunning backdrop of snow-capped peaks.

At an overlook, I wrestle the boot off to find that my foot has turned into a sort of grotesque, multicolored sausage. I stuff it back in and press on.

That night, Tom and I find a completely unoccupied campground on a river and settle down to some good wine, hot soup on the camp stove, and fresh bread. Afterward I stick my injured foot in the icy water, and look over at the KLR in the campfire’s glow. A fairing panel hangs comically by a broken bracket. The shift lever is bent, and the fender and brand new handguards have fresh battle scars. Tom tells me that sometime during the course of the day, the headlight expired. It seems fitting that the KLR and I share this litany of injuries. At that moment, I feel sure we will go the distance. Together.

The next day, over breakfast, I tell Tom that I feel as if I have been worked over carefully with a ball-peen hammer. At the same time, however, I don’t think I have ever been so eager to ride.

At mid-morning we summit Cow Mountain—a technical, singletrack ascent of a granite dome with a staggering 360-degree view of jagged, snow-capped peaks. I hobble around like a madman, gesticulating at the beauty, drunk with the fact that one could reach such a place on a motorcycle.

That night, to our astonishment, we find another empty campground—this one in the shadow of a near-deafening waterfall. I am by now confident that I have done no lasting damage to the foot—despite its hideous appearance.

After three days in the mountains, we make the long, hot march back across the central valley to Santa Cruz. With 10 miles to go, Tom gets a flat. A professional mechanic—one of the best I have ever known—he fixes it in 15 minutes, including wheel removal. As a capstone to a great trip, a friend has invited us over for a beer. As we sit on his back deck overlooking an apple orchard, I wonder if I have ever had a better one. The broken bike, the broken body—it’s all quite perfect.

It’s now November. This morning, against all knowledge and reason, I take off in 30-degree weather at 7 am. Inside of an hour, I am crashing through ice-covered mud puddles, shards flying against the steel-gray sky.

I have a small hole in my boot that is admitting dollops of water, which have neatly frozen. At one point I am traversing some silty mud when the rear wheel decides to embark on a small journey of its own, appearing freeze-frame fashion to my right. I the moment it takes to realize I am sideways, the bike snaps straight and I am through.

I stop to assess. The bike is is a mess. I am alone, on top of a mounting, covered with mud and in a state of borderline hypothermia, but exuding the strong heat of self satisfaction and solitude that comes from doing things that are slightly unbalanced. It’s a happy thing, this pea-green bike. Elemental pleasures.

I have put several thousand miles on the bike in just a few months.Right now, as I ride along, I am thinking of the complexity of it all. There is the 100-mm piston rising and falling, rising and falling, 6,000 times per minute, unfailing, and against all reason. Cables tighten and relax; gears mesh; clutch plates slide, then grip; plugs fire; water courses through narrow passages; fan blades spin; hydraulic fluids press against pistons. If you think of it objectively, it’s all too much, can’t possibly work, a million points of failure and vulnerability.

Yet on it goes, the ultimate irony, thrumming along in its inimitable way. Stronger than I thought. All of it.