Bike Accessories

We will be needing some accessories for our bikes. Most importantly, we will need some cases. But we also will have to look at other things, such as alarms, possibly some kind of (emergency) navigation, a communication set, handprotectors, handle grip heating, a center stand, those sorts of things.

If our final choice of bikes would become the Ténéré's, there is the possibility of using the official Yamaha accessories. These accessories can be found on their website.

An other possibility is using third party accessories. Touratech offers various acesories (on that particular page, especially for the Ténéré). They also offer accessories for various other models, as well as some generic accessories. Also SW-Motech offers some accessories.

Cases

The official Yamaha cases are quite expensive. The first cases had some problims with the locks, but that problem has been solved, so that's nothing to worry about on these cases.

Touratech offers some seemingly tough side cases. However, they do not seem to have any top cases.

SW-Motech offers some alumininum cases, which can be seen in their prospectus. Some discussion about these cases can be found on the Adventure Rider forum.

Hepco & Becker are another big player considering cases. They have a new Xplorer series coming up soon. However, some existing models are also quite promising: the Gobi series offer robust non-aluminium cases. A nice twist is that these cases have a double wall, which can contain water in between which will save some space in that matter. They also have a basic model, the Alu-Standard series.

Navigation

Because we will be travelling through so many different countries, a "normal" navigation system would not make much sense. We would need many maps, if they are even available at all.

So, we will have to look at something else. A more simple device would give us the ability to use waypoints merely consisting of lat/long coordinates. In our preparation, we will have to manually add some waymarks, which we could use if we are finding ourselves being lost. It will give us some extra navigational information in the very desolate area's, as well as an idea how far away a next waymark is. Ofcourse, we will navigate mostly using regular paper maps and enquiries of locals.

Currently we have a Magellan eXplorist 100 at our disposal. It does a good job at activities like geocaching. It is the most basic device you can get. No internal compass (which would not work near the bike anyway) and no ability to connect to anything. There are no maps, just waypoints. The device is also water-proof (it is even supposed to float in water). These properties pose the bare minimum a device we will take along will have to have. So this divice would do the job, however, adding waypoints is done quite inefficiently, because you can't use your computer for it. So possibly this would be a nice addition. Also, some form of basic map could be a possibility. Main cities (around the world?) and some of the main roads. However, we will have to see if this is possible/available on such a scale.

Magellan offers a Worldwide BaseMap, which contains topographic lines, borders, main roads, waterways, railways and points of interest. This map can be used on the Magellan SporTrak Pro, SporTrak Map, and Meridian series.

Garmin also offers navigational devices. Their Colorado and Oregon series both offer worldwide base maps. The Oregon series has a touch-sreen interface, which might get damaged more easily.

Mounted videocamera

We don't want to bring a handy-cam. It's too big. For beatiful pictures of surroundings, we bring photocamera's. But for some realtime footage of our trip, we may consider some helmet-cams.

An employee at Termaat Motoren gave us a tip to look at the VholdR camera. It's a nice small camera, hardly larger than a bullet-cam, which contains all functionality of the device. Looking at some video's on their website, the quality is quite good. However, it's priced over €300,- so we should also look at alternatives.