G'day All,

Been riding road bikes for over 25 years and during this time I've seen our regional roads in NSW slowly deteriorate to the current third world standards. The roads are that bad in my area that even my ST1300 has trouble coping with the road surface and I was getting sick and tired of being belted and shocked as my bikes suspension trys to keep up with our crappy road conditions. Being fed up I started looking at something with longer suspension travel which would offer a more comfortable ride.

Enter the dual sport bike! I've been noticing the steady increase of adventure style bikes on our roads lately and started looking at my options. Test rode most of the latest offerings: R1200GS, XTZ1200, VFR1200X & TEX1200....all nice machines but at around $25000 or more optioned up I couldn't justify spending that sort of money on a steroid taking chook chaser.

I was about to give up until I was offered a ride on a DL1000. I never considered the V-strom because I wasn't that taken by the looks, anyway the rest is history and I bought a new 2012 Vee. The Vee is really growing on me. I have few complaints. The front end needs sorting but nothing a revalve and decent set of springs wont fix. I paid $11490 ride away and in comparison to the competition I consider it great value for the money.

Hope to hang around and learn a lot more from this excellent forum.

Cheers,

Tony

The Vee is A great bike, You will learn a lot here.

Welcome to the nut house Bully. Where about in Oz do hail from, and I know what you mean about the crap roads