So I've been on a motorcycle kick lately. My son and I are taking the class to get our endorsements this weekend, and I've been shopping for bikes.

Years ago I watched Long Way Round and Long Way Down, and really enjoyed them. While I don't imagine I'll ever be taking a trip of that magnitude, the movies did instill in me an appreciation for the "Adventure Bike" variety of motorcycle, and a desire to do some long distance rides and camping off the bike.

In addition to researching specific bikes I've been getting back into the documentaries and literature. I worked my way through Sam Manicom's excellent audiobooks about his trip around the world, and am currently almost done with Ted Simon's "Jupiter's Travels" and "Dreaming of Jupiter". These are both interesting and honest approaches to travel, and enjoyable reads.

Obviously Ewan and Charlie's trips were a little more produced from the start, but to a degree that was necessary since they were making a movie. Long Way Up, though, is just stupid.

This whole electric motorcycle thing is preachy, self-important, misguided, and unnecessary. I'm only 3 episodes in and I'm already tired of the sanctimonious environmentalism that's also incredibly hypocritical, especially when you end up having to resort to a diesel generator on the back of a flatbed truck to charge your stupid electric bike. It would have been way more fuel and carbon efficient to just ride the original BMWs.

It's also painful to watch them overtax the limited infrastructure that the locals are depending on for daily life to (usually unsuccessfully) try and charge their vehicles. I also feel like we're missing the beauty of one of the most incredible places in the world (Patagonia) because 90% of the focus is on where and how they're going to find electricity to charge the bikes.

I am at a point where I'm trying to decide if I should give it a chance and keep watching hoping it gets better, or just give up on the whole series.

IIRC, not long after this was filmed, Harley distanced themselves from Livewire. I think there is only one dealer in MI for them.
I watched a little of the film but could not watch it all the way through.

Skip it. Long Way Home, their most recent trip, is much better.

quote:

Originally posted by YooperSigs:
IIRC, not long after this was filmed, Harley distanced themselves from Livewire. I think there is only one dealer in MI for them.
I watched a little of the film but could not watch it all the way through.

I'm not sure I'd characterize it as distancing themselves. LiveWire was spun off into a separate company, but H-D owns over 90 percent of the shares and does all the manufacturing.

quote:

Originally posted by bigwagon:
Skip it. Long Way Home, their most recent trip, is much better.

Agreed.

The biggest irony of Long Way Up is they didn’t even ride through Mexico. They were too afraid of cartel violence and the chance of one of them being kidnapped and held for ransom so they loaded the bikes into the back of an old converted school bus and rode the bus through Mexico.

They also cheated past much of Columbia with boats and planes.

That's funny. Watching "Long Way Round" and "Terra Circa" got me into my brief stint of adventure riding also.

Those series are all pretty good, especially for non-motorcyclists. Some are better than others of course.

Long Way Up is the least good of all their series. It's worth having on in the background while you're doing something else.

Check out Itchy Boots on YouTube. Her early seasons are excellent. It was fun to see how her skills at filming and narrating improved incredibly quickly. All of the seasons have interesting episodes, but some of the later ones were less interesting or perhaps a bit repetitive.

Agree the constant eco-green stuff was annoying remember this was 2020, so the electric transportation push was full on and Imagine Harley paid a good amount to put those bikes up.

On one of their excursions Long Way Round, they wanted KTM but they refused thinking they would beat the bikes up and the show would reflect poorly on KTM if the guys had lots of trouble, BMW stepped up at the last moment.

One thing for sure that trip showed that South America wasn't ready for electrical transportation. I'm amazed they were able to finish the trip, those Livewire bikes are more street than dual purpose, really not a good match for that kind of trip.

quote:

Originally posted by bigwagon:
Skip it. Long Way Home, their most recent trip, is much better.

Agreed.

I watched Long Way Round and Long Way Down back in the day. Long Way Up was huge disappointment and the fact that I didn't watch it until a year or so ago after the Livewire fiasco had already passed made it almost comical in retrospect.

I've been on Advrider for almost twenty years now and love ADV. What is ironic is that those two basically launched the modern ADV segment, but the bikes they rode, whether the big GS or the Livewire bikes, for the most part are complete wrong for what they're trying to do.

If you want decent motorcycle content watch some of the Adam Riemann stuff, especially the stuff his stuff from the past five years.