7 Dual Sport Beginner Mistakes YOU Need to Stop Making

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Dork Side. I am the Dork in the Road and today I'm going to tell you about seven dual sport beginner mistakes that you, yes you, need to stop making. I'm the Dork in the Road and I want to be your internet writing buddy so please consider subscribing. Don't forget to turn on those notifications so that you don't miss out on future content. Dual sport beginners make a lot of mistakes. It's part of the process of learning. I always say anything worth doing is worth doing badly at first and riding motorcycles off-road is no exception to that rule. We're all constantly on a journey improving our skills and hopefully just riding a little better than we did the day before. There were a lot of mistakes that I made at first that I'd like to maybe help some of you avoid. Some of the pitfalls, literal and otherwise, that I fell into when I got started. So here are seven common beginner dual sport mistakes that you should stop making or at least think about no longer making or try to make less often because I still make some of these mistakes sometimes and I've been at this for a few years now. Beginner dual sport mistake number one, not wearing enough gear. Sometimes the temptation is just to get on your bike and go and getting out there and riding is the right instinct but there is a minimum level of protection that you really should think about just ensuring you have at all times. And there are different types of dual sport riding and different types of dual sport riding require different types of gear but let me just give you a couple examples. So one, trail riding. I can't tell you how many times I have trail ridden with people who did not think it was important to wear knee pads. Let's just process that a little bit. So here's what I want you to do. If you're a person that thinks that wearing knee pads on the trails is not necessary, I want you to just walk outside, just go outside your door, pause the video, find the nearest rock, maybe a round rock, maybe about this big, and all I want you to do is from a standing position drop onto that rock knee first. Come back and tell me how that worked out for you. That is probably pretty excruciating and that is the minimum of what will happen to you out there on the trails. Now what if I told you you could eliminate or prevent that pain for as little as $10? You can buy a pair of bottom-of-the-line cycle gear knee pads for $10, slide them into your boot, wear them when you go out, and I guarantee you they'll be covered in scratches before you know it and you'll be glad that you had them. Same goes for elbow pads. Those are the things that hit the ground first. You want to have them protected. Dual sports do it all, right? They'll ride in the woods, they'll ride on the trail, they'll ride on the highway. If you're doing a lot of highway riding, man, I highly recommend those riding pants. Yes, gear is expensive but so are skin grafts. Dress for the slide, not the ride, all of that stuff. You need riding pants. Some armor or knee pads is really helpful. Along those same lines, number two beginner dual sport mistake you should stop making is wearing the wrong gear. A lot of people here, I need to wear boots, throw on a pair of hiking boots and head up in the woods or down the highway on their motorcycle. I see it a lot. I understand that gear is expensive. I understand that you have to start with what you have but lower leg injuries are the most common injuries for motorcycle riders, particularly off-road and particularly new riders. Good protective gear does not have to be super expensive. If you're riding off-road at all, I always recommend decent boots with good protection. If you're trying to get the most bang for your buck and not spend a whole bunch of money, MX boots are where it's at. This is a lot of protection. You can get a set of these for $100, $120. Boots are expensive but decent protection can be had for the $100, $120 range. Hiking boots just aren't gonna do it if the bike falls on your leg or if you get it caught between a rock and your motorcycle or twisted underneath you or whatever. You're really gonna wish you had more protection at some point. You might as well just take the step, bite the bullet and get the extra protection. Because a minor crash that could be a scratch on the side of your MX boot could be an ankle sprain or twister or breaker that'll ruin your day or your season. So it's just it's just worth it to wear the right gear. So wear the right gear. Number three, this is less of a gear thing and more of a technique thing and this one I'm still learning. I wrestle with this one to this day. Number three mistake, dual sport beginners need to stop making is not standing up. Yes, sitting down is easier. Yes, standing up the whole time is tiring. I'm not talking about standing up the whole time. I'm talking about standing up when you're on rough terrain, rocky terrain, anything that's got a lot of up and down, going up hills and downhills. That's what I'm starting to learn now is that standing up on steep downhills is actually more comfortable in a lot of cases. But any time there's technical sort of bumpy terrain underneath you, standing up gives you the ability to deal with whatever you hit unexpectedly. It puts the weight lower on the bike, gives you your legs as shock absorbers, better balances the weight front and back. The only times I ever crash is when I'm sitting down and that's because all my weight is on the rear tire and there's no weight on the front. The front is light and it washes out, right? So standing up is a technique worth mastering even though it's uncomfortable at first. And I just talked to you about the wrong gear. Well standing up is a lot easier if you're wearing the right kind of boot. So an MX boot with a very flat hard bottom like this, notice how I can't bend it, right? Suddenly you're not standing on a foot peg, you're standing on a platform this wide underneath your foot. It's like the floorboards on a Harley-Davidson or something. There are ways to make standing up easier. Another way is bar risers. Some people don't like bar risers, I get it, but I'm never gonna ride at the level that the bar risers are gonna hurt me. They're only gonna make me more likely to be standing up when I come across the thing that I needed to be standing up for. Number four, and this one is gonna be a little controversial, but number four dual sport beginner mistake you need to stop making is not replacing your stock tires. Now there's a pretty big caveat to this one and that is if you're only gonna ride on the road and maybe on some gravel roads, most stock tires, and I'm in particular talking about the Deathwings that come on the Yamaha dual sports or the IRC tires that come on the CRF250L stock, they're supposed to be 50-50 tires but they're not. They're really designed for good test rides. They're very good on the road and not good in anything loose. If you're gonna ride gravel roads, if you're gonna that's about the extent of what you're gonna do in some highway, then yeah you can stick with the stock tires for a while. But if you're gonna get into anything loose at all or slippery, mud, sand, loose rock, anything like that, I highly recommend that you upgrade those stock tires immediately. I put the Kenda Trackmasters on this. I ordered them the day I got the bike because I wasn't gonna deal with this stock tire BS that I had to deal with on my CRF250L when I got it. I know here come the it's not the bike it's the rider comments, I get it. But having those crappy tires on my CRF and going out in the mud, in the sand, loose conditions, screwed up my progress as a rider. It shot my confidence. I had to ride into the ruts. I was sliding down into everything. The back tire was spinning constantly and not in the way that I wanted it to. It made me a worse rider and it took me a year to finally work my way back around to where I might have been if I hadn't been developing bad habits based on not having the right tire. So tires do make a difference. Just upgrade your tires. Get new tires. And if you're worried about the money, I sold the stock tires off this DRZ400 for 50 bucks for the pair. I recouped some of the money that I lost buying new tires. Number five dual sport beginner mistake you need to stop making. Not communicating and I mean this in two ways but they both have to do with safety. Number one is always communicate to someone where you're gonna be when you go out riding because that way if you have a bike breakdown or heaven forbid you fall off your bike hurt yourself and you can't get out they know where to start looking. It seems silly but I always just text my wife GPS ping of where I am planning on riding roughly so that if I don't come home she can send the cavalry to that spot. This is 5A. And 5B is not having a plan for communication once you're out there. So if you're out in the woods by yourself in the badlands in the wilderness off the beaten trail and something happens and you're out of cell phone range what are you gonna do? I am NOT a mechanic so I need some way to communicate if I need to be picked up or I need help out in the woods. This is the Delorme inReach. They've since upgraded to the Garmin inReach. This is a two-way satellite communicator that allows me to communicate with anyone with a cell phone and it also has an SOS button in case the proverbial crap hits the fan while I'm out there and I just need an immediate evac. So it's all the benefits of like one of those personal locator beacons but also the ability to have a two-way communication so if I just need the truck because I busted my chain then someone can bring me that without having to call in a helicopter. So I highly recommend that. Yes there's a subscription fee. Yes you have to buy the device. Spot's a little cheaper on that both of those fronts but the peace of mind is worth it. Number six dual sport beginner mistake you need to stop making is not riding with other people and I am an antisocial person. I generally like to do things by myself. I'm independent. I don't like to have to wait for other people or go through the trouble of setting up things with other people. I also don't like to make solid plans necessarily in advance so like I might want to go riding Saturday but I won't be sure until Saturday and so I don't like to commit myself ahead of time. It's stupid. But the point is riding with other people is great for a lot of reasons. It's worth the effort shall we say. It's just more fun to ride with other people to have someone to share the fun things you're doing with. To talk about what you're doing. To be able to share those memories and reminisce later. Learn from them they learn from you. It's obviously safer because the likelihood of two bikes breaking down and becoming impossible to get out on is pretty low right. So I definitely take less gear when I know I've got another motorcycle with me because worst case we ride two up nuts to butts all the way out and at least I'm not gonna have to spend the night in the woods. You can push yourself more knowing that there's someone else there so if your bike tips over a thousand times you got somebody to help you pick it up. If you hurt yourself there's somebody there to help you. There's somebody there to spot for you to look for things that you may not have seen. You can go to places you maybe wouldn't attempt by yourself. You can try that hard hill climb and see what's at the top. You can ride more and harder and have more fun when someone else is with you. So you're probably thinking to yourself where the hell am I supposed to find all these people to ride with? Great question. Lots of options out there. So Facebook groups is a big one. There's Facebook groups for every area. There's a Pacific Northwest dual sport riders group as an example and then there are more local groups. There's discords like the Dork in the Road discord link. There's a link for that in the description. People are constantly setting up group rides there. A great place that's not online to check is go to your local shops. Where do they sell dual sport bikes around you and just ask them. Where's the riding groups? Who do people ride with? Find those people and get connected with them if you can. And this is all coming from a very very anti-social person. I'm encouraging you to do these things because I've found them it found it to be a lot more fun to ride with other people in a lot of cases. The number seven beginner dual sport mistake you need to stop making not using a Sena or some other communication device. I will tell you that Duck Fan and I decided to get Sena's when we first started riding together and it was one of the best upgrades we ever bought. It is so nice to be able to talk to each other when you're riding. It's like a whole different ballgame. It's just fun like I said. It's also more convenient because you don't have to stop at every intersection turn off your bikes and try to yell at each other through your helmets to figure out what the plan is where you're trying to go. You also don't have to assume that people can handle things or people aren't pushing themselves too far because you've went up a steep hill climb and oh crap now I have to follow him or I'm gonna lose the group. You can express your concerns. You can talk people through things. You can shout out obstacles. I do that a lot with Lil Dork. I can coach Lil Dork real-time communication. She can talk me through what she's doing what she's experiencing. I can give her advice and feedback while we're doing it. So great when you're riding with riders with different skill levels. It's just safer. The real-time communication is so great. You know the second somebody goes down right rather than maybe you're riding on a dusty trail and you're really feeling it and you ride and ride and ride you get the next intersection and they're just not behind you. You would know. You'll hear it or they'll stop communicating. So it's just safer there. People can communicate like I said if they're not feeling it if they're not feeling up to a certain type of obstacle or maybe the water crossing is just not in the cards today or something else is off. They can communicate with something's up with their bike. My front tire is a little low. My chain feels loose. I'm not really sure we should be pushing it this hard right now. All of this real-time feedback stuff you can get. It's so worth it. Having a Sena or some other, a Cardo something like that. Icon makes a communicator now. Totally worth it even off-road. Highly recommend that you have some way to communicate with the people that you're riding with. So that's it. That's my seven. So what did I miss? What are the most common dual sport beginner mistakes that you see people making? Tell us in the comments. Let me know. If you got some useful information or a good idea of the video I would really appreciate if you hit that like button and you might even want to go super crazy and just hit that subscribe button while you're at it if you haven't already. Thank you for watching. I appreciate you and please do not forget to be excellent to each other. Thank you. Gear is not cheap. It's... Okay, you're very distracting. Not right now. Hello everyone. Welcome back to the Dorkside. I am the Dork of the Road and this is me testing my microphone. Is it working? I don't know. Will this make it in the blooper reel? Probably.