On gravel, goal is to get dirty but not down  June 15, 2003|By
Paul Duchene, Special to the Tribune.  As adventure touring on
motorcycles expands into the Second and Third Worlds, blacktop
highways become dusty memories.  Welcome to gravel roads.  Even
in the U.S. gravel roads are a temptation. After all there's a
certain exclusivity, secrecy and privacy associated with them,
or they'd be paved.  And gravel roads set traps for the unwary.
Apart from the chance of blasting all the paint off your
fairing, sportbikes with short bars and the rider's weight on
the front wheel are easily dropped if deep gravel is
encountered.  "You get to a certain road and you stop and think:
What's down there?," says Dwight Hughes, of Clearwater, Fla.
The 64-year-old Hughes has ridden all over Africa, Europe and
South America on dual-sport bikes, once racking up 33,000 miles
in 18 months. He has four adventure tourers, a Suzuki V-Strom
and Ducati Elephant in Florida, a Kawasaki KLR 650 in Texas for
trips into Mexico and a BMW 65