Many viewers have noticed that Bret Tkacs has not been hosting recent MOTOTREK videos.
Just before Christmas 2019, Bret stopped by the Inventive Pictures production office in Olympia and told me he would no longer be available to film MOTOTREK videos.
Since 2018 Bret and I have had a few discussions about his time constraints and responsibilities outside of MOTOTREK, so although the news was disappointing his decision did not come as a total surprise. Shooting MOTOTREK videos has always been fun, but it is time consuming (each video can take the better part of a day to shoot) and Bret is a busy man. Bret is always welcome to return and host MOTOTREK videos down the road.
You can follow Bret and contact him directly at BretTkacs.com
As this channel moves forward into 2020 I hope you’ll join me in welcoming the fresh faces and personalities who will bring new adventure motorcycling insight and learning experiences to you. We’ve got a lot of fun stuff planned!
Do you love adventure motorcycling? Do you have a story to tell or a skill to teach? Are you comfortable on camera?
MOTOTREK’s goal is to educate, inform and entertain our worldwide audience of adventure motorcyclists. If your story syncs with ours, let’s get together and make a MOTOTREK video!
Contact producer Tim Tyler at info@mototrek.net
Here are few guest hosted episodes we’ve had the pleasure of producing:
RTW Paul and his amazing KTM 500 EXC 6-Days motorcycle
These are BLACK shirts and are available in LARGE and X-LARGE sizes only. They are made from a very soft and comfortable, non-shrinking cotton/poly blend and are printed locally, right here in Olympia, WA USA.
Shirt + international postage is $30. Includes TWO FREE MOTOTREK STICKERS. Please use these PayPal links here to order! Make certain your PayPal shipping address is correct!
If you would like to order a different quantity or combination not listed above, please email a request to info@mototrek.net.
Orders will ship within a day or two and will probably take two weeks to arrive. If we sell out, your order will be refunded immediately and this page will be updated to reflect our inventory.
David Fox, a frequent aerial cinematography contributor here at MOTOTREK, totaled his BMW F800 GS last month on our ride down to Phoenix to meet Ted Simon and Sam Manicom. He chose to replace it with the newly released KTM 790 Adventure S.
Bret was eager to try out this highly-touted machine… so let’s make an episode out of it!
“The mountain was out” (as we say here in the PNW) so we started the day with Bret’s intro, positioned with Mt Rainier in the background.
For the next eight hours we roamed the park for the most interesting and challenging surfaces to ride and film on.
With evening approaching we headed back to the paved roads and finally called it a day.
“What an opportunity!” Those are the words I emailed to Sam Manicom once I found out he and Ted Simon would both be at the 2019 Overland Expo West in Flagstaff, AZ. A loose plan to film a conversation between the two motorcycle travel authors was put in place.
Bret was scheduled to teach in Colorado that same week, so we packed our panniers and headed south from MOTOTREK HQ in WA state.
Camping in Moab on the way to Overland Expo
In Utah we stopped to camp and film an episode in the beautiful Moab outback, and when Bret and Christina headed east to CO, co-cameraman David and I rode further south to Overland Expo in Flagstaff, AZ.
At the Expo we connected with Ted and Sam and tried to find a time and a quiet place to film the conversation. Impossible! We made plans to reconnect in Phoenix after the event.
En route to the “Valley of the Sun” city we opted for some dirt and exited interstate 17 onto Bloody Basin Road – which turned out to be a bad idea.
David meets a side-by-side head-on without notice.
Fortunately David left the ER that same night with a clean bill, ready to film the next day!
Many thanks to Al and Julie Jesse for accommodating us at their wonderful home in Phoenix! A very special Thank You to Ted Simon who was cold and tired from an uncomfortable trip from Flagstaff to Phoenix just before we started filming, and to Sam Manicom for making the whole thing come together.
We were excited when Sena sent us a pre-release version of their 10C Pro helmet camera/communicator. The 10C PRO is a remarkable device in that it combines a capable Bluetooth communicator AND and a 1440p action camera is a compact, lightweight, easy to operate device that mounts comfortably to the side of any motorcycle helmet.
We immediately took it out for a test ride and published this video.
Although the video quality from this new camera is leagues better than what we got from the old 10C, it’s still not as good as what most people expect from action cameras in 2018. The 10C PRO is still not available commercially, of course, so it’s totally possible that things might be improved with a firmware update. We’ve suggested to Sena that they reduce the baked-in image sharpening (detail) and lower the chroma saturation in order to improve image quality.
Audio quality is not that bad given that the 10C PRO’s noise cancellation needs to differentiate between voice and not-voice. Removing wind and background noise from an inexpensive microphone travelling at 60mph is no easy task. However, for some reason the 10C PRO records audio at only 128kbps and in stereo, and it would seem that dynamics could be improved if that bit rate were at least doubled. Even the old 10C recorded audio at 500kbps (mono).
We also found that for some reason, YouTube’s re-compression after uploading does not do the Sena video any favors. The files from the camera really do look a lot better than the clips on YouTube. You can download the raw 1440p clip here (845MB)Compare this to the YouTube and Vimeo uploads and you’ll see how much re-compression degrades the quality. I’m pretty sure Sena could drastically improve this by reducing the baked-in sharpening/detail in the 10C PRO.
Since we scaled the Sena’s 1440p video clips down to 1080p for our review video (above) we decided to include a raw 1440p/29.97p video clip excerpt here for those who care. This clip was encoded in Adobe Premiere from a 1440/29.97 sequence to a 1440/29.97 40mbps mp4 file. You can bypass YouTube’s recompression and download the the file directly here (845MB).
Just because a motorcycle is not marketed as an “Adventure Bike” does not mean it can’t take you on amazing off-road adventures! Bret Tkacs makes a quesadilla and takes a closer look at MOTOTREK producer Tim Tyler’s modified 2014 Kawasaki Versys 650.
Dirt and gravel roads can be challenging and scary to even the most experienced paved road motorcycle rider. Bret Tkacs offers five tips that cover the basics of transitioning from paved to unpaved roads.
