1190 Adventure Blog Day 11: Timeline

Into the final sprint here for the 1190 Adventure press launch. It was great again today with 21 testers streaming along over the island, Tenerife was – once more – the hub of 1190 Adventure activity.

 

Along with 21 journalists from France, Sweden, Finland, Poland, Czech Republic, Romania, Israel and Japan here’s our timeline:

6.30: Alarm goes off

7.00: Breakfast

7.30: Preparation of bike presentation in hotel’s conference room.

8.15: Go! The start of the presentation with testers/journalists

9.15: Briefing to explain test routes and photo locations

9.45: Start of the first of three groups on 1190 Adventure bikes with 7 journalists. Riding to photospots in the mountains. I act as a guide.

10.45: First (small) part with about 60km of brilliant road riding in bizarre volcanic rock scenery. Arrival at photo-locations.

10.15 – 12.15: Photowork on different roads with different locations. All kinds of individual photo productions being done also shots from a rolling car (tracking).

12.15 – 13.00: I’m guiding again. A group ride down the hill; a terrific road and great fun. Some journos (from eastern countries) are pushing from behind. So I speed up a little but keep things under control. Hats off to female tester Mariko Kawakami. The young lady from Japanese magazine ‘Dirt Rider’ is an Enduro champion back home, riding her own KTM 250 EXC two-stroke. She has never ridden a big bore street bike before but steering our powerful all-new 1190 Adventure she keeps up with total ease. Much respect!

13.00: Back to the hotel for lunch. At the same time photo locations in the mountains are switched, colleague Alex starts downloading, checking and selecting the digital files.

14.00: Change of tour guides. A colleague takes my group of testers for the afternoon loop.

14.00 – 15.30: Quick shower. Quick check of 1.643 emails. Quick look at first Adventure reports from online publications.

15.30 – 17.30: Meeting with colleague Paolo. Planning of activities for next weeks. Upcoming are 1190 Adventure R, the new KTM 390 plus a reworked full range of off-road bikes. Lots of things in the pipeline.

17.30: First journalists return from the 200km loop. Also the French group with star guest Cyril Despres. What follows, is a funny discussion of achieved top speeds (Cyril with his open Enduro-type helmet just placing in the middle of the hero-antics…). After pointing out the threat of speed restrictions on the island, Despres exclaims: “Oh, okay then. Next time I ride full speed here, I’ll take a jacket with ‘Marc Coma’ written on my back…”

17.30 – 18.30: Feedback and talking time at Red Bull with happy giggling bunch of test riders, who have all returned safely to the hotel. Facial expressions range from wide to 360-degree grins.

18.30: Interview with journalist from Israel

19.30: Meeting point hotel bar. 21 beers please, plus some more for KTM staff members

20.00: Dinner

22.00: Two more interviews with magazine testers

24.00: Hotel room. Hacking blog text for day 11 into laptop.

1.19: Shut-off windows software. Lights switched off.

To be continued