READY FOR ANYTHING
The twenty first century is the age of specialization.
It’s not enough to be a computer engineer, you have to specialize in a particular branch of computer engineering. Doctors have certificates in one subspecialty of gastroenterology, not just gastroenterology in general. When it comes to motorcycles, there are luxury touring motorcycles, light touring motorcycles, cruisers, cross country off-road motorcycles, trail motorcycles, trials motorcycles and motocrossers, to name just a few.
The Transalp, unlike most motorcycles made these days, is a generalist. It does almost anything.
Owner Allen Siekman has a collection, mostly of vintage Japanese motorcycles. They all get ridden, but this Transalp is the one he grabs when he needs to get someplace. “The Transalp does everything so well,” he says. It has also aged well — the original paint and bodywork on this machine looks new, despite the odometer showing over 62,000 miles.
Transalps are classified as dual-sport bikes, a kind of motorcycle that has evolved relatively recently. At the dawn of motorcycling, all motorcycles could be classified as dual-sport bikes. With the streets of major cities commonly paved with cobblestones and rural roads mostly dirt and often featuring deep wagon ruts, Reading Standards, Popes and flat tank Harleys were expected to deal with all possible road surfaces, and did
