Matt Bubbers, Author at Canada Moto Guide

A Total Hack Goes to Flat Track School

Matt Bubbers — Wed, 24 Aug 2022 10:00:52 +0000

Flat Track is punk. It’s NASCAR but dirty. It’s Tokyo Drift, the best of the Fast and Furious franchise, except on two wheels. Or, that’s how I sold it to some friends, all of whom nevertheless bailed on the Go Flat Track School for reasons related to avoiding broken bones. I went anyway. Let me preface this with the fact I’m bad at motorcycles. And yet even I – an unconfident and new-ish rider…

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Opinion: Retro-Dakar bikes are pure cosplay – and I love it

Matt Bubbers — Wed, 23 Mar 2022 20:26:04 +0000

Unlike CMG’s own Lawrence Hacking, most of us are never going to compete in the Dakar Rally. Thankfully, however, with the spate of new vaguely retro-looking Dakar-style adventure bikes, motorcycle brands have paved the way for the average rider to live out their Dakar fantasies even in downtown traffic. These are not your typically ugly, alien-looking ADV machines. Late last year, for example…

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Opinion: My first new motorcycle

Matt Bubbers — Thu, 17 Feb 2022 23:13:10 +0000

Spending what I would consider to be a small fortune to buy my first new motorcycle was either incredibly deranged or the best decision ever. Frankly, the jury’s still out. Buying your first new motorcycle can be a fraught experience, doubly so in a pandemic that meant demand outpaced supply. Clearly, I wasn’t the only one stuck at home, not knowing when this thing would end, jonesing to get and…

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Opinion: Things I wish I knew

Matt Bubbers — Fri, 14 Jan 2022 17:52:38 +0000

Matt Bubbers is CMG’s resident newbie. An experienced auto writer but new to motorcycling, he’ll be chiming in over the coming months to give us some insight on his experience as a new rider. – Ed While others learned to feed a sourdough starter or sing sea shanties, I learned to ride a motorcycle during the pandemic. Thankfully, I managed to schedule and pass my final test in the fall in…

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How-To: Beginner Tips for Riding Off-Road

Matt Bubbers — Tue, 15 Sep 2020 20:10:19 +0000

As usual, I’ve done a stupid thing. I went and bought an extremely large and too-expensive motorcycle which, as a relatively new and inept rider, is a machine which I am uniquely unqualified to pilot. The smarter decision would have been to place that money into an RRSP, or TSA or something right? Well, I’ve never been accused of being smart, so…Triumph Scrambler 1200 it is! The XE. The big one…

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Test ride: 2019 Ducati Scrambler Café Racer

Matt Bubbers — Tue, 13 Aug 2019 09:00:58 +0000

Small town Ontario. The land of pickup trucks. Here, a young man climbed down from his super-duty behemoth and came over to check out a lineup of sparkly new 2019 motorcycles. “What’s that one?” he asked, pointing at the silver and blue Ducati. Not the Harley-Davidson. Not the neo-retro Honda. Not the retro-retro Triumph. Not the hideous neon-green Kawasaki. Later, some brave soul with a 500cc…

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CMG’s Days of Summer: Lessons learned

Matt Bubbers — Fri, 28 Jun 2019 09:00:49 +0000

My assignment was essentially to infiltrate a gang. They were a hard-charging, fast-riding, loud-snoring bunch of veteran bikers. Road weary and wise, they’d travelled the world on two wheels and lived to tell the tale. And tales they did tell, late into the night. In fact, it was hard to get them to stop. The group in question is the CMG staff. My job, as resident newbie — still with only a…

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Newbie sort-of review: Ducati Scrambler Sixty2

Matt Bubbers — Sun, 07 Jan 2018 18:56:26 +0000

Matt Bubbers knows a lot about cars, but he doesn’t know much about motorcycles. Undaunted, he’s still as excited about two wheels as anyone can be. His enthusiasm is infectious. He’s like a dog humping the leg of the motorcycle world. So we’re giving him a chance to tell us about bikes from a different perspective than our own grizzled, jaded point of view. Last August, he spent a week with a…

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