The Dainese Expedition Masters embody what for me is the dream trip. I don’t want the hard and pure, but on the threshold of fifty years I confess that I am increasingly inclined to pampering on the bike: versatile and ultra-comfortable clothing even after ten hours in the saddle; food and accommodation at the top once off the bike, which must be at the top too. All of this is pure enjoyment as long as the sense of adventure, the essence, for us motorcyclists, of the journey of life is not faded.
Like these, with destinations at the edge of the imagination, racing on the saddle of real globetrotters towards (mis)adventures we didn’t even think possible. For example last summer, at my first Expedition Master in Iceland, I was surprised by 50 knots of crosswind, fearing that my Multistrada and I would take off and be swallowed up by Hekla. A volcano not at all reassuring even if, at that moment, theoretically inactive. This search for the extreme is the constant in my life on the bike and coincides with the spirit of trips organized by Dainese, which in the most disparate situations wants to show customers the goodness of their clothing in terms of comfort and safety. It is no coincidence that the next dates on the 2023 calendar tickle me beyond measure since they foresee, at the end of June, a passage at 5,600 m in the Himalayas, and another, in the first week of October, in the hottest basin on the planet, Death Valley Californian.
But Patagonia! The only thought is daring too much, it’s that motorcycle journey to the edge of the imagination, of the possibilities reserved for a normal person, and for this reason even more longed for. Before leaving, I read up on the magnificence of nature, but what unrolled under the Pirelli Scorpion Rally STR of my DesertX left me breathless all the same. We pass from the expanses of the prairies to the immobility of the deserts. Follow rivers and discover lakes. They are shining at the foot of the backbone of Latin America, the Andes, arranged as if to protect that environment disputed by the two oceans. Yet there seems to be no trace of mountains on the legendary Ruta 40: the front fairing of my Ducati overlaps the horizon line for hours. Beyond that is Tierra del Fuego. Smell of ice. It pulls you like a magnet. You are at the edge of the world. A journey, I would say, metaphysical. Without the premise of a hill, like the guanaco that suddenly leaps into the road, the horizon disappears behind granite spiers that seem to have come out of nowhere to rise to the sky and pierce the clouds. The worthy epilogue of an experience like this was Perito Moreno. A glacier that mysteriously grows in size every day even if, from its front, twenty-story high ice buildings detach and collapse every half hour, generating small tsunamis in the water. And in your heart.
