It's been a very interesting experience picking up my first plastic. Honestly, I don't have much interest in riding the big bike at the moment! Yeah, it pulls like a freight train and eats up miles and all that, but it is
nowhere near as much fun!
The plastic is a schlep - I've borrowed a trailer, which I'm storing at a friend's garage half way across town - such are the sacrifices of living in a city apartment - but when you're on it and riding in the dirt, then biking has a whole new meaning. It's just so light and responsive - it jumps and twists and turns, and you can do all kinds of things you'd really think twice about on the big bike and then pass on for fear of damaging the thing. If the plastic falls over, well just pick it up, dust it off and carry on. Really, really good fun!
But it's damn slow on the open road, and no two-stroke is going to do the job on the Amageza, so.... I be having a
lot of bike prep to be doing.
I currently own this:

It's a 690 with a fairing and a 5litre rear tank. Riding reasonably hard it will do maybe 300km on dirt, but that goes down to 200-220km in deep sand... and that's not enough! And the fairing is the Omega tubular mount, which has been known to give issues on the Amageza.
So modding it will need:
- Rally Raid Evo2 front tanks for an extra 10 litres
- Home made steerer-tube frame mount (weld on) and HDPE fairing mount or possibly Highway Dirtbikes rally-lite setup
- Fairing panels
- Proper bashplate with built in water tank - at the moment I'm thinking of buying the Rally Raid water container and making my own carbon/kevlar bashplate
- Improvement to the lighting - which currently sux - possibly local LEDs
- Obviously the roadbook/ICO/GPS setup
- It doesn't have the world's best suspension - I'd love some Rally Raid 300mm Tractive rally suspension, but that's just out of the question right now
or.... flog it and buy one of these:

and do this to it:

Well ok - probably the budget Safari-tanks version, but you know...
Rough sums probably point to the CRF version being about R30k cheaper in the end, but that is offset by higher engine maintenance and I'll definitely lose a bunch of that when selling it on, so it's a bit of a zero sum game in the end.
The 450-class bike (Honda, Yammie, KTM) is probably going to be quicker, lighter and less tiring on the specials, but the 690 will definitely be a much nicer mount on the liaisons. And, ironically, probably 20% lighter on juice when pushing on than the carb-fed bikes, which is around 5kg less fuel to lug around. And then there's the thought that this isn't purely a race bike - also a weekend trip bike, so it needs to be up to that to.
Common sense is pushing me towards keeping the 690, and to be honest I really can't be arsed with the schlep of buying and selling bikes. But the aftermarket 690 stuff is so bloody expensive! A pair of RR front-side tanks (10 litres) is about the same price as a pair of Safari front & rear tanks for the CRF450X (30 litres) and if one went Acerbis on the front you could save another R5k. And the 450s have better suspension, and are much less complex.
Decisions, decisions, decisions....