As the market changes and so-called "middleweight" sportbikes creep toward quadruple-digit CCs, Yamaha's latest addition joins the party already in progress. Having been released to the Euro market last year to great success, can it attract American riders?

Yamaha has been selling this new Super Ténéré adventure-touring model in Europe for several years now and is finally bringing it to North America. Ténéré (pronounced like "tay-nay-ray") is the word for "desert" in the language of the Tuareg tribe that resides in the region of the Sahara where Timbuktu is located. The first bike to carry the Super Ténéré name was the 1989 XTZ750 twin and it won the trans-Saharan Dakar Rally six times — so this new machine has good DNA!

Right after a rider on a black-and-orange, big-twin cruiser scoffed at the bike I was on, we both took off from the traffic light onto the highway, his blaring, straight exhaust pipes no doubt saving many lives as we whisked ahead. Only much to his mortification, the TMAX scooter was in the lead once we attained the speed limit and I backed off.

Despite gloomy economic news, there are some bright spots to be found. As budgets tighten and used car lots fill to overflowing with once coveted gas guzzlers, two-wheel alternatives are now beginning to appeal to a much wider cross section of folks.

Life, as we know, is full of compromises. In a perfect world, each of us could afford a bike for going to work, one for track days, one for touring and another for carving canyons on the weekends. But then again, since Transformers would have to be real in this perfect world, we'd only need one bike to do it all.