Motorcycle Culture
Nemesis and 952
Some famous bike-building towns: Mandello del Lario, Milwaukee, Spandau, Hinckley, Gladstone...Gladstone? Huh?OK, it's not so famous maybe, not yet, but the Portland, Oregon suburb of Gladstone is where you'll find Kenny Dreer's Norton Motorsports Inc. The current custodian of this illustrious name is the first in more than a decade who can lay claim...
London, England
In 1959, with post-WWII austerity long past and his nation's economy booming, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan told the British people "You've never had it so good."He was probably right....
High Country Roads
On a cool October morning as I leave my home in Mayodan, the place where the Mayo and the Dan rivers converge, my hometown in the northern Piedmont of North Carolina seems a long way from the Carolina high country. I'm excited though because I know that in a few fun-filled hours I'll be standing on a mountain gazing at a fantastic view that takes in...
Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument
The day before I embarked on a Gold Wing 1800 to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, I opened a Backpacker Magazine article entitled "Organ Pipe Cactus – The Most Dangerous Park in America." Flipping to the story, I was shocked to learn that my standard riding Kevlar might be pulling double duty – protecting me from the asphalt as well...
Hot Springs
The hot springs of Paraiso, Esalen, and Tassajara are known as the 'Ah Spas.' Line them up for an afternoon ride, and you're in for some serious Central California soaking. Pick the right day and you may meet actor Branscombe Richmond and his wife Lei. As vice president of Indian Motorcycles, he'll often ride to Esalen Hot Springs from the Indian factory...
Kick-Ass Kits
The Stage IV Speedstar-kitted Road Star Warrior is rumbling away beneath me, my eyes are locked on the timing lights and my clutch hand is just keeping the bike from rolling past the staging lights. The next few seconds seem to take an eternity as I feel my heart thumping through my leathers. The Christmas tree lights drop – I twist the throttle...
Wine Country
Warm gusts push me left and I fight back, leaning right. The mile-wide Carquinez Strait not only funnels the Sacramento River's watershed to San Francisco Bay, but, so it seems, all of the San Joaquin Valley's winds. I've just another quarter mile of the Carquinez Bridge to brave before I can begin riding some of the incredible back roads leading into...
City Portrait: British Columbia
December, Canada, and motorcycling are words you don't often find in the same sentence. But then there's Victoria. Sheltered on the southern tip of Vancouver Island, near the entrance to Puget Sound, Victoria is caressed by palmy breezes tracking in from the central Pacific, and protected from fierce Arctic air by the Coast Mountains. In a country famous...
City Portrait: Sydney, Australia
Before riding on a recent tour that extended up the east coast of the fifth continent, I took some time with my brother Daniel and friend Peter to explore a special site, Sydney, Australia's largest city and the home to those sun-filled summer games the whole world watched in 2000....
Loveride
Sunday morning at Glendale Harley-Davidson's 19th LOVERIDE the crowd is so tightly packed we're on a first-name basis. Twenty-four hours ago I took farm roads, not freeways, south from Monterey to Los Angeles. Most of these frontage roads were built over stagecoach runs profiling the land's natural features. Conversely, hopping one of the major freeways...
