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City Portrait
City Portrait: Knoxville, Tennessee » Sept/Oct '06
All motorcyclists covet great roads, and everyone has their favorites. But when it all boils down, certain common denominators remain. The twists, turns, sweeps, and swoops of lonely two-lanes snaking their way through the mountain ranges across the land usually comprise the cream of the collective crop. And every motorcyclist who can't resist the...
City Portrait: Boston, Massachusetts » Jan/Feb '05
Boston's biking community is a healthy, vibrant scene. Nary a summer weekend passes without a charity ride or rally to choose from, and although the seasons work against us, a little cold weather keeps but a few from a day in the saddle. Perhaps the blood of the hearty Yankees who settled the region still runs through the veins of its riders....
City Portrait: Kansas City » Nov/Dec '04
It is still dark outside when my watch alarm starts ringing. By five, the whole family in the car, we're turning out of the driveway for the Midwest where we'll take a scooter tour of Kansas City. The clan arrives after a boring 12-hour drive: the only highlight being Florian's sighting of the Oscar Mayer WienerMobile™. He is still talking about...
City Portrait: Australia » Sept/Oct '04
Within 25 years of European settlement, the community that became Melbourne was home to 300,000 people. The gold-fueled frenzy made it the fastest growing city in the British Empire, and its prodigious wealth earned it the name Marvelous Melbourne. Is it still marvelous, or has rival Sydney stolen its cachet?...
City Portrait: Covington Kentucky » Jul/Aug '04
The slow-moving Ohio River flows by on the right and the traffic before us barely crawls through Bellevue and Newport. Eight million people live within a 100-mile radius, and it seems like almost everyone has come out at the same time to attend a major celebration. More likely, the amount of time lost on the roads here is the simple workaday cost of...
City Portrait: Nashville, Tennessee » May/Jun '04
"Well, somebody told me, When I got to Nashville, Son, you finally got it made."– Waylon Jennings, "I Don't Think Hank Done It This Way"Music City, USA. The Country Music Capital of the World. Rock City. The Athens of the South. Decidedly southern, Nashville, Tennessee is clearly international too. Restaurants serve sweet tea, grits, red-eye gravy...
City Portrait: New Orleans » Mar/Apr '04
With a full moon overhead, a warm spring breeze hums through the streets of New Orleans. I'm walking down Magazine Street to the French Quarter with the pulse of excitement quickening within. A man in a mask walks by with a drink in his hand. At the corner of Bourbon and Canal, another man quotes biblical warnings dark as the night. I walk toward the...
City Portrait: Vancouver » Jan/Feb '04
When I moved to Vancouver in March 1987, it rained every day for the next three months and I wondered what the hell I'd gotten myself into. But on a blue-sky day in April when scanning the city from Cypress Mountain, it's oh-so obvious why. God isn't making real estate like this anymore – at least any that I can get to. Big beautiful trees, sandy...
City Portrait: Sacramento Shining » Nov/Dec '03
When explorer Gabriel Moraga "discovered" what the Maidu Indians already knew about in 1808, a lush, incredibly fruitful valley at the confluence of two great rivers, he named it after the Holy Sacrament. Forty years later, as news of another discovery even more appealing spread, a virtual river of men converged on the spot. And then......
City Portrait: Seattle's Coffee Culture » Sept/Oct '03
Two events herald my approach to Seattle from the north on Interstate 5. First, the ominous coalescence of scattered clouds quickens as I'm leaving the Olympic Mountains' rain shadow, proof that Seattle's soggy reputation is richly deserved. Second, the smattering of cars turns into a packed, four-lane steel stampede as I approach Everett, Seattle's...
