We’ve all (hopefully) been there, out on a mountain ride and feeling absolutely gobsmacked by the scenery. So, you stop and snap a photo, hoping to capture the power and grandeur of the mountains. But when you look at your picture the mountains look tiny (like hills at a flea circus), the blue sky has […]

Ouray, CO, “Little Switzerland.” Vehicles roll through town packed with overlanding gear, and dual-sport motorcycles parade the streets with their colorful jockeys aboard. Smack in the middle of this melee rides a group of Space Rangers on loaded, knobby-tired beasts, some with cylinders protruding from the sides like proud iron rhinos. The riders are standing […]

Previous articles focused on tools and technologies that can help us get out of trouble or at least reduce risk and damage after the fact. All of them are generic and reactive fixes. Generic, because off-the-shelf solutions are not specific to motorcycle usage; and reactive, because it is assumed the rider will actively respond to […]

It was a rough ride down Interstate 78. Old ladies slowly drifting too far beyond the road surface markings. Big, V8-powered trucks switching lanes to lodge their tailgates a breath from Justin’s handlebars. His father, “The Captain,” would growl into his Sena headset, forgetting he had an audience on the other end of his microphone, […]

    Halfway between the Northern California coastal towns of Santa Cruz and Half Moon Bay, at the nexus of some of the best motorcycle roads on the planet, lies the somnolent town of Pescadero. It just might be the coolest coastal burg that no one has heard of. So please, don’t go there. But […]

A sleeping giant lies on the valley floor between the Temblor Range and the Caliente Range. That is where this story begins. In 1857, the strongest earthquake in California’s recorded history ripped through the San Andreas Fault, wrenching the western side of the Carrizo Plain National Monument 31 feet northward. But today the giant quietly […]

    At 125 horsepower and 125 Nm of torque, the BMW R 1200 GS can sling mud from its Shinko knobby like a snow blower in a Louisiana swamp. My pal Jay Rothstein sits unaware atop his clutch-less KLR 650, 12 miles north of Gypsum, CO. Afternoon rains have turned this section of the […]

  In previous articles, we have established that when traveling the unexpected is likely to happen and therefore it is wise to carry a communication device, either a phone, asset tracker, or satellite communicator. Yet not everyone owns satellite communicators and they’re not free. Occasionally a backup plan is needed, and other cost-effective survival tools […]

  RoadRUNNER: Strider Bikes got its start when your son was two and learning to ride using a tricycle and a pedal bike with training wheels. What wasn’t working? Ryan: The bikes were too tall, too heavy, and too complicated. A great analogy would be using Honda Gold Wings in a learn-to-ride motorcycle class for […]

When we’re riding and running into emergencies, it could be extremely valuable to carry a smartphone or an asset tracker. But the smartphones don’t always have coverage and the asset trackers, as the SPOT3, have limited one-way functionality. Murphy comes in all kinds of unpleasant forms, yet not all of them are life-threatening situations. Hitting […]

Thunder roared in the distance as I ducked under the rusty, corrugated sheet-iron structure. I was a lone 16-year-old boy wearing a faded Levi’s jacket, tight, high-water 501s, and a white T-shirt. Three hundred miles into the day’s journey, my 4 a.m. departure was taking its toll. It was my longest day yet on a […]

Reflecting back on my last National Park Service assignment, Sequoia National Park and Kings Canyon National Park were managed as one giant park with a huge Sierra heart.  After all, these parks have two of the largest living trees in the world.  The largest sequoia tree resides in Sequoia National Park and that is special.  […]

The world is filled with an abundance of avid motorcyclists. But “avid” can take many forms. There are bikers whose lives revolve around riding daily, whether to work, a vacation destination, or simply a meandering excursion along some country roads for an afternoon. There are those who purchase their dream motorcycles and continually extol their […]

As I press my tent stakes into the mineral-rich soil of the nation’s oldest national park, I am glad that I didn’t heed the impulse to turn around before even rolling across the western boundary of Yellowstone earlier in the day. The big jugs on my BMW R 1200 GS were getting hotter than I […]

It’s the craze that’s sweeping the nation! Here’s a selfie of me with friends! Here’s a selfie of me in the bathroom! Here’s a selfie of me in front of a thing that I saw! Here’s a selfie of me with a bacon cheeseburger! Selfie. SELFIE. SELFIE! Love them or hate them, a lot of […]