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 […]

It was a warm spring day when Mr. Roland Howard Goff, of southern Georgia, started up his Honda VTX 1300. He couldn’t have imagined the chain of events that would result in him spending the next eight days lying trapped in a ditch under the heavy bike, fighting for his life with one leg crushed, […]

From Track to Trail: Motorcycle Tires for Every Rider Founded in 1863, the German motorcycle tire company Metzeler has more than 150 years of experience under its belt. The company started in Munich as a producer of rubber and plastic products (including toys and surgical gear), expanding to aviation in 1890 and motorcycle, bicycle, and […]

You know you’ve met a fellow rider when they take out their phone to show you a picture of their ride. Most have a snapshot after a wash or while on a trip. But if you want to be the person with the awesome photo of your bike that makes other riders go “wow!” then […]

Often when meeting with other riders, I get asked, “What is your bike’s GPS setup?” I reply with the same answers and direct them to my RoadRUNNER articles on the subject—but those discuss general principles and concepts. Instead, this article will present a real-life GPS setup as a case study, which could benefit riders who […]

“Of all the fire mountains which, like beacons, once blazed along the Pacific Coast, Mount Rainier is the noblest …” —John Muir Mount Rainier is the fifth highest peak in the contiguous United States, and America’s fifth oldest national park. But for my family, we simply called this park home. When my tour ended with […]