Tours

Nov/Dec '06 Premium Content

New York Scooter Tour

Stand on a New York City subway platform in the summer and you'll know how Dante felt at the gates of Hell. Down there, beneath the melting tarmac, the air is so thick with heat it can be cut with a plastic knife. The subway cars are air-conditioned,

Nov/Dec '06 Premium Content

Italy: Two By Two Through Tuscany

"The traffic rules in Italy aren't so much rules as suggestions," our tour guide says at our pre-ride briefing. "You can pass cars anywhere, just do so safely. Drivers here don't care; in fact, they expect it of you." Despite my lingering

Nov/Dec '06 Premium Content

Brazil: From the Amazon Basin to Rio

With the crossing by canoe of the rocky waters of the Mamoré River, we leave the tropical north of Bolivia and resume our two-wheel journey, heading north into a new and fascinating world called Brazil. A five-hour ride on intensely hot pavement takes us through lush fields to the town

Sep/Oct '06 Premium Content

North Dakota Roundtrip

'Throttle up and start cruising,' the North Dakota motorcycle map recommends. Sage advice I conclude while steering the Gold Wing out of the small town of Williston. The vast prairie does beckon in a beguiling manner, yet one can't help but feel a slight sense of

Sep/Oct '06 Premium Content

Shamrock Tour® - Palm Springs, California

I have a theory that most males are fascinated by either wheels or spheres. The latter group spends much of their recreational time chasing a ball or watching someone else do the same. The "true" wheel guys share a passion for transportation, and they couldn't care

Sep/Oct '06 Premium Content

Northeastern Michigan: Bay City and Presque Isle County

The opposite ends of this tour take in two different worlds connected by great scenic roads. In Bay City, you can stay busy sightseeing, shopping or sampling the night life. And over in Presque Isle County where the simplest pleasures hold sway, you can stroll in settings of undeveloped serenity

Sep/Oct '06 Premium Content

Classic Roads: US Highway 191 - Arizona

A little north of Tombstone, the coyote (Roadrunnerus digestus) emerges from the low scrub brush on the dusty shoulder of Arizona's Route 80. He stops mid-trot and watches with apparent nonchalance as our RoadRUNNER Gold Wing (Burn-em-upus asphaltus) breezes by. But I'm not fooled by his

Sep/Oct '06 Premium Content

North Carolina Mountains

In my younger, more impetuous days, my old buddy Rich and I were known for embarking on road trips that often defied logic in their timing and execution. Never sticklers for details, we'd throw caution to the wind and, on a whim, hit the road with reckless abandon.

Sep/Oct '06 Premium Content

Canada: Call of the Yukon - Part Two

It's the great, big, broad land 'way up yonder, It's the forests where silence has lease; It's the beauty that thrills me with wonder, It's the stillness that fills me with peace. -  Robert Service Around the midpoint of the Second

Sep/Oct '06 Premium Content

Basic Bolivia

"Welcome to Coca Country" could well be the most fitting name for the Bolivian exhibition hall at the next World's Fair or maybe for some future installation at Six Flags over South America. Admittedly provocative (unless the soft-drink giant underwrites its construction), nevertheless the hall might

Jul/Aug '06 Premium Content

Moab to Los Angeles: Mother Lode of the Mother Road

Monument Valley, that dreamy, spiritual, red-rock vista so lovingly exploited by automobile ad directors must indeed be an impressive sight at sunrise or sunset, when the warm light and strong shadows etch its soaring spires and buttes against the sky. But under the cover of high clouds on a hazy,

Jul/Aug '06 Premium Content

Shamrock Tour® - Grand Rapids, Minnesota

My first view of Mille Lacs Lake is an impressive one indeed. The bright midmorning sun is laying a shimmer across the wind-blown surface, creating a near blinding electric caper of refracted light that, even in broad daylight, puts the Vegas strip to shame. Another half-mile of asphalt passes beneath

Jul/Aug '06 Premium Content

Roundtrip Tour: Circling Pittsburgh

The bar in the sports-crazy college town of Morgantown, home to West Virginia University, had one of their televisions tuned, oddly enough, to the Weather Channel. Gnawing away at the wing of some unlucky flightless fowl and sipping from a stein of suds, I found myself paying more attention to

Jul/Aug '06 Premium Content

New Hampshire's White Mountains

Leaf-peeping in New England is serious business. Each autumn, as the days and nights shift from warm to cool and memories of days spent lazing on the beach in light summer outfits become as fuzzy as sweaters pulled out of storage, people from across the country and around the world

Jul/Aug '06 Premium Content

Florida Scooter Tour

In the grand scheme of things, February in North Carolina is not all that bad. We could ride year round, but few of us choose to do so. Our long, hot summers condition us to opt for the extra two wheels once the leaves take leave. Sure, the daytime highs

Jul/Aug '06 Premium Content

Canada: Call of the Yukon - Part One

One of three roads in the world to penetrate the Arctic Circle, the daunting Dempster Highway runs from Dawson City to Inuvik. On its scenic way, the road skirts the Tombstone Range, travels through First Nation towns, and traverses the Peel and Mackenzie Rivers on ice bridges (ferries in summer)

Jul/Aug '06 Premium Content

Northern Chile and Argentina: High and Dry

Summer was running out of gas. Yellow leaves fell gently, and autumn nipped at the air when we left behind the vineyards and fruit plantations north of Santiago on our trip to Mendoza, in Argentina. Like ghost riders, it felt as if we were heading straight into the sky. An

May/Jun '06 Premium Content

Summer Splendor in SE Massachusetts

In the summer, Cape Cod becomes the crown jewel of eastern Massachusetts. While the Berkshires in the western half of the Bay State lure vacationers and weekenders with its rolling hills and famed classical music performances, the siren song of the beaches and other shoreline attractions of the Cape prove

May/Jun '06 Premium Content

Shamrock Tour® - Austin, Texas

It must be after one o'clock. I can tell because the hunger pangs are starting to hit with a consistency matched only by the Heritage Softail's staccato, V-twin thump ricocheting off the warm Texas asphalt. According to a friendly reader I met at the Fort Worth

May/Jun '06 Premium Content

Scooter Tour: Goin' Down Jersey

"New Jersey, Come See For Yourself" is the official slogan recently selected to encourage tourism in the Garden State, and Down Jersey, that mostly rural portion of southern New Jersey bordering the Delaware Bay, is certainly what the current crop of boosters have in mind. A land of

May/Jun '06 Premium Content

Minnesota and N. Dakota - Classic Byways: Highway 52

We've enjoyed our few days of rest in Rochester, but the lure of the highway cannot be denied. Unable to resist, we leave the city behind and again plunge into the sea of greens and golds we've come to know as Midwest farmland. Drifting lazily along

May/Jun '06 Premium Content

Southeastern Indiana

If you are looking for roads that wind through fantastic, hilly scenery and want to encounter a little history every few miles or so, then start making plans to ride in southeastern Indiana. You'll find Native American trails, the route of Indiana's only major Civil War

May/Jun '06 Premium Content

France: En Provence

The weather in Provence, a region comprising some five départements in the southeast corner of France, is near perfect in spring and autumn, with mainly clear skies and temperatures in the mid-seventies. It's a land of scarlet poppies growing wild by the thousands, church bells ringing out from

May/Jun '06 Premium Content

Exploring Chile's Wild and Rugged South

Off-road heaven has a name  -  Chile. Twenty-seven hundred miles long, this very narrow stretch of land between the Andes and the rugged Pacific coast is one of the most multifaceted countries we have ever seen. In stark contrast to its arid northern reaches Chilean Patagonia offers all the dramatic

Mar/Apr '06 Premium Content

Virginia: Spirit Roads and Ghosts In Grey

Have you ever been somewhere that seems to speak to you? You know, a special place that feels so comfortable and so right that you can't help but feel you belong there. Staying away is impossible and with each return the mystical region's sweet refrains strengthen