Tours

Jul/Aug '03 Premium Content

Cruising Oregon's Scenic Byways

I must go down to the seas again,to the lonely sea and the sky,And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sails shakingAnd a grey mist

Jul/Aug '03 Premium Content

Germany: Home Run Siegerland-Wittgenstein

Craftsmen, farmers and even princes have always lived a tough and meager life at the edge of the Rothaargebirge (Red-Hair Forest). This bare-bones existence is what supposedly made them a reticent and stubborn lot. On a trip through his former homeland, Andi Seiler tried to find out if these character

Jul/Aug '03 Premium Content

Shamrock Tour® - Litchfield, Connecticut

This Shamrock is about quality, not bragging rights about how many miles were covered in a day. It's also not about horsepower or performance since most of the roads are posted for dawdling between 25 and 45 mph. This tour is about relaxing and enjoying the beautiful scenery

Jul/Aug '03 Premium Content

California: From Monterey to Ojai

When we go to a special location for a round-trip excursion or for a shamrock, the question always arises about the way we should choose to get there. Most of the time we use interstates or major highways. Oh, God, is this ever boring! But during our last trip to

May/Jun '03 Premium Content

Wine Country, CA

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

May/Jun '03 Premium Content

Hawaii: Surf to Summit

For a lesson in atmospheric physics, riding a motorcycle up a volcano is tough to beat. And Maui provides the perfect lab: the 40-mile, helter-skelter Haleakala Highway. Rising 10,000 feet in 40 miles, it's the longest continuous climb in North America. And they say it's

May/Jun '03 Premium Content

Colombia, Ecuador and Peru

Customs Office, Guatemala City Each of our four motorcycles now had 31 pages of documentation, ranging from photocopies of passports to typed forms with VIN and registration numbers. Thirteen people at 13 desks had to stamp each sheet. Mercifully, not all of the agents needed to be bribed. The strain

May/Jun '03 Premium Content

China: Down the Old Silk Road

Five months of preparations behind us, we finally have all the required visas and travel permits for China in our hands. We had been waiting for the written invitation of Almaty. Without it, we wouldn't get the visa for Kazakhstan. When we finally received the expected fax, our

May/Jun '03 Premium Content

Europe: 13,000 Km in 25 Days

You can easily call it a mug's game: We only have four weeks to travel more than 13,000 kilometers. In the process, we cross the boundaries of nine countries. Beginning with a ride to Spain's sunny Seville, the site of the last World's

May/Jun '03 Premium Content

Canada

Even though its name suggests a forbidding trail more suited to snowmobiles than motorcycles, the Icefields Parkway had been on my "must do" list for a long time. Often conjuring illusions of Everest  -  with vast swaths of snow, vertical walls of ice, and crevasses wide enough to

Roundtrip Tour Premium Content

Riding Along Route 66

You may know how it is. You're sitting through a long, cold winter evening beside the fireplace and dreaming about tours while the bike hibernates in the garage. Years ago I was in this situation. The fire crackled and Pink Floyd played in my headphones while I read

Mar/Apr '03 Premium Content

High Noon in Pennsylvania

The sky is blue and the roads are remote, twisting through the woods between Cumberland, Maryland and Somerset Counties. Swinging through the valleys and towns nestled at the feet of the mountains here, we have no way to predict what is about to happen. Sometimes, when the stars align in

Mar/Apr '03 Premium Content

Mid Atlantic: Bridge Tour

Our shakedown of colonial American history begins in Elizabeth City, NC, just on the other side of the swamps and tidal flats from Jamestown, VA, the first permanent English colony in the New World. Along the way, we're crossing some of the greatest bridges on the East Coast,

Mar/Apr '03 Premium Content

Shamrock Tour® - Hot Springs and Western Arkansas

In a bygone era, Hot Springs was a crooked place. This past fall we lit out for those storied hills to prove that it still is. Men and women soothe their rheumatoid arthritis in the carbonated, pressure-heated springs seeping from the deep cavern of the mountains. They relax in a

Mar/Apr '03 Premium Content

Australia: Queensland and the New South Wales

A normal day in our office begins with a check of the e-mails. Recently a pleasant surprise popped up when the first message displayed announced that everything was ready for my trip in Australia. Organized for journalists by Twin Blue Motorcycle and called the "Northern Tropics" tour, it

Mar/Apr '03 Premium Content

Austria: Southern Styria-The Green State

In the middle of the fall, around the end of October, the choice of passable roads narrows in Austria. On streets at high altitude you naturally expect snow at this time of the year. And further down the slopes many of the available touring areas that are closer by may

Mar/Apr '03 Premium Content

Return from Redmond

Redmond, Oregon: Early Sunday morning. I awoke to the sound of zippers. Nothing signals the end of a rally more than the swoosh of sleeping bags being stuffed into compression bags and the sound of tent flaps opening. Over 6,000 tents were spread out at the BMWMOA national rally;

Winter '02 Premium Content

Southwest Texas

This land is beautiful and cruel. Cacti and creosote dot the ground and bloom from the road's edge to the far horizon. Long, sharp spines flare from the waxy stems, ready to draw blood. So far, fighting wind, rain, and heat on US 90, we aren't

Winter '02 Premium Content

Shamrock Tour® - Paducah, Kentucky

"Paducah?" My friends at our neighborhood bar ask. "Paducah!?" Maybe they just like saying it - but, yes, having accepted an invitation to visit their Summer Festival, the HOG - Rally, and to ride the regional roads, I'm bound for Paducah. The Ohio River

Winter '02 Premium Content

New York: The Finger Lakes

Hot, so hot. Gusting winds keep leaning the bike over, but provide no relief. It's open country. The pavement just keeps rolling over hills and across valleys and I catch myself starting to nod off. I have to find a place to stop that's out of

Winter '02 Premium Content

Baja California

Baja. In the world of off-road racing and riding few words conjure the kind of reverence associated with this legendary peninsula. For almost 40 years Baja has hosted one of the greatest off-road races in the world, the Baja 1,000. Located on the western coast of Mexico, the state

Winter '02 Premium Content

Canada: Nova Scotia

The warm June sun that sparked the smiles behind our visors when we picked up our bikes in New Jersey has abandoned us. Between Portland, Maine, and Saint John in New Brunswick, our constant, dour companions are pouring rain and cold temperatures. Here Comes the Sun The monotonous drone of

Winter '02 Premium Content

Washington State

Bonnie and the others invited along for a week of laid-back motorcycling  -  cruising Washington's beautiful Mount Rainier and the Cascades  -  had commitments at home in New Jersey. As for me, I was as free as Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Jack Nicholson in the 60'

Fall '02 Premium Content

California: Mendocino Coast

Our excitement is undeniable - accelerating pulses, shallow breathing - as we climb on the plane jetting us to a most beautiful part of California: Highway 1, between San Francisco and Eureka, where the scenic seductions of Marin, Sonoma, Mendocino and Humboldt counties thrill us in the coming days. The

Fall '02 Premium Content

Easy Does It - East Tennessee

Telling me that County Road 116 is as nasty as Deal's Gap, a local rider also says I shouldn't stop along the way, either. 'If you ain't from there, you ain't one of them,' he says. 'And don'