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,
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 Road Two
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,
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's
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 long flight
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'
Fall '02 Premium Content Shamrock Tour® - Santa Fe, New Mexico With only three days to spare for exploration, the choice of Santa Fe and its exhilarating surroundings is a wise one. The weather is fine and the way unwinds as smoothly as silk beneath our Road Kings. A number of people have asked me recently to define a shamrock tour.
Fall '02 Premium Content North Africa: Trans Sahara Part Two Sitting on the terrace of the Grand Hotel in Niamey, I order five gorgeous, grilled meat skewers in broken French, "Cinq brochettes, s 'il vous plait!" To get on in West Africa, French is essential since neither English nor German are commonly spoken. Everyone who wants to
Fall '02 Premium Content Germany: Sauerland Heartbeat Tour A journey through the countryside on low mountain-range roads, past massive bales of hay, picturesque little villages, and along beautiful expanses of water - this is the tour through Sauerland, in the heart of Germany. Facts & Information In General The Sauerland region is located in the southeastern sector of
Fall '02 Premium Content Winter or Summer, Ride to the North Jersey Shore Exiting Garden State Parkway's #114, south of the reeds and grasses of the tranquil Cheesequake estuary, a trip on Harley's Road King to New Jersey's north shore can be more rewarding than just another day at the beach. Panoramic vistas, educational exhibits, hiking trails,
Summer '02 Premium Content Kentucky Bluegrass Joyrides Take One: Cold Kentucky Rain Crossing the border between Virginia and Kentucky creases the worry lines across my forehead. Dark clouds are gathering in the northwest. My mind on replay, I can hear those Elvis refrains about the cold Kentucky rain and all that Weather Channel chatter about the soggy
Summer '02 Premium Content Shamrock Tour® - Farmington, Maine There is no better time or place to tour in northern New England than when those fleeting days of Indian summer coincide with the crowning glories of fall foliage. There's beauty to fog, especially during the transition from night to day. As the sun breaks through, pearlescent tendrils,
Summer '02 Premium Content Texas Hill Country All the people who told us that Texas is long, straight, and boring probably either think the world is flat, or they've never seen Hill Country. If waltzing a tall, steep-forked KTM Adventure enduro through huge canyon sweepers and over some of the best up and down
Summer '02 Premium Content North Africa: Trans Sahara Part One Using the worldwide web to make my travel preparations, I sit for hours in front of my monitor, scanning maps and calculating GPS-data. Immersed in the process, I almost feel like I'm already motoring north of Tschad in the Tibesti Mountains. In reality I am still at
Summer '02 Premium Content Great Britain: A Special Trip to Wales First I lived here and then I even spent my honeymoon here and now, a dozen years later, my wife and I return to enjoy once more the wonders of Wales on motorcycle! Some things never change! Like the constant drizzle of rain when leaving the ferry that just took
Summer '02 Premium Content Cruising Central California's Missions There's a small window of time for comfortably riding between California's central coast missions. It begins with the blooming of the blue wisteria and ends when they lose their blossoms. You'll even catch yourself looking for these flowers along your favorite roads in the
Spring '02 Premium Content North Carolina Coast With the new Le Mans and Stone (on loan from Moto Guzzi) beneath us, Christa and I put them through their paces on a treasured trip along the North Carolina Coast. Goose Bumps Late in the afternoon, with some 80 miles to travel, there's little time for us
Spring '02 Premium Content Shamrock Tour® - Snowshoe, West Virginia What's going on in a well-known ski area like Snowshoe in the summer? Daniel, Andrea and I find some answers in this curvy paradise. With that old John Denver tune looping around my mind, I lead my brother Daniel and his girlfriend Andrea from Winston-Salem, NC,
Spring '02 Premium Content Europe: Andalusia & Murcia, Spain Five sunny days amid blooming trees, unspoiled nature reserves and empty roads in an inviting corner of southeast Spain. Our spring vacation begins in Alhama de Murcia, some thirty miles northwest of the Mediterranean port city of Cartagena. Jan's Kawasaki ZX-9, Matthias's BMW and Regina&
Spring '02 Premium Content West Coast Wonders Most famous for their gorgeous coastlines, Washington, Oregon and Northern California offer any visitor an array of sights and sounds. But further inland the Pacific Northwest also harbors a host of surprises for the motorcycle traveler. This time out, the Promised Land lies between San Francisco and Seattle - the route
