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 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'
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 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 action
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, toward Snowshoe,
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
Spring '02 Premium Content Highway 50 - Coast to Coast As the days of my retirement drew closer, the most asked question by my co-workers was "What are you going to do when you retire?" My standard answer, "It's not what I'm going to do but what I'm not going to
Fall '01 Premium Content Adirondack National Park A visit with our son Florian at his ice hockey camp in Lake Placid, New York, this July presented an excellent excuse for Christa and I to explore the Adirondacks. But if you happen to be anywhere close - you won't need an excuse. However, you will need
Fall '01 Premium Content Shamrock Tour® - Dillsboro, North Carolina Deep, hanging clouds at 7 a.m. and the heavy raindrops tell us we have to wait. Some four hours later, the wait is over and it's time to call Garry, and start our tour of the Nantahala National Forest. We meet at my home in Clemmons -
Fall '01 Premium Content Nantahala A half a million years ago, tectonic plate movement in the Atlantic Ocean caused a massive upheaval of solid granite that eventually became the Appalachian Mountains. These lofty peaks at one time were over 100,000 feet high. Exposure to the elements, the many epochs of glaciation, and time itself
Summer '01 Premium Content Great Lakes Escapade Destination USA doesn't always have to be the much-visited Southwest. Foreign visitors, who think only of red boulders and dry desert expanses in association with the US, should think again. A vast gamut of alternatives runs everywhere. In this case, a tour of the Great Lakes region in
Summer '01 Premium Content Shamrock Tour® - Marion, Virginia Poring over my maps on a lazy Sunday, another rainy day in March, I felt restless. The urge to ride was almost overwhelming and I could hardly wait for the first warm days of spring to start the next tour. The winter had been long and cold, fairly unusual for
Spring '01 Premium Content Blue Mountain Driving through the Rockies means getting a real out of this land of wonderful landscapes, fantastic lookouts, rockin' backroads and friendly people. Andi Seiler got it. The radio is turned up. Steppenwolf's 'Born to be Wild' is resounding from the speakers, sunshine is back after
Spring '01 Premium Content Deals Gap 'Hey guys, tomorrow something exciting is going to happen,' remarks 'Tiger' Christian at dinner, putting on a smug smile like a Cheshire cat sitting in front of its Christmas turkey. It doesn't matter that it is only October. Somehow, everyday is Christmas in the
