Everywhere......

Everywhere..... mountains, prairies, deserts..... in sun, rain, and even snow.... in the cold, in the heat..... well-fed, hungry and thirsty.... she's gone everywhere with me..... everywhere.....

Without a whimper, without a complaint, without a single unkind word.... always with her flashing smile..... waiting out thunderstorms under freeway overheads and service station sheds, running from the hail, leaning out over the sidecar to feed or speak to our little son..... almost hitting bears more times than you would believe, and hitting one deer once and enough -- and sharing the same hospital room..... she's been up to Alaska twice, Nova Scotia twice, Hawaii, the European Alps three times..... well over 350,000 miles now... She's my veteran world traveler companion, and we didn't go first class.... motorcycle and tent....for twenty-five years.... we've spent hundreds and hundreds of nights in wind-rattled tents....precious nights.....everywhere.....she went everywhere with me. And we're going again. She's made my life... I look at her and marvel, and silently thank God...... and wonder how I ever deserved this blessing.

Agent of Excitement

In developed nations, where every human survival need is met, the greatest danger to human beings is boredom, or the feeling that life is agonizingly predictable and humdrum and meaningless -- and most people will go to great lengths in putting excitement back into their cubicle-bound lives. As an "Agent of Excitement," the motorcycle is unsurpassed -- relatively cheap and available to nearly everyone, motorcycles are an instant cure to the Humdrum Blues. Almost every population center in the developed world is surrounded by a rabbit's warren of paved and unpaved roads. If you have a motorcycle and an hour for lunch, you can report back to your cubicle with your heart trip-hammering, every nerve reborn and alive, looking eagerly ahead to the ride home.... if you have a motorcycle and a week, you can cross a continent, with all of the suspense and drama and uncertainty of such an endeavor....and if you have a motorcycle and more days than a week, well........

That is why motorcycle companies very seldom if ever put up advertising that mentions the utility or the inherent economy of motorcycles -- not in the developed world, anyway. Marketers of motorcycles sell the machines by talking about its ability to put romance and adventure in your life... which a motorcycle can do better than almost anything else, and which most people today need more than almost anything else. The popular iconic and universally recognized sticker, "Live To Ride, Ride To Live," strikes a chord in just about everyone suffocating and suffering in a cubicle today....

In the very early twentieth century, the vast majority of Americans lived and worked on family farms. And this was no easy life -- it was an existence marked by extremely hard work and limited geography. Most Americans lived and died in a few square miles, and many never left their own county or township. But the early Americans had also been travelers -- the Oregon and Sante Fe Trails, the sea circuit around Cape Horn, the cattle drover trails, the gold rushes, the voyage to America itself -- testified to the spirit of adventure that lurked just under the surface for most of them, and the confined life of a farmer must of rankled.....

But the development of the early twentieth century motorcycle offered almost instant salvation from the "prison" of farm work. For just a few dollars, the young farm worker could obtain the means of temporary escape.... Indian and Harley offered nearly everyone the chance of freedom, at least for a Sunday afternoon. Given the cost of feed and pasture, early motorcycles and gasoline were cheaper than horses, and much more capable of expanding a farmer's horizons. Almost every farm town across the country had a motorbike club, and pictures of them hang on the walls of many old restaurants. There was no utility to the motorcycle: you couldn't haul hay on it, you couldn't herd sheep with it (although some tried), you couldn't harvest vegetables with it.... but what you could do was change your horizons, what you could do was to "go and see," what you could do was to regain your freedom and sense of adventure. And it's interesting to me that, one hundred years or so later, motorcycles are still being used for the very same purpose.

I believe travel without effort is meaningless. Travel should not be free. Travel should cost you something, not in money but in effort and commitment and courage -- all of which is paid for from the currency of your heart..... Only when you pay dues such as these do you get the traveler's true reward -- the reward of a better understanding, a better understanding of the world and your place in it.

Motorcycling is a uniquely convenient way of adding joyous effort to travel.  It is usually so joyous, that the means become more important than the ends.   In other words,  going there is just as important as getting there.   Riders often laugh about hopping on their bike for a quick ride to the store for a loaf of bread, a quick ride that lasts half the day!  You see, it's impossible not to travel when you have access to a motorcycle and the skills to ride it.  Impossible.