Mid-Life Rider

Flagstaff Arizona: 485 Miles
It wasn’t until mid afternoon that I finally got it. The big storm system that had been chasing me since I left Seattle was keeping temperatures down. Rather than grumbling about the cold and off and on again drizzle, I should be happy. This flash of insight occurred to me when I [...]

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Ely Nevada: 505 miles
“Take what the road gives you.” My riding pal Ron and I talk about that when we do our long rides. It’s something he learned from spending years riding rivers (change the word “road” to “river” and it makes sense).
Day 2 of my long ride down and it’s raining. Been raining for [...]

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Lakeview, Oregon: 503 miles
I’ve been here before. These roads. Seen these trees. Lakeview. Crummy roadside motel. Eating alone. But it’s all fresh and different each time I ride by and through. Even the Interstate 8 , my home away from home tonight, has a kind of seedy charm that would be totally lost on me [...]

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Someone asked me the other day why I blogged. I hemmed and hawed and didn’t really have an answer. It goes with the other question, “Why do you ride?” Ah, not so fast! They’re surely not from the same root! Maybe, maybe not.
I’ll get to the blogging point in a minute, but I have just [...]

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It’s Friday night. It’s raining. I’m in a hotel in Tillamook, Oregon. This is not what I had planned.
“This is not what I had planned.”
More and more I have noticed myself having that reaction. Which more and more makes me reflect on why I have so many plans. I mean think about it. How many [...]

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One of my life-long friends and riding buddy has taken his family off on an around-the-world tour. Actually, let’s give total credit, the entire family have taken themselves off on an around the world tour.

They’re presently in India where they met a guy named Stu who is riding all over the place on one of [...]

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“AChick” embodies so much of what many of us aspire to (or at least me). Here’s the lead on her most excellent and extensive Alaskan ride report called Seize the Journey.
I recently calculated that in the last 12 months I have ridden over 67,000 miles on two wheels. There are expressions in the motorcycling [...]

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You take what the road gives you. You take what the weather gives you. You take what the ride gives you. That’s the zen of riding.
Riding any sort of distance has the tendency to bring out the philosopher in me. The philosopher, the dreamer, the schemer, the blogger, the critic . . . The opportunity [...]

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 “I’m happy to be riding back into this country. It is a kind of nowhere, famous for nothing at all and has an appeal because of just that. Tensions disappear along roads like this.”  Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Robert M. Pirsig. HarperTorch 2006, Mass Market Paperback, 560 [...]

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This is a republish of a piece I wrote in 2005.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. A middle-aged man wakes up one day and decides he just has to have a motorcycle. I thought so. That was me.
I could fill pages with the run up to this decision, all having [...]

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