Passes & Canyons Blog

When the Ducati turned up in my driveway, nobody knew what to do with it. I was in New York, covering a polo tournament, and people had threatened my life. My lawyer said I should give myself up and enroll in the Federal Witness Protection Program. Other people said it had something to do with the polo crowd.
The motorcycle business was the last straw. It had to be the work of my enemies, or people who wanted to hurt me. It was the vilest kind of bait, and they knew I would go for it.
Of course. You want to cripple the bastard! Send him a 130-mile-per-hour cafe racer. And include some license plates, he’ll think it’s a streetbike. He’s queer for anything fast.

That’s Hunter S. Thompson speaking there. He was into motorcycles.

If you ride motorcycles the chances are good that you like to read about motorcycles. Taking me for example, I get three moto magazines in the mail and occasionally pick one or two up at the newsstand. And then there are the books.

I read a really good book just recently and I’m passing it along to you as a recommendation. The book is The Devil Can Ride: The World’s Best Motorcycle Writing. It is a collection of pieces by different authors, edited by Lee Klancher. The quote above is from “Song of the Sausage Creature,” and it’s one of the pieces in the book.

This book is not just a collection of well-known articles by well-known writers, however. Some you’ll recognize but many you will not and often the ones who write the most interesting stuff are the folks you never heard of. The whole time I was reading this I kept wondering how Klancher came up with all of these pieces.

Take Elena Filatova, for example, and her piece, “Ghost Town.” She likes to ride her bike through ghost towns, but no, we’re not talking about some old west USA ghost towns. We’re talking Chernobyl. You know, as in the area in Ukraine where the nuclear reactor melted down and poisoned everything for centuries. Apparently it’s not overly dangerous to pass through these areas, you just don’t want to stop or spend too much time there.

I travel a lot, and one of my favorite destinations leads north from Kiev, toward the Chernobyl Dead Zone, which is 130 kilometers from my home. Why is this my favorite? Because one can take long rides there on empty roads.
The people all left, and nature is blooming. There are beautiful woods and lakes.

There is a broad range of motorcycling included here, ranging from adventure tourers to one-percenters to the totally weird. George Orwell (or at least his motorcycle) to Robert Pirsig to T.E. Lawrence, as well as a few familiar names like Brian Catterson, Kevin Cameron, and Peter Egan. Plus, as I said, all the people you never heard of.

This is a good book. Publish and send me a Volume 2 and I’ll dive right into it. Meanwhile, you might want to check out the only volume available now.

Recent from National Motorcycle Examiner
William Barclay declared winner of Hoka Hey, to receive cash via wire

Biker Quote for Today

Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.

Man, you write about one book you read and before you know it you’ve become a book reviewer. At least that’s what has happened with me, and I have to believe there’s a connection.

It started when I did a review of John Newkirk’s The Old Man and the Harley. This was a book I bought because it sounded really good and I figured that maybe I’d be able to snag an interview with the author, considering that he lives here in the Denver area. I never asked for an interview because I found the book disappointing but I did publish a review.

It wasn’t long after that when I was contacted by a rep from Motorbooks asking if I’d like to have some of their latest books to review. I said yes and so far I’ve received a variety, including such as The Vincent in the Barn, Race Tech’s Motorcycle Suspension Bible, How to Restore Your Motorcycle, and The Devil Can Ride, to name just four. So far I’ve posted reviews of three of these in various places.

Next I heard from Cheryl Probst, who had just released her latest book, Motorcycle Museums of the United Kingdom. Would I like a review copy?

Sure, you bet, though I haven’t had time to do much with it yet. I’m going to try to get to it soon.

After that I heard from Avalon Travel asking if I’d be interested in reviewing Gary McKechnie’s latest motorcycle touring book, Great American Motorcycle Tours. Or would I perhaps like to have him do a guest post for any of my publishing venues. Yes and yes. Again, I hope to get to this soon.

Finally–at least for now–I was contacted by a different rep from Motorbooks. I replied explaining that I was already dealing with another of their reps but it seems they put out enough different titles that they divide promotion among several reps. So Rep 2 can supply me with different books than Rep 1.

OK, great, go ahead and send me Motorcycle Journeys Through the Pacific Northwest , 2nd Edition. I’ll add it to the stack. And I will get to it sooner or later.

So look at this as sort of a heads-up. If there are any of these you’d be especially interested in hearing about let me know and I’ll move it to the top of the stack. Otherwise I figure I’ll keep plugging along until we get into winter weather, at which time I’ll have more time to read and there will be less going on in terms of rides and rallies and all those summertime motorcycle things we do. Then maybe I’ll have to start a book club.

Recent from National Motorcycle Examiner
The Devil Can Ride: Riders can write

Biker Quote for Today

A skittish motor-bike with a touch of blood in it is better than all the riding animals on earth… –T.E. Lawrence

I picked up a copy of this book, Motorcycle Journeys Through the Southwest, on the recommendation of Steve Shards, the Kiwi rider whose pending trip to Colorado I discussed in several posts previously. It’s an interesting book and if you’re coming to the four-corners states (Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona) there is a lot of good information about roads you may not know exist. I mean, let’s face it, there aren’t any websites comparable to motorcyclecolorado.com for any of those other states.

What caught my interest was when Steve included some roads in Utah on his trip plans that I had never heard of. I asked him how he (in New Zealand mind you) came to know about these roads, and he told me he read about them in this book. So I bought the book.

The author, Martin Berke, breaks the four-state area up into a number of geographically logical sections.

What I personally find most interesting about this book is that Berke covers a number of roads here in Colorado that I have ignored on the website primarily because they don’t go through to anywhere. That is, these are roads that dead-end or where the pavement runs out and you would need to either turn around or venture out on the gravel — or worse. He also suggests campgrounds up some of these roads as bases for day trips.

Looking through this book pointed out to me that I’ve been a little short-sighted in this regard, both in what I’ve included on the site and in my own travels. Especially now that I’ve started including some of the better gravel roads, I’m going to let this book help me explore some parts of this state that I’m unfamiliar with. I’d say that’s a darn good recommendation.

Biker Quote for Today

Never hesitate to ride past the last street light at the edge of town.