As someone who’s spent a career immersed in the world of motorcycles – from industry launches and product reviews to cross-continental rallies and the personalities that shape our culture – I’ve seen firsthand how the essence of two-wheeled travel extends far beyond the specs of the bike. The machine is the conduit. The real ride? That’s in the stories we gather, the people we meet, and the places that change us. From small town shop tech to famous celebrities – we share the same passion for new experiences.
In The Moment Collectors, Asia, veteran overlander and respected author Sam Manicom has curated a collection that understands this truth at its core. The result is an evocative, 400-page anthology of travel tales that dives deep into the heart of what it means to ride through the world’s most vast and culturally rich continent – Asia.
Manicom has long been regarded as one of the great storytellers of motorcycle travel, and here he takes on the role of editor and guide, gathering 20 diverse voices – from round-the-world legends to first-time road warriors. The book is as textured as the terrain it covers, enhanced with hand-drawn illustrations and photography that add authenticity without distracting from the text.
What’s particularly notable for an industry professional like myself is the range of contributors. Some, like Paul Stewart and Heike Fania, are established names in the adventure travel community. Others, including riders writing publicly for the first time, bring a raw and refreshing vulnerability. This spectrum is what gives The Moment Collectors its staying power – it isn’t just a “greatest hits” of veteran road tales; it’s a living, breathing collection of perspectives.
Elspeth Beard – another legend of global motorcycling – pens the foreword with a fitting reminder: It’s often the interruptions that become the journey. She echoes Ted Simon’s iconic sentiment, and the book’s stories prove it time and again. Plans fall apart. Routes get rerouted. Illness strikes. And somehow, those detours become the very essence of the experience.
Maria Schumacher and Aidan Walsh’s Indian adventure is a perfect example. Inspired by a chance visit to the London ExCeL motorcycle show, they land in Delhi with only visas, helmets, and hope. Their journey is as unpredictable as the traffic, veering from moments of physical trial to emotional revelation. It’s not a polished, Instagram-filtered version of travel – it’s real, and for that reason, it’s compelling.
Later in the book, Manicom and Birgit Schünemann share a different kind of narrative – traveling through Vietnam not on ADV bikes but on $6-a-day automatic scooters. For readers within the motorcycle press, it’s a reminder that the machine matters less than the mindset. It’s the story, not the displacement, that leaves a mark.
Each chapter transports the reader – from the remote white deserts of Chukotka to the high passes of Mongolia – without ever feeling formulaic or forced. As someone who’s viewed hundreds of rider submissions over the years, I can say with confidence: The editorial balance here is exceptional. Manicom’s curation is thoughtful, letting each story breathe while keeping a consistent rhythm throughout the book.
The Moment Collectors is more than a travel book. It’s a time capsule of the motorcycling spirit. It captures the essence of exploration, uncertainty, and resilience in a world that too often seeks control and predictability.
For those of us in the industry – writers, editors, manufacturers, marketers – this book is a reminder of why we do what we do. It reconnects us with the emotional core of motorcycling: the moment when the journey becomes more than the ride.
And for our readers, whether seasoned tourers or daydreaming commuters, this book doesn’t just make you want to ride – it makes you want to remember why you ever started. Five stars for Sam Manicom and for the contributing writers.
Rubber Side Down delivers 44 chapters on motorcycle rides and the necessary things that are required for a long and satisfying motorcycling life. For example:
How do you find a girlfriend that actually wants to ride on the pillion seat?
Where do you find a motel that caters to just motorcycle customers? (Look for one near La Crosse, Wisconsin.)
What can you do about hazards such as a livestock truck ahead of you that suddenly splashes out a large steaming pile in your lane?
What is the best, swerving out of your lane or standing on the brakes when a kayak comes off the roof of a car and sails into traffic?
Is camping in parks with a motorcycle and a pup tent a good idea. Ron explains all the ups and downs and has decided roughing it is only for younger riders.
I was rolling along from chapter to chapter and enjoying everything and then I reached chapter 22, “Tip-Toeing Off the Resevation,” which begins with: Warning: The following column focuses on a motorcycle that is not a BMW. Yes, I know, HERESY!
I almost fell out of my chair. I lived in the Eau Claire area of Wisconsin for several years and I crossed Ron’s path many times. I often asked him if he’d like to try one of my bikes to get a taste of other brands other than BMWs.
“Try my Indian FTR,” I’d say. Or, “How about the Royal Enfield – it has about the same amount of power as a BMW at one third the price.”
“No, No! I am a shameless Disciple of BMW!”
“What about that Triumph 900 in the back of the garage? Just as old school as a BMW, twin cylinders, air cooled, and 50-year-old styling.”
“Well, maybe sometime, but not today.”
And here I am picking myself up off the floor after seeing the photo of Ron and his 2014 Honda NC700X at the beginning in chapter 22, his hand covering the Honda logo and his face in “hand caught in the cookie jar” grimace!
After my heart rhythm settled back down, I continued on until I reached chapter 30, “Glenn Stasky, Innovation Man.” Chapters from 30-34 contain profiles of several BMW riders and photos of their Germanic steeds. I turned back to the inside cover flap to see if the book can be sold only to BMW owners at BMW outlets. It doesn’t appear that is the case.
As I worked my way toward the end of the book, I came at last to chapter 39, “Exploring The Twisted Road.” Finally, we must be getting to the hundreds of twisting miles near Eau Claire and La Crosse. Other chapters have given us looks at fishing in the Eau Claire River and how to deliver pizzas in Eau Claire, so this must be the chapter on the incredible riding scene in northwest Wisconsin. The chapter turned out to be a plug for Twisted Road, a motorcycle rental service Ron used when vacationing in New Mexico.
Why a hot bed for motorcycling such as Eau Claire was completely ignored in the book is very strange. Ron, you may not have participated, but the oldest motorcycle charity ride in the U.S. is in Eau Claire’s backyard. Indian Motorcycle sponsors the Flood Run that follows the Mississippi River Road and even raffles off a new Scout each year. As far as I know, BMWs and even Hondas are allowed to participate. This event from what I have seen would have provided fodder for a fat chapter in the book.
Rubber Side Down: The Improbable Inclination to Travel on Two Wheels is an enjoyable read, regardless of the brand(s) of motorcycle you prefer, but BMW acolytes will find it particularly appealing. Published by Road Dog Publications, the book is 252 pages and retails for $19.99 on Amazon.
ABOUT RON DAVIS
Ron Davis caught the motorcycle bug at age fifteen. Forty years and about 20 bikes later, he has remained an enthusiast, especially for bikes carrying the BMW roundel. Over that period, he’s also squeezed in a full-time career teaching high school and university classes in writing, photography, and publishing while also working as a social media writer for the tourism industry in Northwest Ontario and as an associate editor and columnist for BMW Owners News. More often tongue-in-cheek commentary than a technical or travel focus, his writing has been featured by BMW Motorcycle Magazine, On The Level, Backroads Motorcycle Tour Magazine, Volume One, Our Wisconsin, and the National Writing Project, and his essays (some about riding) can be heard regularly on Wisconsin Public Radio’s “Wisconsin Life.”
Melissa Holbrook Pierson, author of “The Perfect Vehicle” and other books.
In 1997, Melissa Holbrook Pierson published The Perfect Vehicle: What It Is About Motorcycles, a delightful book that chronicles her love affair with motorcycles as well as the unique cultural and historical landscape of the two-wheeled world. In 1998, while struggling my way through graduate school in Philadelphia, I bought a motorcycle and learned to ride.
Within the first year of my own love affair with motorcycling, I read – no, I devoured – The Perfect Vehicle. Not only did Pierson artfully articulate the full spectrum of emotions, sensations, and experiences that are familiar to any motorcyclist and evoke the “ride to live, live to ride” credo, she educated me about the exciting new world I had come to inhabit.
When I read Pierson’s account of buying a Moto Guzzi Lario from a small European bike shop called The Spare Parts Company tucked away on a narrow street in the Old City section of Philadelphia, an area I explored regularly on late-night pub crawls and weekend wanderings, I felt an even stronger connection to her book. I had been to the shop before, and my then-girlfriend was friends with the proprietor.
On the 25th anniversary of The Perfect Vehicle, considered one of the best books ever written about motorcycles, we reprinted a review published in the August 1997 issue of Rider and which can be found on our website here. We also reprinted Pierson’s introduction to the Spanish edition of the book, which was published in 2021 by La Mala Suerte Ediciones, the first and only publisher devoted to motorcycle books in Spanish.
Flashback to August 1997, the issue that featured our review of Melissa Holbrook Pierson’s “The Perfect Vehicle”
Introduction to ‘The Perfect Vehicle’ Spanish Edition
By Melissa Holbrook Pierson
Twenty-five years have elapsed between the time I began writing The Perfect Vehicle and the moment you are reading these words. The impetus for writing was, quite simply, unbridled joy. Why had no one ever told me motorcycles were so transporting? Why didn’t everyone know how affecting they were, how they enriched and condensed experience? How they were a powerful force for personal good?
So I attempted to say in my book every last thing I could think of to say about these machines that both capture and express the human imagination. But no amount one can say about something that’s essentially infinite can comprise “everything.” Even I would go on to find more things, and more things, to say. I wrote articles and poems and another book about bikes. I’m not finished yet. The meaning of the ride is never-ending, which is why we ride: to taste immortality in the form of the resounding now.
A quarter of a century is a long time. Time enough for everything to change – governments to rise and fall, species disappear, cities spread, new technologies revolutionize daily life and rewire our brains. In that long span, I can now report, much has changed about motorcycling. And very little. There have been technical advances in the bikes we ride – fuel injection, ABS, “ride by wire” (explained to me half a dozen times to no effect), things once visibly mechanical now directed in the dark by computer chips. No longer for me long garage bullshit sessions among friends, where I would marvel at the ingenious arrangement of parts mirrored in the minds of people who are to me equal marvels of nature: they manage to comprehend the way complex systems, the motorcycle’s biomes, flow together and apart.
I always knew my bike had a heart, but now it has a separate brain. In its advanced evolutionary state it may only be attended to at the office of the appropriate neurologist, I mean, dealer with the codes. This has put an unhappy distance between the soul of the machine and its rider, but the tradeoff is performance well beyond the imagination of the last century.
There are concurrent changes in the types of people who ride. The so-called adventure bike has become hugely popular, along with global journeys on it that once were rare but are at this moment being undertaken by astonishing numbers of people of every age, nationality, and gender. The percentage of riders who are female has more than doubled since I started riding, and these women are often pursuing it in cultures that openly disapprove. They don’t care; they do it anyway. That’s how powerful the allure is: we risk death to do it.
Much verbal handwringing has materialized, in the United States at least, about the “graying” of the motorcyclist, and the sport’s diminishing hold on youth who are reputed to care more about virtual life than the real thing with its weather and difficulties and the 360-degree view onto a disappearing but still gorgeous planet. Economic factors are often discussed. But that is in the small corner from which I write. Shift the scope to India, which has emerged as the world’s biggest motorcycle market, and see (as I recently did for myself) throngs of young people enthralled by riding and the places it takes you. I’m not worried about the demise of the motorcycle. The planet itself will be destroyed long before the peculiar happiness riding confers.
I, too, have come closer to my end. Going toward it on my bike is the only reasonable mode of travel through these years.
Motorcycles amplify all that is glorious about living. It is not an adjunct to waking up in the morning, or an occasional occupation. It explains everything, gives a purpose to being alive, and a place in both community and history, which still and forever unreels, like the road itself. I have lost dear friends, who happened to die doing the thing they loved most. But that was happenstance, not cause. Motorcycling has brought me the deepest friendships I’ll ever know, acceptance into a worldwide brotherhood, and the ultimate knowledge that love is real – love for an inimitable collection of parts that mysteriously opens a window onto the most vital of experiences, as well as love between two people brought together by what I can only consider a magical agent. Yes, motorcycles are even matchmakers for the lovelorn.
So much has changed in the years between then and now. So much has stayed the same. I still feel boundless anticipation and hope and desire and a fleck of worry every time I engage first gear. The world becomes new on every ride. But now I know a deeper secret, one I have both lived and witnessed, again and again. Motorcycles save lives.
Our guest on Episode 32 of the Rider Magazine Insider Podcast is C. Jane Taylor, who describes herself as a writer, a biker, a mom, a wife, a warrior, and sometimes a bit of a chicken. But at age 50, when she received an invitation to join the AARP, she ripped up the letter and bought a motorcycle. On April 19, Jane is releasing a new book called Spirit Traffic: A Mother’s Journey of Self-Discovery and Letting Go, about a 10,000-mile cross-country motorcycle trip she took with her husband and son. You can read an excerpt from Jane’s book in the April 2022 issue of Rider. You can buy Spirit Traffic online or at bookstores, and it’s available as an audiobook. For more information, visit cjanetaylor.com.
You can listen to Episode 32 on iTunes, Spotify, and SoundCloud, or via the Rider Magazine Insider webpage. Please subscribe, leave us a 5-star rating, and tell your friends! Scroll down for a list of previous episodes.
We all fight a battle between our opposites selves, between good and evil, between our inner demon and our inner angel. No one is all good or all bad. It’s the vast area in the middle where things get interesting.
When it came to reviewing Peter Jones’ new book, “The Bad Editor: Collected Columns and Untold Tales of Bad Behavior,” I knew I would be biased. I know Peter. I like Peter. We’ve shared lots of laughs and drinks over the years at motorcycle press launches. When I took over as editor-in-chief of Rider, Peter reached out to me and offered to help. Now he writes a monthly column in Rider called “The Moto Life.”
So I asked Denis Rouse, Rider’s founding publisher and a guy who loves reading as much as he loves riding, to review Peter’s book. Denis doesn’t know Peter. Denis is unfiltered and likes controversy. He’s also been in the trenches of the motorcycle industry. Who better to review a book called “The Bad Editor”?
But after reading the review Denis sent me, I knew we needed to zoom out, to take a wider view.
We need interesting people in this world to save us from the khaki-slacks and white-Camry dullness that will swallow us whole if we don’t pry open its jaws and kick out its teeth. Interesting people are complicated. As Whitman would say, they contradict themselves, they are vast and contain multitudes.
Peter Jones with his 2006 Suzuki GSX-R1000 Bob-Job.
Peter is interesting. He has a degree in fine arts and used to work in a museum. He started road racing in his 30s. He had a engine throw a rod between his legs at 199 mph on the Bonneville Salt Flats, just missing his chance to join the 200 MPH Club (and luckily escaping without grievous bodily harm). But he later joined the club, clocking 202.247 mph from a standing start on a naturally aspirated production motorcycle at Maxton AFB. Peter has written for every major motorcycle magazine and worked for Pirelli, Öhlins, Kymco and Nitron. He’s written academic papers on philosophy and an as-yet-unpublished book about risk. He’s working on a graphic novel. He’s restoring a 1962 Benelli Sprite 200. Peter also an eclectic taste in shoes. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him wear the same pair twice.
You get the idea.
Peter’s new book has a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde quality to it. The first 150 pages are devoted to 30 columns he wrote between 1996 and 2002 for Sport Rider, Motorcyclist, American Roadracing and Motorcycle Street & Strip. Many of the columns are about road racing — the mindset of racers, crashing, backmarkers, G-forces and so on.
As Denis puts it: The chapters on road racing are excellent, in particular the one in which our man describes riders of unworldly skill who walk a track before a race and engrave the geometry in their minds to achieve a subconscious sense, some say even a spiritual sense, to negotiate the course at terrifying speeds and lean angles and braking forces that bend the science of physics. Then there’s this painful chapter on expiating guilt that deals with the time Jones crashed his bike in a road race, causing the rider just behind him to do a career-ending crash, that rider being Stewart Goddard, who despite being paralyzed from the chest down as a result of an early moped accident, was doing well enough on the circuits to be an icon at the time. I’m human. I know guilt. How does Jones handle it? I remember how Graham Greene defined its opposite, innocence, as “a blind leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.”
There are also columns about lane-splitting in Los Angeles traffic, being mesmerized by a Supercross race in Las Vegas (a city he fears and loathes), “The Art of the Motorcycle” exhibit at the Guggenheim, owning a clapped-out CB350 and why you should never try to ride a motorcycle with 15 pounds’ worth of brake rotors in a bag slung over your arm, all of which are well-written, thoughtful and entertaining.
Dr. Jekyll is the good guy, the responsible one. He’s not the interesting part of the story. It’s Mr. Hyde’s 19 “Untold Tales of Bad Behavior” that people really want to read.
According to Denis: Jones stirred memories of my own from years as Rider’s publisher of which I’m not particularly proud. Like the time we drove a rental car on the beach in and out of the salt of the surf wash during Daytona Speed Week. Like when I was drinking Lone Stars with tequila shooters at the bar in Gilley’s during the Houston Motorcycle Show and became convinced by colleagues and Harley execs that I could ride the mechanical bull at gringo level without a serious get-off. And the time we were seated at an entertainment club featuring female impersonators, and one of the entertainers came to our table and, well, I won’t go on here, it’s Jones’ book not mine, but there’s related dubiousness in it that’s plenty familiar to me.
What enthusiasts often want to know is, “What really happens at motorcycle press launches?” They don’t care about the 48 hours of travel to spend 36 hours on the ground in Spain to ride a motorcycle for 100 miles. They aren’t interested in how many photo passes you had to do to get the shot, or that you had to ride a motorcycle with DOT tires on a track in the rain. They want the trench coat opened and the naked truth revealed.
Because Peter has a solid moral core, is not out to settle scores and doesn’t name names, his tales of bad behavior feel restrained. The tales lack the prurience we all crave. Peter is self-effacing, humorously pointing out his own foibles and errors in judgment, but the veil of anonymity that protects the not-so innocent left me hungry for more details, for the who, what, when, where and why of what transpired.
Where Peter is more open, though again without pointing fingers at a particular person or brand, is about the delicate balance motojournalists maintain to serve different masters: editors, publishers, readers, advertisers, manufacturers and themselves.
Back to Denis: What rings especially true in the book, and it’s a subject Jones deals with eloquently on several levels as an insider, is the pressure advertisers put to bear on the shoulders of a motorcycle journalist to retain integrity (read: honesty) in the test reporting of machines and related accessories and riding equipment. Advertising is important. The ship goes down without it. But Jones knows it sinks faster when readers no longer trust it.
Motorcycle magazines (and websites) are enthusiast publications. There is a symbiotic relationship between all parties involved, yet the rules of that relationship are not written down or set in stone. As Peter told me in our recent podcast interview, when journalists are reviewing the advertisers’ products, there’s an inherent conflict of interest. Readers want motojournalists to be honest, but only when that honesty aligns with their own biases. When a reader’s favorite motorcycle doesn’t win a comparison test, the reader will sometimes accuse the editors of the magazine of being “in the pocket” of the winning manufacturer, rather than accepting the conclusion that the motorcycle in their garage isn’t the best/fastest/coolest.
As I know from personal experience, no staff editor at a motorcycle magazine gets rich doing their job. It’s a labor of love. Sure, free helmets are involved, but try paying rent or buying groceries with a used helmet and let me know how it turns out for you.
Peter isn’t a bad guy, not in a moral sense, but he has found himself in bad situations.
Denis: The ironic capper comes in the last chapter of the book in which Jones leads several police officers in a life-threatening chase on the Blue Ridge Parkway. He was speeding way over the posted 45, in a national park no less, when he caught the pursuant attention of the law. The deal ends at a dead end, and Jones is promptly arrested, ordered to lie prone on the ground with his hands cuffed behind him, with an officer’s knee planted on his back. Off he goes to the Graybar Hotel. End of book.
Was a felony conviction added to his resume? He says no but more detail to come in Volume II of “The Bad Editor.”
I’m just jonesing for it.
We need people like Peter Jones in the motorcycle industry. We don’t pay him enough to write his monthly column. So buy his book. Buy two and send one to a friend.
“The Bad Editor: Collected Columns and Untold Tales of Bad Behavior” is 250 pages, and is available in paperback for $18.55 or as a Kindle e-book for $7.99 on Amazon. To read sample chapters and find out more about Peter Jones, visit TheBadEditor.com.
A lot of new books get published every year in this great country of ours, and in 2019 it was more than a million. Plus millions more previously published books. Pretty hard to keep track of them all. So how did I hear about this guy Fitterling and his two books? I noticed on a Baja California website the mention of a book called “Chilli, Skulls & Tequila,” and Baja always interests me. I looked it up on the computer, and the book was being sold by a company called Road Dog Publications. Tap a few keys on this keyboard, and up pops a website primarily dedicated to travel books involving motorcycles, owned by Michael Fitterling.
I contact him; he sounds interesting. He had a brief exposure to mini bikes as a kid, and then went off and did other things. Did not get back into motorcycles until he was 50, when he was working for a small publishing company, Lost Classics Book Company, specializing in reprinting old books. He acquired that company in 2010. He had a wife and kids, and had rebuilt a 40-year-old, non-running Honda CB350, which soon had an additional 30,000 miles on the odometer. He decided to start another publishing line dedicated to books about traveling on motorcycles, and in 2012 bought a Triumph Bonneville T100. Then he joined the Vintage Japanese Motorcycle Club and became editor of its magazine.
In 2014 he decided to write “Thoughts on the Road: Wrenching, Riding & Reflecting,” an entertaining recollection of how he got into this motorcycle world, now his business. The book has chapter headings like “How Not To Load A Bike On A Trailer,” “The Trip I Didn’t Take” and “Managing Wanderlust.” He lives in Florida and loves traveling on two wheels, racking up tens of thousands of miles every year, and is delightfully meticulous when on a subject, especially his travels. He admits to being subject to “a black wall of stress and depression” and motorcycle trips do much to break down this wall. In 2017 he wrote about two of his longer trips in “Northeast by Northwest: Two Restorative Journeys,” describing well everything he sees along the back roads he chooses to travel, with minimal use of Interstates.
“Northeast” is a two-week trip from Florida north to Canada covering more than 5,000 miles, and it is done on the cheap: $600. I was impressed. He carefully explains his planning of the trip, using a forum put on by an adventure rider outfit, with members offering free space to camp, or even a free bed. And he also has friends along the roads he is going to take. But the fact that he was traveling for 40 bucks a day, gas, food and lodging, was great. In the appendix he lists the “Complete Route, Turn by Turn,” which may seem a tad excessive, but it shows the meticulousness of his thinking.
“Northwest” is a longer trip, three weeks to go to the Canadian Rockies in British Columbia, more than 7,500 miles. For a total cost of $1,080 — do a little arithmetic, and that comes out to $51 a day. Again, I’m impressed. Though motel owners might not be, as he only spent one night in a motel on each of those trips.
Read these books and nobody should complain about not being able to afford taking a trip. Presuming they have a good tent.
And what about the “Chilli” book? Turns out the author is an English woman who has done several long trips on a motorcycle, but in Baja she used a rent-a-car.
Run up roaddogpub.com to find out more. Clement Salvadori
Having known Bob Higdon for some 35 years, I understand why
he has the reputation of being a curmudgeon, which is loosely defined as a cranky
fellow full of opinions. He is also a scribbler of minor note, hence these two
volumes of opinions concerning motorcyclists, and travels on a motorcycle.
By profession he is/was a lawyer, and obviously a well-paid
one since he retired at age 53 and started doing all those motorcycle things he
should have been doing in his twenties and thirties. He and I agree on some
things, like the Cross-Bronx Expressway in New York being one of the worst
roads in the country, and disagree on others. He writes that the 1979 R65 was “the
singularly worst motorcycle that BMW ever produced.” He never says why, but BMW
sold many of those models from 1978 through 1983, and then many more in the
single shock version from 1984 to 1993. We should take note that Higdon does
not give a damn about what other people might like.
Most of these chronicles have seen the light of day in
various magazines, be they national mags like Rider or club mags like On
the Level or Iron Butt. That last
brings to mind that probably a third of the stories focus on long-distance
riding, be it trying to break the time record riding from Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay
to Key West, Florida, or the more benign 1,000 miles in 24 hours. I admire
those hardy souls with strong butts who do this kind of thing, but it is
certainly not the way I like to ride. But both funny stories and some tragedies
come out of such shenanigans, and Higdon certainly does not think that
motorcycling is a very safe pastime.
Higdon has been to a lot of places, mostly in North America,
but also on the other five continents…we’re leaving Antarctica out of this.
He must have a bit of masochism, as he travels roads that I have no desire to
go on, like the Road of Bones in Siberia, and the Haul Road going north in
Alaska to Prudhoe Bay. I rode around the world in the 1970s, and if I had a
choice between a bad road, and a not-so-bad road, I always chose the latter.
Higdon seems to focus on the baddest of all.
He obviously enjoys a rather literate background, as he is
constantly mentioning noted writers of the past, from 8th-century BC
Homer and his “Odyssey” to Hemingway and Kerouac. He makes humorous (I hope)
reference to James Joyce’s “Finnegan’s Wake,” about the wake for a fellow, poor
old Finnegan, who fell off a ladder and died. Having heard it is an extremely
difficult book to understand, I’ve never tried to read it, but Higdon compares
it to an annual Iron Butt Rally. Last year’s IBR winner, a woman, rode 13,000
miles in 11 days, so I’ll leave you all to contemplate the book you probably
will never read and the event most of us will never ride, which I find
difficult to understand.
Higdon and I almost met in Munich in 1972, as I picked up my BMW R75 in April, and he got his in June. Who knows how we would have gotten along? Or not. He claims to be “morbidly shy,” which just may be a product of his peculiar sense of humor, but the companionship he enjoys in his travels indicate it is not quite so morbid. I do recommend these two books since he writes well, the reading is easy, and the subject matter—riding motorcycles—is great.
“The Higdon Chronicles,” Volumes 1 and 2 are available from Aerostich.com and Amazon.
Three years ago I wrote a review of “The Adventures of Mimi and Moto,” a children’s book that follows “blue-eyed Mimi, a female monkey, and green-eyed Moto, her male companion, as they ride dirt bikes, sportbikes, choppers, a sidecar and what looks like a Gold Wing.” At the time, my then six-month-old niece Nina was too young to understand the words, but she enjoyed having the book read to her by her parents before bed. Nina loves story time so much that she demands it before naps or nightly bedtime.
Nina is now three-and-a-half, and although she hasn’t started riding a little dirt bike yet (fingers crossed!), she’s become proficient at riding a Strider balance bike. She’s also quite precocious and has an amazing command of language for a girl her age.
When the authors of “Mimi and Moto,” the wife-and-husband team of Nancy Gerloff and Mark Augustyn, sent me their latest book, “Mimi and Moto Ride the Alphabet,” that same day I stopped by Nina’s house on my way home from the Rider office. She had been wearing a Wonder Woman outfit all day and was thrilled to get a new book.
Nina is intrigued by knobby tires.
I figured her mother or father would read the book before she went to bed that night, but Nina pestered her mother to read it to her NOW. My sister-in-law Kelly was in the middle of feeding a bottle to Nina’s seven-month-old brother, Felix, so I sat down on the couch, still wearing my bright-orange Aerostich suit, propped Nina in my lap and read her the book with the most animated voice I could muster.
Reading a book to a chatty three-year-old, I’ve learned, is very interactive. Comments are made, questions are asked, dots are connected, pages are turned back and forth — it’s a fascinating process to observe for a linear, literal, by-the-book adult like me.
Uncle Greg tells Nina about wheelies. E is for “enduro riders exploring the woods who make up no excuses.”
Each page of “Mimi and Moto Ride the Alphabet” is dedicated to a different letter of the alphabet, with playful, colorful illustrations by Aveliya Savina and Marat Kurokhtin. Stories are told and lessons are taught, with words that begin with the featured letter shown in bold. For example, for the letter D:
Dear little rider, our day continues with the dandy letter D. Dirt bikes, dual-sports and dads rock, do you agree? Dirty helmets and gloves most definitely protect. Daddies teaching their daughters and sons to ride safe deserve much respect.
Pages for letters C and D from “Mimi and Moto Ride the Alphabet.”
I’ll admit, at times my tongue got twisted due to all of the alliteration on every page, but Nina was patient with me. We had engaging discussions about goggles versus face shields, the purpose of knobby tires and the relative merits of different flavors of ice cream (the letter I). And Nina enjoyed playing the guessing game of identifying the animal shown on each page (but not mentioned in the text) whose name begins with the featured letter—a frog on the F page, a unicorn on the U page and so on.
Nina identifies the unicorn on the letter U page.
As much as Nina enjoyed the book, Uncle Greg got a kick out of identifying different motorcycles shown throughout, like a Triumph Thruxton (C is for café racer), BMW GS adventure bikes (N is for “navigating their Iceland adventure”), a Yamaha MT-07, a Ducati Hypermotard and a KTM 1090 Adventure R (“I remember going on that press launch!”).
“Very cool vintage motorcycles depend on the letter V.” Mimi, the blue-eyed female monkey that is the co-star of the book, works on an old bike. (Illustration by Aveliya Savina and Marat Kurokhtin)
We applaud Nancy and Mark for promoting a positive image of motorcycles among children. They were recently recognized for their efforts by winning the Motorcycle Industry Council’s 2019 Gas Tank Competition. As Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young sang, teach your children well — and hook them young on two wheels!
Hard cover copies of “Mimi and Moto Ride the Alphabet” and “The Adventures of Mimi and Moto” retail for $14.99 plus shipping and are available at mimiandmoto.com or Amazon.
The KTM 1290 Super Duke GT is a bike fit for Wonder Woman.
Three genuine icons of Italian motorcycle racing comprise the newest titles in “The Motorcycle Files,” the series of e-books written by Alan Cathcart and published by BRG Multimedia.
They are the legendary Moto Guzzi V8, the Bicilindrica V-twin from the same factory and the four-cylinder 350 that was the final Grand Prix racing motorcycle from MV Agusta.
Moto Guzzi was the dominant manufacturer in the
350cc class of Grand Prix racing in the mid-1950s and the sensational V8 was
the weapon it chose to make in an effort to take the premier 500cc category
from Gilera and MV Agusta. It is still the only eight-cylinder motorcycle ever
raced and had not reached its full potential when Moto Guzzi quit racing at the
end of the 1956 season. Although the V8 never did win a Grand Prix, its
specification alone, not to mention a win in the prestigious Imola Gold Cup and
recording a speed of 178mph in the Belgian GP at Spa, was enough to guarantee
it iconic status.
In contrast, the Moto Guzzi Bicilindrica 500cc V-twin did win the 1935 Isle of Man TT in the hands of Stanley Woods and many Grand Prix races after that. In fact, it kept on winning over a racing career spanning two full decades. The machine featured is the bike in its final form, as when it won the 1953 Spanish Grand Prix.
Covered by the final e-book in this release is a machine which truly represented the end of an era — the jewel-like 1976 MV Agusta four-cylinder 350, complete with titanium frame! Giacomo Agostini rode it to victory in the Dutch TT at Assen to suitably close the book on almost 30y years of highly successful Grand Prix racing activity for the famous Italian marque.
Each e-book in “The Motorcycle Files” series provides the reader with a full history of the subject machine, an in-depth technical analysis and track test riding impressions by Alan Cathcart. They are illustrated by rare archive material and superb digital photography, including many shots with fairings removed to give a close-up look at engine and chassis technology.
Priced at $3.99 each all 30 titles in “The Motorcycle Files” series are available for download from Amazon.
Missed Shifts ($22) is a collection of stories, essays and articles from veteran motojournalist and longtime Rider contributor Jerry Smith. Drawn from his work in print and online, the 196-page book includes the highs of riding fast motorcycles, the lows of riding them just a bit too fast, traveling to strange and wild places, the business of being a freelance writer and even a few fond remembrances of the dogs who waited patiently for him to return from his adventures.
Bringing you the Best Motorcycle News from Around the Web!
We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.Ok
