A journal of my favorite motorcycle adventures.
Looking back at all of the motorcycles I have owned, my favorite was a 2014 BMW R1200GS. The legendary “Gelände/Straße” platform had been reinvented, and I loved both the looks and the capability of that bike. I rode it all over the world. When I got its successor - the 1250 - I went with the larger Adventure. It was a “bigger is better” mentality. It’s an amazing motorcycle. In 2024, the platform…
American ghost towns are a fascinating phenomenon and well worth visiting if you can. Usually powered by greed that drives people to extreme places in pursuit of quick riches, towns sprung up around mines after a rich vein was struck, or to provide supplies to settlers rushing to California or Alaska for gold. Conditions quickly changed around some towns. A mine might be abandoned because it no…
June in the Pacific Northwest can bring some nice riding weather. I met up with a couple of riding buddies to take full advantage of it over six days and 1500 miles.
September remains one of my favorite times of year to ride. It brings the crisp fall air and changing colors of leaves onto the scene, but it’s still usually warm enough for short sleeves. There is no better time of year to extend a weekend to four days and ride around the beautiful Pacific Northwest. That’s exactly what my riding buddy Greg and I did this year.
After experiencing Yellowstone National Park back in 2014, I’ve had a goal of getting to Glacier National Park in northern Montana. A brand new bike this year gave me the perfect excuse to get a good ride in and see another national treasure. The totals looked like:
Few days are as fun as “new bike day.” After ordering a 2023 R1250 GS Adventure from BMW’s factory in Berlin, and tracking the bike’s build and container ship across the Atlantic, it arrived at BMW Motorcycles of Seattle today. I went over to capture the unboxing.
Getting out for extended rides has been an important part of my life over the years, but recently the bike has been garaged while I’ve dealt with a lot of change. We moved homes, I retired from Microsoft, and of course COVID has had an impact on all of our activites. It felt great to break the caged streak with an end-of-season North Cascades loop with my buddy Greg. Since the Mariners didn’t have…
Getting out for a ride during a global pandemic like COVID-19 is hard enough unto itself. Greg, Chris, and I added to the challenge by planning a ride as wildfires were breaking out along the west coast.
Back in 2016, my good friend Walter and I rode around Central Europe on motorcycles, exploring both the cities and the beautiful countryside of Italy, France, Germany, Czech Republic, and more. That ride was so fun that we promised we’d do a similar ride again. This year we did exactly that.
A long, five-year journey is quickly coming to an end for Harley-Davidson’s “Project Livewire.” Nobody knows yet whether it’ll mark the beginning of a new century for the motor company, leading with technology the way that it has led with lifestyle and brand marketing in the latter half of the 1900s. Or whether it’ll become another product in a long line of motorcycles that offered too little, too…