Wade, a friend of mine, has a very good travel blog called Vagabond Journey VagabondJourney.com. He was looking for specialists that could write about different kinds of travel than he does. He asked me if I would be a Motorcycle Travel Expert. I TRULY do NOT consider myself an expert, but I have lots of opinions and am apparently the most knowledgeable person he knows relative to Motorcycle Travel. These are posts that are on his site. Please visit HIS site to see the stories and look around. His site is worth supporting.
Here is a link to this story on Wade's site: Motorcycle Bob, an introduction.
QUESTION: Is there any way that you could give me a quick run down of your motorcycle travel history, or a brief description of you and motorcycles — when did you start riding, what was the draw that attracted you to the motorcycle? How did you come into traveling long distances by motorcycle? What is it that drives you to travel this way?
Motorcycle Bob
Here is a rather long bio, and an answer to your question. As to the other questions above, I am too long winded to answer them in one post. Ask me them individually later, and I will babble, I mean answer them to the best of my abilities.
Prior to finishing college I spent a lot of time riding bicycles in my local area both as a form of recreation and main transportation. I always loved motorcycles, but getting one was out of the question in my household. During college, I borrowed and learned to ride motorcycles, getting my license in 1984. It was not until 1986, when I was out of the house, out of college and in the workforce that I bought my first motorcycle. This was a Harley Davidson Sportster. I put 15,000 miles on it that year. This is ten times what the *average* motorcyclist puts on a bike annually. I guess I was hooked. Through the years, my mileage increased to an average of 30,000 miles a year, and I went through a number of bikes, of various brands and styles. Harleys are still my favorite, although the only Harley that I currently have is the first bike I owned, the Sportster. This bike has been retired as it is a bit too far gone after being my winter bike in New England for many years. The garage also has a Buell, that is in pieces, and a Honda that is my only currently functioning motorcycle.
For many years I rode around the United States and Canada, again, mostly on Harleys. Much of my longer trips included lots of LONG days, 1,000 miles a day or more for parts of the trip. I have been to every US state except for Hawaii, and every province of Canada at least once. I rode a Harley down through Baja, Mexico, but other than that I had not, until 2001, traveled outside of Canada and the US. Since then, there have been three trips to Mexico, one which included Guatemala and Belize, and another that included just Belize. These trips were done on a Kawasaki KLR 650.
In 2005 I took a semi-guided tour from Turkey through Greece to the Balkans, including Albania, Montenegro, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Bulgaria, and probably the corner of another country or two. I call this a semi-guided tour because it was with a specially selected group of riders, to an area that the tour company had never been to. It was sort of an expeditionary ride to help them start an annual tour to the area. This was another fast ride, on bikes provided by the tour company. I did get to spend some time in Istanbul prior to the ride.
The end of 2005 into the beginning of 2006 found me purchasing a bike in Argentina from Dr. Greg Frazier, and riding to Uruguay, then down to the southern tip of South America, with a bit of Chile thrown in, then back up to northern Argentina. The bike was old, and developed reliability issues which turned a basic ride into a fun adventure.
Since then I have only traveled domestically (which for me, includes Canada). It is time for a BIG ride. I am thinking about taking a month or more off this winter and going someplace warm.
