Ron Davis, an associate editor at BMW Owners News, has published his second book, Rubber Side Down: The Improbable Inclination to Travel on Two Wheels. Like his first volume, Shiny Side Up, it is a compilation of published columns, essays, and musings on life behind a handlebar.

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 Reservation,” 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.”

You’ve probably heard of Peter Jones. You may even have a strong opinion about him. He’s been a journalist in the U.S. motorcycle industry for more than two decades. Jones has offered his unique take on the two-wheeled world as a columnist or contributor at Cycle World, Motorcyclist, Cycle News and RoadRUNNER, among others, and he was a staff editor at Sport Rider in the late ’90s. And starting with the March 2021 issue, Jones has been writing “The Moto Life” column in Rider.

Peter Jones is a renaissance man. He road raced in the WERA National Endurance Series and is a former owner of the Team Swine Dudes/Pearls Suzuki race team, which won championships in multiple classes. He set a 202.247 mph land speed record on a production-based, normally-aspirated motorcycle at Maxton AFB. And he wrote and presented a paper at the 2011 North American Sartre Society conference, applying Jean Paul Sartre’s philosophical concepts to how racers intellectually manage the risks of road racing.

Jones has released a new book, “The Bad Editor: Collected Columns and Untold Tales of Bad Behavior.” He tells the story of a motojournalist’s life from the perspective of 30 collected columns and 19 new tales of bad behavior.

The collected columns first appeared, in slightly different forms, in Sport Rider, Motorcyclist, American Roadracing and Motorcycle Street & Strip. The 19 “Untold Tales of Bad Behavior” are original to this book, written to be irreverent entertainment for motorcycle enthusiasts. No names are named, no brands are identified and no world problems are solved. These tales are written as humorous inside stories of bad behavior by the author, his cohorts, his enemies, and, yes, some corporations.

If you’ve ever asked “What really happens at motorcycle press launches?” then this book is for you.

The Bad Editor is available now from Amazon.com in print ($18.55) or Kindle eBook ($7.99). Sample chapters and news of book signings can be found at thebadeditor.com.

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

What goes on? Reviewing the first and second books of a trilogy? Blame it on Covid-19. People have been cooped up due to the coronavirus, and book sales have been doing well. I’m just notifying you readers that two entertaining novels are now on the market, The Misadventures of Rusty Kenneficke, published in 2019, and the second The Further Life of Rusty Kennefick, this year.

Some of you may have already read a couple of Keith’s earlier books, about his travels. In 1963 he and a buddy rode a pair of BMW R50s from Oregon down to Chile, and later wrote a good book, MotoRaid, about the trip. After that trip he got into the motorcycle business, owning several BMW shops in Seattle, Washington. But the travel bug remained with him, and in 2013, 50 years after the first adventure, he and his original buddy did that trip again. The new book was called Ride On; Moto Raid II. Then he retired, and decided to write some fiction. Now, he might not be in the same league as Sinclair Lewis or Hemingway, but he is hoping to catch up with John Grisham. 

The first book finds Rusty Kenneficke 37 years old, divorced, and aspiring to become a writer. As more than one author has noted, it is relatively easy to write, very difficult to sell books. He buys a motorhome with a rack on the back that can hold his motorcycle, and takes off, hoping to get inspiration. Instead he gets involved in a whole lot of misadventures, beginning with a motorcycle crash with a woman he recently met on the back! That relationship did not go well.

He visits his folks, but becomes responsible for destroying his father’s water-skiing boat; not a good sign. He meets unpleasant people in RV parks, including a fellow named Boomer, who goes to prison for a few years and blames Rusty. Further misadventures have Rusty and his brother getting drunk and crashing his brother’s wife’s car, with all sorts of problems following. He drinks too much at a friend’s house and tears up his Achilles tendon trying to do a fancy dive into a swimming pool. Dad shows up so he can come home to recuperate — and he ends up almost burning the family house down. Salvation, of a sort, comes when he meets a long-ago girlfriend, Jan.

The second book has Rusty changing his life, dating Jan, getting a job in a motorcycle shop — about which the author knows a lot, making it a very interesting part of the book. He covers all aspects of the business, from finances to hiring and firing. A couple of years go by, and Jan, who has a good deal of money from a failed marriage, tells Rusty she wants them to buy the dealership. Good fun. Until Boomer returns.

We don’t know when Book Three will appear. These two hardcover books are available from www.keithsrides.com  $18.95 apiece, plus $4 shipping.

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 8^th-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.

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.

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.

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.

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!”).

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 each plus shipping and are available at mimiandmoto.com or Amazon.

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.

As diehard motorcyclists, we all know that the long-term viability of our favorite pastime depends on getting the next generation on two wheels. Getting the youngster(s) in your life on two wheels could mean a 50cc dirt bike with an auto-clutch and a throttle limiter. But just as we need to learn to walk before we can run, toddlers need to learn balance before they can ride.

That’s where a Strider balance bike comes in. It looks like a pint-sized BMX bike with a straight handlebar, a height-adjustable solo seat and chunky tires, but it doesn’t have pedals. Kids sit on the Strider like a normal bike and their feet can touch the ground. To move forward, they just walk their feet alongside of the bike, Fred Flintstone-style–slow at first, then faster until before you know it they’re running.

The balance part comes in when kids get a good head of steam going. Once rolling at a decent clip they simply pick up their feet, coast along and learn to balance themselves by a combination of intuition and trial-and-error. And by learning balance from the get-go, they can skip right over training wheels when they move up to a pedal bike.

A couple of years ago we gave a Strider to Auggie, the son of my long-time riding buddy Paul, for Christmas. It was a Strider 12 Sport in bright red, along with a size-adjustable helmet with a cool stars-and-stripes paint job (one of Paul’s nicknames among our group of dual-sport riders is Captain America–like father, like son).

Weighing just 6.7 pounds, the Strider 12 Sport has a steel frame, 12-inch mag wheels with EVA polymer tires that never go flat or need air, tool-free adjustability for the seat and handlebar, built-in footrests, a padded seat, mini grips for small hands and a cushy handlebar pad. Seat height ranges from 11 to 19 inches and it fits children with inseams from 12 to 20 inches.

At the time Auggie was 16 months old, just shy of the Strider 12’s target age range of 18 months to 5 years. He wasn’t interested in the Strider at first, preferring the security and ease of being chauffeured around by Dad in his four-wheeled push car. He wasn’t too keen on wearing the helmet either. But one day while playing at a park, Auggie saw other boys on Striders and he ran over to them and wanted to go for a ride. Peer pressure isn’t always bad!

Within 6 months of getting his Strider, Auggie didn’t want to do anything else. He constantly pestered his folks: “Mama! Papa! Ride bike?” They live down the street from us, and Auggie would duck walk his Strider up the slight incline to our house with his parents not far behind, then he would put his feet up on the footrests and coast his way back down the sidewalk.

Now that Auggie is 3 years plus a few months, he’s ready to graduate to the Strider 14x, which is designed for ages 3-7 (inseam of 16-23 inches or height of 30-57 inches). It starts off as a no-pedal balance bike, but can be easily converted to a pedal bike with the Easy-Ride Pedal Kit, which includes a fully enclosed chain, special narrow pedals and a coaster brake. Since it’s designed for larger kids, it has 14-inch spoked wheels with pneumatic rubber tires, a taller handlebar and a larger seat.

The other toddler in our life, my niece Nina, got a Strider 12 Sport for Christmas last year when she was 18 months old. My mother gave her a pink one along with a matching helmet. Like Auggie, it took a while for Nina to warm up to it, but the nice thing about the Strider is that it can be adjusted to accommodate a child’s growth so that it fits them perfectly at any appropriate age.

Whether or not Auggie or Nina will become motorcyclists remains to be seen. But at least they’re learning balance and the joys of rolling around on two wheels. And since they’ve been told to wear helmets from day one, they’ll be safe riders whether or not they ever end up with a throttle in their hand.

The Strider 12 Sport no-pedal balance bike for ages 18 months to 5 years is available in blue, green, pink, red, orange or yellow for $119.99, and Strider offers free shipping on orders over $50.

For go-fast kids, there is the Strider 12 Pro ($169.99), which weighs just 5.6 pounds thanks to its aluminum frame and comes with textured performance footrests and a front number plate. And yes, there are even organized Strider races, including the Strider Cup Series and Strider Cup World Championship.

The Strider 14x with Easy-Ride Pedal Kit for ages 3-7 years is available in blue or green for $209.99.

And if you want to start ‘em really young, Strider sells a Baby Bundle ($199.98) for ages 6 months and older, which includes a Strider 12 Sport that fits into a rocking base so they can ride a rocking bike instead of a rocking horse. When the time comes, remove the Strider from the base and they’re ready to balance on two wheels.

You can find Striders co-branded with Honda, KTM and other motorcycle manufacturers, though availability may be limited, and you can find below-MSRP pricing from many retailers. Do an Internet search to find co-branded bikes and/or the best deal.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:
See your toy or sporting goods retailer or visit striderbikes.com

Anyone wanting to know anything and everything about Moto Guzzis, “The Complete Book of Moto Guzzi” is the place to go. Ian Falloon is a well-known motorcycle historian, with many books to his name. He is especially fond of Italian marques and this volume really does answer all the questions any Guzzi owner might have. And tell him a lot he does not know.

My own introduction to Guzzis was when I was 16 and my professorial father took a sabbatical to Rome. The manager of our apartment building had a Guzzino, or Motoleggera 65, a little two-stroke made from 1946 to 1954. It was not until I read Falloon’s book that I realized this basic transportation sold so well it put the financially challenged firm back on solid economic footing following World War II and allowed the company to get back into racing, an Italian passion.

The Guzzi marque was begun in 1921 by Carlo Guzzi, a World War I (in that war Italy was on the American side) pilot, and two of his buddies. First model was the Normale, a four-stroke 500cc single, engine pointing forward. And this horizontal engine was very much the Guzzi image for the next 45 years, with its signature outside flywheel—or salami slicer, as some called it. The size of the single ran from 175 to 500cc, and the racing versions were quite successful. Racing was important to sales, and in the 1930s Guzzi also had a transverse-mounted four-cylinder engine, as well as a transverse (like Ducati) 120-degree V-twin and a supercharged 500cc triple.

The aftermath of WWII required much change. The Guzzi factory had not been bombed, but the 250 and 500cc singles were way too expensive for the average Italian, so soon an array of smaller bikes like the Guzzino and 160cc Galletto were on the market. And the OHC 175 Lodola appeared to compete in the Motogiro d’Italia, a long race on public roads with 175cc being the biggest engine allowed. In the 1950s a lot of money was frittered away on questionable enterprises like the 500cc V-8 GP bike—which was raced briefly and not very successfully. The company bowed out of GP racing in 1958. Carlo Guzzi died in 1964, and then a whole new approach was taken, beginning with the development of a large V-twin that would be used by the police and military.

In the early 1960s a New Jersey outfit called Premier Motor Corporation was bringing in some small Guzzi 125cc models, but most Americans did not become familiar with the Guzzi product until the V7 appeared on these shores in 1967. This was an OHV 90-degree 703cc V-twin, cylinders sticking out sideways, with the ads boasting 50 horsepower at 5,800 rpm, a 12-volt battery, electric starting and twin-leading-shoe front brake. Joe Berliner took over Premier and convinced Guzzi to up the size to a more conventional 750cc—and an extra five horses. Berliner called the model the Ambassador. Since then more than a hundred different V-twin versions have followed, from 350cc to 1,400cc, including straight OHV two-valve engines or OHC four-valve.

Today Piaggio owns the Moto Guzzi marque, which is best known for its Vespas. Let me make one thing perfectly clear: this is not bedtime reading. The 10 x 12 inch book has 260 pages, weighs a hefty four pounds and a $60. “The Complete Book of Moto Guzzi” is published by Motorbooks and can be ordered at any bookstore. For more information, visit the website of Motorbooks’ parent company, QuartoKnows.com.

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Back in January of 1962 Thye was in college, caught the travel bug, and decided he wanted to ride a motorcycle down to Chile, no mean feat in those years. He convinced a friend, Dave, to come along with him, so they both bought used BMW R50 models, spending the rest of the year earning money and preparing to take the trip. In January of 1963 they took off from Lake Oswego, Oregon, with a temperature of 25 degrees. And some minimalist camping gear; the photos of their decrepit pup tent show what these boys lived in. Their destination was Pucon, Chile, Lake Oswego’s sister city.

A couple of months later they were knocking at a cafe door at 11,300 feet in Costa Rica—on a very bad dirt road, probably the worst stretch of the Pan-American Highway in Central America. Thye describes the road as “similar to driving along the bottom of a swift creek, without the water. Already they had been subjected to sickness, accidents, breakdowns, and genially corrupt border guards. They get to Panama and find a ship that will take them to Buenaventura in Columbia.

Then things got interesting. More bad roads, bad weather, motorcycle problems—but these are two young men having the time of their lives. And did they look for the easy roads? Nope, they headed for the more interesting, like Peru’s infamous Central Highway in the Andes, much of it a one-lane dirt track. “Leaving Ayacucho, we covered 45 miles in just under five hours.” Later they got lost in the wasteland where the Peruvian, Bolivian, Chilean borders come together and were arrested as drug smugglers.

They were greeted warmly in Pucon, but were pretty darned broke. Fortunately they had prepaid tickets to get back to the US, leaving the Beemers to be shipped later. Six months after they left, they were back in Oregon. And 25 years later Thye decided to write a book about their trip; Moto Raid was originally published in 1990. He and his wife bought a BMW dealership and 20 years later he starts thinking about repeating his 1963 trip. His old riding buddy, Dave, is up for it, too. As are a few friends, who figure to do the 16,000-mile trip in 100 days.

Six people on six modern Beemers meet up in San Diego in January 2013, and head south, though not on the same roads as 50 years before. Familiarity comes at the Guatemalan border, with less corruption and far more bureaucracy. No camping for these upscale folk, as they are staying in nice hotels. And have GPS to guide them. A new restaurant is up high on the Costa Rican Pan-Am, as the old one had burnt down…and the road is now well-paved.

From Panama they fly themselves and their bikes into Bogata, Columbia, where customs keeps them held up for half a day. Traffic has increased greatly, and Latin drivers are not known for caring about the rules of the road. Minor accidents occur, nothing major. South of Lima, Peru, five of them decide to stay on the coastal Pan-Am Highway, while one heads off on the old Central Highway, which he describes as “three days in hell.” In Bolivia they visit places Thye had not been to 50 years before, but the goal was again Pucon—now grown into a major tourist destination with more than 100 hotels. This time they are going to Buenos Aires, Argentina, to fly home. Eight days before departure Dave loses to a truck while in a traffic circle, and spends several days in a hospital, the only major injury of the two trips. But all fly home, and bikes are crated and follow. Good fun, good reading, and might convince a few people to head south. The two-book set, in a sleeve, is $24.95 plus shipping and handling from keithsrides.com.