My warm winter riding in the green jungles of the Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam came to dark cold end when I landed in the USA and had to wear electric riding gear and long underwear to arrest chills. Instead of immediately returning to scribe work in Denver, I sought warm weather like pictured above in Arizona near the Mexican border.

Riding pal Phil Orth from Sierra Vista, Arizona promised a day of “real” adventure riding along the Mexican border. As he strapped on a pistol before leaving I asked, “Is that for snakes?” He smiled and said, “You never know what we’ll find out there. Snakes, maybe. Possibly vigilantes hunting anything that moves. If I am fired at I want to be able to say ‘Hello’ back to whoever Hello-ed at me.” I flashed back to some of my border riding along the Burmese/Thai border when their snipers and troops were shooting back and forth at each other with me on my motorcycle in the middle, and wondered if the word “adventure” had to include guns. Snakes, whether desert rattlers or Burmese cobras, were always enough adventure for me.

Wordsmith work lay on my desk with editors sending me nasty letters. In the pile were four books in mixed stages of progress. Requests from magazines for overdue submissions had received lame or tardy answers and an unfinished script for a film was holding up expensive production schedules. The one book I was having fun with, MOTORCYCLE SEXPEDITIONS-ABSOLUTE RIDING, got a bump in the Bangkok Post when author Robert Davis mentioned I was at work on it in his May 25, 2006 article for the Horizons section on “Motorcycling in Thailand and Laos.” One of my personal goals had been to get the word “Sexpedition” into a dictionary. I created the word a few years ago, much to the chagrin on some of my more conservative critics, especially those males who cross their legs when libido and motorcycles are mentioned together. I have fun with critics like these, sometimes mentioning their literary work and Viagra in the same sentence when referring to the need for substance.

Alaska had been on my radar screen for July but literary prostitution knocked it off. I aborted the Alaska adventure to finish a project for Globe Rider Productions, a DVD titled MOTORCYCLING TO ALASKA. It was slated for release in September 2006. Copies were being pressed to meet catalog demand September 30. The film was a “how to” prepare a rider and motorcycle for the ride to and in Alaska.

Alaska bound to ride his dream, Timy Gonzalez is all smiles as pictured above. He read my book ALASKA BY MOTORCYCLE, prepped his BMW and himself and above was captured on film the day before he left. He managed not to be eaten by bears and returned with a mile-wide smile and funny stories of his heavyweight BMW falling over. He rode solo, stopping along the way to say “Hello” for me to Alaska friends I could not visit myself. Stuck in Denver, pecking out words, I was jealous of his freedom and virgin ride to the top of North America.

“Size Does Matter” was a sticker I saw on a 1200-cc BMW saddlebag ridden by Barry BBQ. Besides having BMW motorcycles in common, we both had to duck when entering some rooms in Asia and each of us make little motorcycles look like toys when we ride them. We had several other interests in common, like fishing, photography, and ministering to two-legged dears, but big motorcycles and fishing seemed to be focal points spawning fun associated with each. He had a little fun on me with his blog www.barrybbq.blogspot.com/2006/12/dr-g-goes-fishing.html one afternoon when we hammered 40-100 pound Mekong catfish.

Big motorcycles got me away from flogging words when the Honda VTX’s arrived in Denver for their annual Colorado rally. One evening I did my multi-media show SUN CHASING: FOUR TIMES AROUND THE WORLD BY MOTORCYCLE as a feature presentation. It was the premier of a new format for the show. I wondered whether a group of motorcycle owners who rode cruisers would be interested in tales from my four solo rides around the globe, none using a Honda VTX. A filled room for the presentation answered that question. I discovered this group of motorcyclists was not only about show, but most about go.

A Day Ride with the VTX’ers on what they described as the “Old Farts” route found me hustling on my 650-cc Kawasaki KLR to keep up with the huge Honda’s. With 1,300 - 1,800-cc jugs, these monsters easily loped over the Rocky Mountains. When they would stop for a photo op like above, I would ask the owners what, if anything, went wrong with the VTXs. Some would think for a few seconds, others were quicker to answer, but both said the same, “Nothing.”

VTX Rally Guru, Cliff Meier, volunteered to be a Research Consultant for the Sexpedition book project. When I last saw him he was talking about riding his large protuberance VTX through Central America with his wife as his pillion. She offered to be a consultant too. Both wanted MOTORCYCLE SEXPEDITION stickers.

“Getting old is shit.” My mother, who never swore, shared this wisdom with me a couple of months ago. We had been trading lamentations. Her eyesight was failing. My right knee was waking me up at night when I rolled the wrong way. She was having balance problems. My floating right eye when I got tired had ended my motorcycle racing. Her physicians had poked and probed over the previous months, finding little. My doctor pushed a camera eye mounted in the end a long tube up my exhaust chute, also finding little. Both Mom and I were taking medicine for ailments that improved little, but agreed we liked the Valium. We could find one good thing about getting old however, that being old friends.

“Old friend” Grant Johnson flew into Denver and swirled around Colorado for the Leadville Horizons Unlimited Traveller’s Meeting. While I was stuck in front of my computer he was enjoying the camaraderie of fellow ‘round the world riders trading tall tales of adventure.

My disease of wanderlust bubbled to the bursting point. I caught up with Grant as he was doing some BMW GS riding in New Mexico. His time away from computers was as therapeutic as mine. Neither of us felt old as we rode the road.

Grant returned to Great Britain and I to my Denver office. The short ride we had taken was for me like a sniff of whiskey to some of my dried out friends of Jack Daniels. Business in Seattle and the chance for a few days of riding an older BMW around the Northwest left the piles of unfinished writing assignments in Denver and found me on a 1970’s R100 chasing beers and dodging deer with fellow brewskihead and fisherman Jim Aiken. Both Jim and I had, over 25 years, found a strong correlation between catching big fish and tippling. We had been researching the theory through a couple of marriages and hammered credit cards. When given the either/or option of “me or fishing/riding motorcycles with that friend of yours” wives became ex’s, big fish were landed and newer models were acquired.

With his R100 GSPD Jim Aiken has hunted some odd roads and trails. Once his wife found it best to hose him and the BMW off at the pressure car wash after he dropped them all in a mud rut.

Our plan was to do a budget tour. We would explore new roads, not worry about hotels or motels being full by carrying tents and sleeping bags, and bond with our bikes while unbonding with the workloads in our offices.

Neither Jim nor I traveled with electronic tethers, GPS’s. Paper maps, noses in the wind, and common sense let us spend our motorcycle travel money for gas, food and nocturnal research materials versus the expensive electronic gizmos and mapping programs.

We rode off our Washington maps and into the unknown of Idaho because neither of us carried Idaho paper. A lunch stop question about directions to our destination was answered by three of the waitresses, one in her late teens wearing a thin short white dress and thong underwear. As we followed her directions out of town my mind was on the road and lateness of the day. Jim said he had a good idea of where we were and knew of a shortcut over the mountain ahead. Later he admitted to not being able to get the memory of the thong in front of his memory of the road, which soon turned to a dirt track.

The paved road turned to gravel then dirt like pictured above. When the going got dirty I started to worry about how much sunlight we had left and whether we would have to dry camp in the mountains that night. While fresh air and bears did not worry me, Jim was thinking about chilled swill and prime rib, when he was not thinking about prime behind.

I saw a pick-up truck parked by the side of the jeep trail with a man snoozing in the front seat. Common sense is when lost or uncertain, ask directions, and if the directions make sense, follow them. I woke the snoozer and he told me we were on the right road, then pointed to his dash mounted GPS, saying “You’re right here, see? Right between these two paved roads showing on the screen, in the gray area where there is nothing. Keep on going through the nothing over the mountain ahead and you’ll hit this here road that is showing.”

The man’s directions made about as much sense as did why fish don’t eat all day long, in a common sense sort of way, so I told Jim we would keep on the track we were following, some new logging road. Jim, whose internal computer was stuck on video replay of thongs and young stems, said, “I’ll follow you.”

“No, you go ahead,” I said. “If you fall down I want to see it happen, get a photo, because you got us up here with your shortcut and thinking of that thonged high-schooler back there in the last town.”

Jim was riding a motorcycle designed for the kind of stuff pictured above, a model called a “GS” meaning for gravel and pavement.

My bike was built for life on paved roads, far better suited for interstates or autobahns. In loose dirt or stones my BMW wanted to flop on its side and rest. Jim also had the advantage of being in the front while I followed in the dust cloud behind him. The section shown above was part of the new road not showing on GPS maps, somewhere in the “gray area.”

Two hours after we started the 20 minute shortcut ride we hit the paved road and civilization. The mountain had broken my bike, breaking three of the four main welded points on the fairing mount. The mountain had hurts Jim’s bike too, working loose the four bolts holding the rear wheel to the drive unit. Both of our backs hurt from the pounding our out of shape bodies had taken over and into potholes as deep as motorcycle helmets. My right knee, a piece of junk to start, was swollen to the size of a football and both of our wrists were cracking and creaking when we bent them. Dust was in our every orifice and had found it’s way into our clean luggage.

We found an oasis in the form of a bar/restaurant/motel. The motel was fully booked but the owners remembered Jim from the year before when he had rolled up a solid three-digit bill on his credit card. They let us pitch out tents for free in their wooded area behind the motel and the nearby cold, clear mountain stream was our bathtub for the same price.

What we saved by tenting we spent on fishing research in the bar.

When some of the locals found out we had conquered the new logging road they toasted us and bought us another beer. Bellies filled with prime rib and swill, the aching joints and broken bike parts were forgotten as we crawled into our sleeping bags after closing time. We scared bears away by snoring loud enough to be told the next morning that tourists inside the motel thought wild animals were engaged in propagation attempts in our section of the forest throughout the night.

I hunted an auto supply store in the nearest town. Sorting through their discount parts bin I found enough glue and hose clamps to hold the broken bike parts together so the fairing was not lying on the front fender. A car wash blew off enough dirt to see some of the parts Jim’s GSPD had offered to the mountain. We needed a serious “fix-it shop,” so rode to Boise. There we made a pit stop at Happy Trails’ new store and tried to smooze owner Tim Bernard out of free parts cannibalized off one of his bikes.

When Bernard asked where we had been riding and what I was doing in his area of the world, I started to tell him about what I was calling our Break Bike Mountain Ride. As soon as I got the “Break Bike Mountain” part out he threw up both hands and said, “Whoa, I don’t want to hear any more. Next you’ll be wanting to tell me more than I want to know about you and your buddy Jim spending a night up there in the mountains.”

Jim, whose subconscious was still replaying the thong video, started to explain about his wife, kids, grand kids and pulled out his wallet with photos to support his manly assertions. Me, I was perplexed by the whole word play. I had been away from the USA over the winter and missed the movie by a similar name. I now refer to Jim and my expedition as the Busted Beemer Ride.

The new home for Happy Trails in Boise, Idaho is pictured above. If you pass through Boise it’s worth a stop. Spend a few dollars, say “Hi” to my friends there, and ask Bernard for something free. He had loads of free advice and is an entertaining motorhead.

I limped the broken Beemer back home to Montana where a welder made permanent repairs to the fairing. While I was working on other damaged parts my neighbor, Kurt Olsen, came over to supervise. He rides one of the same vintage motorcycles, an oil dripping, hard starting, and fire breathing AMF Harley-Davidson. Brand loyal to his Milwaukee make, he commented several times on the cult errors about BMW’s being dependable. I started to tell him about the mountain ride the BMW had survived but forgot and called it the Break Bike Mountain Ride. Olsen and I live at the end of a road where fishing comes first and single women are rare but sought like prized trout. He, like Bernard, did not want to hear any tale that had “break” and “mountain” in one sentence. I yielded in my defense of the BMW and agreed some of the dependability may have gone the way of ignition points and inner tubes.

“Fish Boy,” Kurt Olsen, and his Harley-Davidson are pictured above. Fish Boy is one of the test riders for the Mekong River Guinness Record Motorcycle Jump.

My summer ended with a ride back to Seattle on the BMW. It was wearing new tires, not leaking oil, and was put away well wiped down for the winter.

Since my crash in the Philippines earlier in the year I had been having nightmares about the get-off. While I walked away with little more than wounded pride and some scratched motorcycle parts, my mind could not shake how close I had come to ending my motorcycle riding in this cosmos. Several consultations with spirit menders and sleep experts convinced me the only way I could get my mind to quit the replay was either replace it with a video image of a thong under a thin white dress on an 18 year-old waitress in Idaho or crawl back on the horse and go riding in Southeast Asia. October in Idaho is cold. I decided to return to the warm jungles for the winter.

Using my base in the Golden Triangle I had on my radar screen Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar (Burma) and the Philippines. As a principal in the Mekong River Guinness Record Jump I will also spend time on that project. A new DVD for Globe Rider Productions is slated as is finishing a book project.

Pictured above is a test ramp for the Mekong River Guinness Record Motorcycle Jump. The GT-Rider website www.gt-rider.com has some updates on the record attempt.

I plan to be in Alaska for the longest day of the year in 2007 on a Kawasaki KLR with the gang from Aerostich Tours (www.aerostichtours.com). Between now and then I will be on some riding expeditions where it is warm and sunny, and reporting on no Broken Bike Mountain Riding.