The road home to Montana vectored me into Boise, Idaho. The reason I stopped was a motorcycle business, Happy Trails. This time it was to poke around in their R & D room, share road tales with the owners, gossip and schmooze with their technical guys like Jason and Todd.

Pictured is my older BMW on the left, and on the right, one of 150 special model BMW GS’s. We found parts, friendly people and admirers at the Happy Trails headquarters in Boise, Idaho.

The Horizons Unlimited Travellers Meeting in Silverton Colorado later in July was ego flattening. My ‘round the world Parkinson’s pillion, Donna-Rae Polk, and I attended to see how other motorcycle travelers were doing their ‘round the world rides compared to ours. We thought we had made a unique journey. www.ultimategloberide.com told that story.

Grant Johnson, a guru in the ‘round the world adventure riding pond, shared with the attendees the tips and tricks of doing it, how to ride a motorcycle around the world. Donna-Rae was a seminar presenter, during which she chided me for some of my "boy doings" during our 14-month, 30,000 mile ride around the world. It was an interesting presentation from her perspective of being with me, on a motorcycle, making a ride around the world.

Who is doing it right? Grant Johnson looked over the motorcycle preparation options in the parking lot at the HU Traveller’s Meeting in Silverton, Colorado, questioning some while acknowledging others.

I left Colorado to attend the Very Boring Rally II, sponsored by the Aerostich/Riderwearhouse Company (www.aerostich.com) in Duluth, Minnesota. There I presented my multi-media show SUN CHASING: FOUR TIMES AROUND THE WORLD BY MOTORCYCLE, as well as did a book signing along with other authors.

Normally I ride alone, but to the Very Boring Rally II chose to buddy- up with a Kawasaki Concours rider, Rick Hall. Hall was the webmaster for the Concours Owners forum on the Internet. He knew many of the back roads to Duluth and where we could camp for free along our route. It was a pleasant way to lope across mid-America. My 2001 Kawasaki KLR 650 was able to keep up with his larger Kawasaki Concours, except when we rode up hills. Rick was patient and a good choice for a riding companion, slowing for my smaller displacement Kawasaki and stopping when I did the same to work as a photographer.

Author Ted Simon met me when I arrived at the Very Boring Rally II. We had dinner together and several opportunities during the event to trade road tales and some light world traveler gossip.

I did a quick ride in the hot August heat from Duluth to the American Motorcyclist Association in Pickerington, Ohio that got me there in time to do a day of research in the archives of their museum. The next day I rode to Cincinnati for more research in the bowels of that city’s library. An invitation to spend the night with a motorcycle sports promoter while in Cincinnati resulted in my learning much about the business of promotion in the motorcycling world, especially the racing segment. After our meeting the sports agent rode his motorcycle north to the Harley-Davidson Museum opening while I rode west to the cool Colorado Rocky Mountains for the annual BIG DOG ADVENTURE RIDE (www.horizonsunlimited.com/bigdog/). The long ride across America gave me time to think about how promoting professional racers in the motorcycling world was much the same as promoting authors in the publishing world, something my contacts, legal professionals, and agents had shown me over time was no easy feat.

With a group of the BIG DOGS near the summit of Mount Evans, the highest paved roadway in North America, found the DOGS in a summer snow storm. The BIG DOGS spent the next several August days riding over snow covered Rocky Mountain passes, while at lower elevations in the flatlands around Denver, the temperatures were in the high 90’s.

The biggest motorcycle show in the world was INTERMOT, held every other year in Kohn, Germany. It had been ten years since I had attended. An opportunity in September for some riding in Germany’s famed Black Forest, mixed with a huge "Old-timer" motorcycle flea market, the Vetorama, and two days at INTERMOT, found me in Germany. I likely drooled while looking at the new adventure motorcycle offerings at INTERMOT, lusting for some of the models, many not sold in the United States. Press or Media Day gave me a chance to mix with other moto-journalists from around the world, renew old friendships, as well as ask questions of manufacturer representatives. For the motorhead-adventure-traveler it was like being the kid in a candy shop.

If you are a real player in the motorcycling world, whether a manufacturer or minion journalist like me, INTERMOT was where the players mixed. Two days at the show, trading tales and tips, left me wanting to return in 2010.

The Black Forest of Germany offered some of the most technically interesting, fun motorcycle roads and riding in Central Europe. Most Americans fly to Germany, then take a guided tour or rent a motorcycle to ride in the Alps, passing up the option of riding the lower elevated mountains of the Black Forest. I first rode through the Black Forest in 1970, and have returned numerous times to ride the small twisty roads and enjoy the many quaint towns throughout this section of Germany.

Long time friend Werner Eberhardt was a hotelier in the small village of Alpirsbach, deep in the Black Forest. Now a Harley-Davidson rider, he and I had ridden BMWs, Indians, Yamahas, Suzukis and Hondas throughout the United States and Europe. He was known locally as Bazi #1, while I was dubbed Bazi #2, Bazi being slang for Bad Boy. Both of us were single, rode motorcycles and liked having fun with ladies, but like slippery fish, both of us were hard to get hold of or in the marriage net.

While poking around Germany I spent an afternoon at the Zweirad Museum in Neckersulm. The displays were motorcycles with a mix of NSU cars and NSU motorcycles in the lower level, a tribute to the NSU Company. I had an NSU Super Max, a 250 cc single that was a quick runner for a small displacement motorcycle, so was appreciative of the NSU collection. Walking through the well-appointed museum, I remembered when Sears and Roebuck was selling NSU motorcycles, but that dated me, as did looking at the Indian Motocycles the same vintage as mine and my birthday. The museum was housed in a restored castle and well worth the two-three hour visit.

Pictured here was a Zweirad Museum replica of the original Paris-Dakar BMW HPN race winner. When I interviewed the HPN Company some years ago, Mr. P, of H "P" N, told me the original race bikes were cannibalized to make later race bikes. He took me to the storage area in the HPN shop and showed me what little was left of the original race bikes, mostly frames and odd bits of plastic. I suspected this replica, like the one in the BMW Museum in Munich, was gutless. Mr. P said the innards of the engines in the Munich museum were missing.

Back in the USA during October I made quick 4,000 mile ride to Mexico, then Irvine, California, to swap Kawasaki KLR 650’s. I traded the 2008 KLR that I had ridden nearly 10,000 miles, for a new 2009 KLR 650, at Mission Motorsports, then rode to the deserts of Nevada to see how the 2009 KLR compared to the 2008 model.

One of my Indian warrior and riding buddies, the "Bishop Smith," wanted to give the KLR 650 a try. I would not let him ride it unless he wore a helmet, gloves, boots and body armor. We discovered my loaner riding gear swallowed him when he got into it, and he complained about the smell. He did not believe my white lie about the gear having a new smell versus his experience as the manager of the USA Olympic Boxing Team that told him my stuff stunk from sweat.

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