There was a brief moment where I thought maybe the next chapter in my life might be making videos of all the amazing motorcycle roads in America: how to get to them, where to stay, where to eat, and the glory of the roads themselves. Then, I made two discoveries that greatly attenuated this idea. One was Adam Sandoval: no way what I could do with my yearly vacation would compete with what he had done. The second was the fact that I hate setting up shots and editing video. I love talking, pontificating, philosophising, but it turns out I actually hate the core part of moto-vlogging. I do some small amount of video editing, but it turns out that this turns one of my favorite things into just a goddamned job.
I have a GoPro 13 Black and I capture some moments for friends and family whether it be ADV, scuba diving, or random camping shenanigans. I watch a lot of motorcycle-focused Youtubers though: Shade Tree Surgeon, Dork in the road, Ride to Food, Her Two Wheels, Off She Goes, Just G Kue, Doodle on a Motorcycle, Kidmoto22, MotoState Podcast, Whit Meza, Rever, RIDE Adventures, DanDan the Fireman, Meghan Stark, Lowbrowcustoms, Real Riders Ride, RevZilla, Klim, and others. Jesus, just the thought of actually properly linking to each one of those channels reminds me of why I don’t produce motorcycle content.
Ugh, and there’s that word, “content”.
I have seen a number of Youtubers who ask the audience what kind of content we, the watchers, would like to consume. These words make me think of a nest of baby birds. Momma flies to the nest, and the baby birds open their mouths for momma to regurgitate whatever directly into their mouths. I went out and got this, now let me vomit this into your face. Motorcycle riding, ADV riding, scuba diving, camping, any kind of adventure travel: these are sacred things to me, the things that I wade through corporate America and 401ks to get to. When someone reduces this to “I will create the content, and you will consume the content”, it makes me sick just a little bit.
You’re on Youtube, with 300,000 subscribers, making cool videos for me to watch. You need money to do this full time. You work with companies who sponsor you. I get all that: just don’t reduce this to yet another transactional interaction. Riding across, discovering a cool restaurant in a small town, camping, seeing amazing sights: these are sacred experiences.
On an episode of of This Motorcycle Life, the host interviewed Melissa Holbrook Pierson. She’s most famous for taking a very long ride on a Ural with her disabled child, but also for writing a book called “The Man Who Stop at Nothing“, in which she claims that Iron Butt style riding is the most pure form of motorcycling. As a multiple Iron Butt finisher , I must disagree.
For a long time, a couple of extreme events have been calling to me. The first is the Hoka Hey Challenge, in which riders cover around 10,000 miles in short order, often 10 days or so. The rules include no staying in hotels and no using GPS. You have to sleep by your pony and follow a set of written directions with paper maps. The first years, people wrecked and died because the trip included gravel and a lot of extreme terrain.
The other is the James Dalton Highway, riding all the way to the Arctic Circle in Deadhorse/Prudhoe Bay. The last 400 miles of this trip is largely shitty gravel.
Beyond these trips, it should come as no surprise that significant miles of dirt and gravel on a 1000lb touring motorcycle is at best impractical. The tires don’t grip, the suspension isn’t built for that kind of rut. The appeal of a machine that can gobble some highway miles but then just take a sharp right onto a gravel road, a Backcountry Discovery Route, maybe some muddy Jeep trails, is strong.
There are views and settings that are hard to get to, and some of those are precious and likely to be much more sparsely occupied than the paved roads to a county park.
The Challenger, of course, is still in the garage. The American highway system is amazing, and that is the machine for long road trips.
I didn’t grow up on dirt bikes like a lot of people did. The guy who’s been putting patches on his black vest for years is buying the full Klim riding gear and hopefully putting some stickers on “panniers” soon.
Adventure touring is the purest form of motorcycling.
In April of 2022, the most poignant observation I have is how weird things continue to be. During the ‘rona years I managed to head to Georgia on 2 wheels for the worst of it, do the Back of the Dragon, and ride to a canoe camp. Now we’ve either gotten COVID under control or decided we can’t have any more shutdowns, and that aspect of the world is returning to level. But things are still pretty fucked up. We unnecessarily let over 1million Americans die during the pandemic. A bunch more retired early. People in service jobs decided “the customer is always right” is a permit for abuse and sought greener pastures. As COVID forced a large-scale remote work experiment, People in the Midwest suddenly found that companies in San Diego and Boston wanted very much to talk to them. There’s a war in Ukraine that’s heartbreaking for moral reasons an devastating to the world’s economy. Gas is expensive and Ford can’t ship vehicles due to world-wide microchip shortages. We might never see the relative level of peace and plenty we were taking for granted in 2019.
While no one would have said 2019 was the zenith of human flourishing, it now seems like a lost utopia.
I still have a motorcycle and I’m still employed. When Harley Mark and Wingnut Dave proposed a 4 day weekend in Arkansas, I had to come.
Weather
It seems like the weather has been kinder to us in WI for the past 15 years or so, because the past 3 years have been marked by monumentally shitty and unpredictable springs. In the weeks leading up to this trip the weather forecast oscillated between 40 and raining and 65 and sunny. Now I’ve got heated gear and I’ve ridden around in 40 degrees all day, but not at freeway speeds. I finally agreed to do something I swore I’d never do: trailer the bike down. We crashed in Bloomington on Night 1 and eagerly counted the miles to Eureka Springs, AR after an early start Friday morning.
Stonegate Lodge & Eureka Springs
I had found Stonegate Lodge on one of the dozen Motorcycle Vlogger youtube channels I started watching to keep myself sane during the winter. It’s rustic-bordering-on-cheesy but that suits me just fine. Arriving on a Friday afternoon and taking the bike off the trailer in 80 degrees and sunshine gave me that Two-Wheel Doggo feeling and I couldn’t wait to get some evening riding in but Harley had other plans. Harleys with an active security system can have their batteries drained by the jostling around of being tailered, luckily Polaris batteries are so notoriously shitty that I travel with a small .7a battery tender so we put the bike on the juice.
WingnutDave showed up after a bit with his wife and a friend from the Alpharetta Roadrunners.
Being in 80 degrees in April in WI basically never happens so it was still great, and we walked to some local grub. This was probably the most holyshititmustbehardtohiregoodpeople moment in recent memory, as I write this in Feburary of 2023. It took forever to get served some pretty basic BBQ meals but it was really good. We headed to the lodge and made plans for Saturday.
Saturday Carving
Our first order of business was to attain what I’m told is the world’s best French Toast. I seldom eat breakfast and even more seldom eat a sweet breakfast so I opted for a Sausage Biscuit instead. This is where it is, though, and apparently there are many pretenders to the throne but here in Jasper is the real Ozark Cafe.
There are no straight roads in Arkansas, and since I was not the route planner this time I actually don’t know what roads we were on, but it was all day carving up in gorgeous weather. We did not ride the Pig Trail so that one is still on my todo list. We got back late afternoon and checked out the famous cat house lounge which was busy as hell despite this just being a random weekend with no big events. The Ozarks are beautiful!
The owner of the Stonegate Lodge was putting on a guest party on Saturday night so we ate BBQ Razorback. He told us of the problem with feral hogs and how whenever he wants to have a party he shoots one with a crossbow and mixes it with bacon to take some of the gaminess away. It was good food, but I do no recommend John Wayne’s bourbon.
Sunday the short weekend was over and we had to head North into much worse weather. I doubt I’ll ever trailer a bike again, but we’ll be back to Arkansas next year.
I haven’t posted much this riding season, however I didn’t forget about the site, and I did actually do several fun things.
I went to Eurkea Springs, AR and rode around for a quick weekend.
I went to Jamaica with the Wife and did some more jumping and diving.
I went to the Five Dirty Bikers Meetup in Uranus, MO.
I’ve done some nice upgrades to The Crow.
I crossed a true bucket list item off by riding from Milwaukee to Central Florida where my folks live, and then riding all the way to Key West and back.
I spent a weekend in Northern Wisconsin hanging out on a lake and riding side-by-sides all the way to Lake Superior.
What I haven’t done is written any of this up. This has been probably the most challenging year of my life work-wise, and because I wasn’t already buried enough I also took some additional courses online that took all my “free” time from July – November.
As I wrap up my courses and work takes it’s course, I will start filling in the details, something to distract me as the snow starts falling and I’m dreaming of the day I can take the bike out in 2023.
Earlier this year, having just gotten back from riding to Missouri, I was planning on riding to Key West, FL. It looked like we’d defeated COVID and things were generally looking up. After a rough 2020, I was going to put 10,000mi on the new Challenger in 2021.
Then I got a promotion at work, and the Delta Variant looked to be likely to shut Key West down again, so I was looking for a consolation prize ride. I talked to the usual suspects to see if they were available, and was actually planning a ride to the UP of Michigan again. Harley Mark had never been to the Tomahawk rally, though, and everyone agreed that camping 1 night and some North Woods riding would be great. Me, Harley Mark, and Lefty started making plans.
Of course, we share a chat room with Wingnut Dave, and Wingnut Dave does not have kids and is crazy to boot. Wingnut Dave (in Georgia) says to save him a spot because he’ll be at my door by 3pm Friday. Adding an unnamed friend of Harley Mark, and five dudes crashed in the Fox Valley Friday night before a fantastic Saturday of riding in late September.
New Gear
Most of the gear I’m wearing is quite a few years old, but I seem to keep picking new things up here & there. Having watched way too much DanDanTheFireMan lately, I decided to make a small sacrifice to safety, and got a new Skull Riderz armored flannel.
Harley Mark’s to Bubba’s
I’ve been user Revr to plan rides since the ride to West Virginia earlier this year. Revr is great for finding roads, but shit for copying the route to a different GPS. Until we get Revr integration directly into the infotainment of the major motorcycle brands, be prepared to add a dozen unnecessary way-points to hit the roads you planned on riding.
We stopped by Doc’s Harley Davidson in Shawano, which is a truly nutty place you have to see if you’re ever up here. Live alligators, a pirate ship, and a vintage car museum? Yea, you have to see it.
Highway 55 northwest through Wisconsin is a fantastic road, and very well maintained. In general it was a fantastic day of riding up to Bubba’s Campground to set up camp.
If you are going to go to Tomahawk and have time to ride, hit HWY 107 down to Merrill:
Once we’d ridden to Merrill and back, it was time to eat. If you’ve ever seen my previous camping excursions, you know I basically just have to overdo it. I had packed my soft-side Bison cooler with some fantastic ribeye steaks, some mushrooms, and onions.
Bubba’s Big Party
With our stomachs full, we decided to mosey over to Bubba’s Big Party. I don’t really have pics of this because the bands were cover bands I hadn’t heard of this year, unlike the amazing Little Texas in 2018.
A New Tradition
When we were getting close to Tomahawk, it turned out that Lefty knew some people who had a toy hauler and had a big ole campground marked off. Turns out everywhere we go Lefty knows someone, often to great advantage like the Hank Jr. concert we caught at WI State Fair. We had a big ole fire, all the ice we needed, and company.
In Wisconsin, this rally is often treated as the end of the riding season. Of course, I’m too stubborn for that and me and my fleece-lined Duluth fire hose pants and heated gear keep rolling until it snows. But I have grown to appreciate the beaty of the North Woods and this perfectly fits into a weekend.
I think the Tomahawk fall rally is going to turn into a tradition for us.
So, here I am. The tail end of a pandemic (or so we hope). The Mrs. and I both in healthcare IT, working from home, surviving the ‘rona lockdown just fine. Things start getting back to normal and things start getting better and better.
I had a trip planned to Virginia to ride the Back of the Dragon between Marion and Tazewell. I had taken care of enough other money things that I planned to do this on a new Indian Challenger. The problem was the ‘rona had still fucked supply chains to the point where getting a bike or parts was anyone’s guess. Weeks went by, and my trusty dealer kept pushing the ship date back one week, every week. It’s not their fault, but as things started getting close to the departure date I started looking around. A new 2021 Challenger Dark Horse in Thunder Black Smoke was sitting on the floor at two local dealers. Now listen, I am a creature of loyalty – I value relationships and that includes relationships with people who have things to sell me. If you get into a hard-to-diagnose electronic issue or something you’ll be glad that you’ve always treated your dealer & service department with respect. But this is the end of a pandemic, which world wide supply chain issues, and me with several trips planned on a newer motorcycle. I had to consider grabbing one of these bikes.
One dealer didn’t call me back. The other called me back and asked for pictures of my bike. I rode down and traded that day. The Crow replaced Black Sunshine in my garage.
The owner of Indian of Metro Milwaukee, who obviously would have sold me another bike if he could have, actually called to apologize. As if he hadn’t already done what he could! These guys are legit.
I wanted a Freedom Shields windshield, highway bars, soft lowers, lower LED headlights, a rider backrest, and a color matched trunk on this bike. The ‘rona supply chain made it clear I would likely have none of it. At least I was able to install highway bars, lowers, and a new set of the trusty ole Kuryakyn highway pegs before I rode for Virginia.
I got the 500mi break in service on The Crow but mounting brackets for trunks and back rests were still hard to come by. Since I knew I was also taking an off the grid canoe trip soon, I just bought a dry bag to serve as my trunk for this trip.
So, who could come to Virginia with me in Mid May? Harley Mark met me on Hwy 41 and rode for Kentucky with me on Day 1.
As I’ve said before, it’s shocking to me how lucky we’ve gotten over time when it comes to finding local food & drink. We opted for a Chill’s somewhere in Indiana for lunch but the host said “We only have 1 server, can you wait?”. Here we are seeing the dis-incentive to work in food service in the latter days of the Covid world. Shit. Luckily the Harley GPS is firing on all cylinders (more on this later) and we see something called “Rick’s Boatyard” on the same exist just 3 miles down the road. We roll, and we’re not disappointed.
Not a bad view for lunch when you’re on a motorcycle trip:
Since I am The Political Biker, I can’t avoid talking about this part. Rick’s has a full staff: all the servers and cooks and bartenders they could want. Chili’s could barely stay open. I have to think that if I were in the service industry in North West Indiana I would obviously make more money and be treated better at Rick’s. Let this be a lesson: there is no labor shortage, there’s only a shortage for labor that will work for shit money and get shit on by assholes.
The rest of the ride is a song as old as time, at least if you’ve been reading Two Wheeled Thoughts. Getting through Indiana is hot and sucks. The second you cross into Kentucky things improve immensely. I will say in all fairness that this was the easiest “No crashes or random road closures” trip through Indiana I can recall for at least the last 8 trips.
Day 1 was to end in Pikeville, Kentucky. Once we got off the freeway East of Lexington onto “mountain parkway” the riding was fantastic. Well maintained roads, lots of sweeping curves and altitude changes through the mountains, the last 150mi of a 700mi day were fantastic.We met up with frequent co-conspirator Wingnut Dave here, who had a shorter drive up from Georgia.
I had assumed Pikeville, KY was a “normal” town due to the fact that we booked a Hilton. However there were some oddities. Despite being a Friday night, the town basically rolled up the sidewalk pretty early. Due to the ‘rona, pools & hot tubs were closed. And this was a mountain town you could just as easily have found in Colorado, or Seattle, or California: so there was no actual hotel parking lot. We found BBQ down the road a bit, parked on the street, and finished the day strong.
I built a small self-contained machine (Raspberry PI) with dozens of my favorite movies on it. Takes up no space but is awesome to be able to pull up The Easy Rider on demand in a random hotel room.
The Money
The next day was pretty awesome.
My main goal for this whole trip was to ride the Back of the Dragon from Tazewell to Marion in Virginia. But as I already knew from planning this trip in Rever, the 90 miles just getting to Tazewell was going to be an awesome mountain curve fest already. We rolled into Tazewell and found that the town had very much leaned in to this attraction:
A big shop, a big parking lot, food trucks. Yea, they like the two wheeled tourism in Tazwell.
The Back of the Dragon was excellent. I would rate this much higher than the Tail of the Dragon if for no other reason than there’s a lot MORE of it and you can reach some higher speeds. Like everywhere else in Appalachia, the views don’t disappoint.
Now, I had routes planned, but I made it clear to my co-conspirators that The Back of the Dragon was what I really cared about. We did some re-planning and decided to take on The Snake instead. The re-planning sucked. It was here that I learned what a big step backwards the 2021 Ride Command is on Indian motorcycles. It’s not super clear why. It appears that basic things like “Take me to Mountain City, TN” won’t work without a strong wireless internet connection. Send a route from my phone to my bike? Nope! Worked on the 2019 but only works using iPhone on the 2021 as of the time of this writing. This was pretty embarrassing: after me bragging about how this tech was eating Harley’s lunch for a few years, we had to rely on the Street Glide to get us to The Snake.
The Snake is actually 3 forks of TN 421 near Mountain City, TN. Very fun curvy roads, but nothing in particular stuck out to me as amazing/memorable. Maybe I’m getting spoiled? You should for sure ride The Snake. There’s a country store at the nexus of The Snake, and as another sweet whiff of normality, there was a cover band playing there and lots of bikes in the parking lot.
From here, we decided to stay in Johnson City, TN. We found a Brazilian steakhouse a short walk from the hotel that was far better than it had any right being.
Day 3
Day 3 was to involve several wacky roads in Kentucky that I found via MotorcycleRoads.com. Beware: just because something is highly rated doesn’t mean it’s safe or well maintained. We encountered a few issues.
Bathrooms: I think it must be difficult to maintain a bathroom in the South. Either there’s an epidemic of septic tank killing microbes, or people just randomly close their bathrooms to strangers. Or, maybe there are other issues
One Lane, 10mph roads: A couple of times, the amazing roads turned out to be super sketchy 1-lane roads where you were likely to meet a dude pulling his pontoon boat and need to squeeze close to the ravine to let him by. For me, this wasn’t fun. Tons of gravel, no reaction time, no ability to get any speed. Plan your routes carefully.
Lack of Road: One thing about the “t-shirt roads” is that they tend to be well maintained, and if they are not you’ll know about it. Here’s a story: on a certain “highly rated” road in Kentucky, I came around several corners to see the asphalt completely washed out in the opposite lane: I kept thinking “Wow, glad I’m going this way and not that way”… until I was going that way. Hitting a seriously huge wash out and catching air on a 1000lb touring bike and landing with enough force to bottom out the suspension and feel some “Oh, that’s going to fuck up my neck for weeks” level of crunch is just not fun. I heard “Oh fuck I thought Mark was dead” in my headset, and hilariously only the guy on a Dualsport with suspension that could have handled this 40mph ramp actually had time to react.
We rode lots of other curvy and narrow roads around Kentucky. One of the final legs of curvy roads of the day was blocked with an orange “road closed” sign. I was about done, and so we turned and headed for Shelbyville, KY.
The Ramada on Brighton Circle is sort of a goofy story. It’s the kind of story that I assume everyone who does real roadtrips has. We found <place> due to <wacky circumstance> but yet had <great experience> so now it’s a part of our routine. In my case it was an amazing 2015 road trip and my dad being cheap and finding a coupon for this hotel at a Rest Area. Cheap, clean hotel. Steak restaurant in the parking lot. Kentucky bourbon liquor store in the parking lot. The right place to be 1 good scoot from WI. I’ve stayed at this place so much now I should have a plaque in there, and it’s become a sacred place due to good memories with Dad and my brother Bart. It’s also one of the few places that has never given me shit about parking my bike under the pavillion:
As long as there’s awesome riding in the Smokies and Appalachia, I imagine I’ll keep staying in Shelbyville from time to time.
Day 4
The next day, well, you know:
Go new places for the first time is awesome, and of course no two trips to the same locations is ever quite the same, but in this case we said “Let’s not mess with a bad thing”.
The new Challenger performed admirably, though I did miss my trunk and rider backrest and I’m still getting used to the schizophrenic throttle response on this bike. A rider backrest and some larger grips would have made the 600+ mi days a breeze on this bike.
Just a four day weekend packed with a ton of fun. As of the time I write this, I have a whole other two-wheeled road trip to write up. Come back soon!
I’m in the process of buying the Indian Challenger I’ve been lusting for since they announced them – in fact I thought I’d have it next week but I guess COVID is still fucking our supply chains so we’ll see. I’m also giving up on writing up & video editing the Georgia trip from last summer I think. This will just be the lost trip in the Lost Year.
However, while I begin my evil plans for two-wheeled travel and activism in 2021, you should check out this interview with Erik Buell. I never followed his story really because I wasn’t a Harley guy nor a racing guy, but while they fail to stay entirely out of is tenure at Harley, this podcast is really about the future of motorcycling.
Spoiler: Eric thinks it’s a good 20 years before electric is practical for motorcycle touring, and that’s fine with me.
Here in April of 2020, we are on a government mandated “Safer at Home” order. Riding a bike is a great way of “socially distancing”, and we have many county parks nearby that are still open, so I’ve been able to pack a lunch and sit by myself during what little good weather we’ve had.
I have a trip booked with my father and other close family for a fishing trip in Alaska. A log cabin lodge For both my father and I, this would be the 50th state we’ve visited (though not ridden in, of course). If we don’t get some good news soon, that’s getting kicked to 2021.
The Power of Anticipation
You may not appreciate the power of anticipating trips like that until you’re suddenly unable to. The planning, the packing, buying gear, making sure your gear is in top operating condition. Telling people about the trip and promising to bring back pictures and stories.
My wife and I are both, thankfully, able to keep working right now as unemployment skyrockets across the country. There’s still still food in the stores and I still have money to buy it. I’m an introvert anyway so I’m doing OK – but I don’t have those big bright spots that help me get through the day. Am I getting away with my wife? Am I really going to be able to ride to Maine in July like I’d planned? I don’t know, so I’m doing the next best thing – I’m doing tons of research and planning trips, and more than just trips.
Another Kind of Riding
Many people who love two wheels grew up riding in the dirt. I really didn’t. Like many people, I was given my first real look at adventure riding when I watched The Long Way Round with Ewan McGregor. Yes, these are rich famous guys with a support vehicle, but it was everything I love about motorcycling write large: off the gird, but more. Isolated with just a friend or two, but more. Camping, making your own food, but more. Strange lands, but more. I thought of the many State & National parks I’ve ridden through and wonder what it would be like to just point the bike and go thatttawayoff into the dirt & woods.
I told my self that if I could swing the time & money that some day I’d be an adventure rider. Not the way Ewan and Charlie do it, to be sure, but there’s a lifetime of adventure in North America. I want to sleep on BDR land in the middle of nowhere, I want to ride the Dalton Highway all the way to Prudhoe Bay, and to ride the Trans American Trail. In The Man Who Would Stop at Nothing, Melissa Pierson describes long distance riding as the purest form of the activity, but I wonder if it’s really this on & off road blend with a healthy mix of dispersed camping thrown in.
I don’t know when I’ll have room (or money) for a BWM or KTM adventure bike in my garage (or a Harley Pan America?), or time for yet another calling that takes me far from home for days at a time. This is something I can fantasize about, when COVID19 is in the rear view.
There are things you can buy that are more or less tried and true, steady and dependable you might even say: is a Leatherman pocket tool really going to be that much different from year to year? Is one year’s Mustang going to be so radically different from the next year’s Mustang that you hesitate to buy before the next model year comes out? Is refrigerator technology going to radically advance such that you’ll wish you’d waited?
Not likely.
But some things are not “tried and true”, some things are advancing so quickly you are always at risk of buying old news … and Fear Of Missing Out keeps you on the sidelines. You risk fear of feeling like a stooge for taking the discount on the current model year as they make room for something different and better and amazing. Cell phones come to mind, maybe gaming consoles, mayve TVs. Motorcycles? Naw…
As I mentioned in A Tale of Two Test Rides, I rode a fixed fairing Road Glide on the same day I decided to take my Chieftain Dark Horse Home.
Six months later, Indian unveils this:
Shit.
Obviously, there’s a lot of real-world miles ridden on fixed fairing bikes: this is a good configuration for long haul touring. That’s why I was interested in a Road Glide! (I also hate the lines of the ‘batwing’ Harley fairing.) You also get a little bit of extra storage in the fairing. I have been privately suspecting for a couple of years that European emissions standards were going to basically force liquid cooling into more motorcycle models before too much longer – it can be very expensive to have radically different platforms on each continent for global manufacturers, and the world is on high alert after the BMW diesel emissions cheating scandals. Even someone like myself, with a somewhat poor level of V-Twin of engine knowledge, though, knows that air-cooled engines require looser tolerances. Metal expands as it heats up: pistons rub against the block, tiny metal shavings wind up in the oil, break in services are required at 500 miles vs. 5,000 miles or “never” on liquid cooled engines. This need for a little fudge factor impacts engine design in fundamental ways such as what compression ratios are safe.
This new PowerPlus 108 also makes more HP. A lot more HP. The stock ThunderStroke 111 makes 79hp. Keep in mind, I love this engine, but as I learned earlier this year, HP does matter even when you have a torque-monster bike that can shred tires at every stop sign. Passing HP and fun on the highway and sweeping turns needs that higher RPM power. 125 HP and 128 ft/lb of torque? That’s an amazing stock engine even if the bike does way 800lb dry.
In addition to the extremely appealing new engine and the fixed fairing, there are some tech upgrades:
Lean sensitive traction control.
Those red line tires…
New Ride Command with weather and traffic overlays – this is a big deal. People who have ridden with me know I’ll happily ride optimistically into the storm of the century because we can “just roll through it”.
This motorcycle is a big jump, and I’m not just talking about the War Bonnet on the front fender lighting up or the puddle lights. This motorcycle is a bridge.
My father, and his boomer generation pals, grew up lusting for a Harley long before most of them could afford one. In the ’90s and early ’00s, many of them finally got them, and set up a bubble and a generational gap that has landed Harley where it is today. There are enough people like me who want an American V-twin but not enamoured enough of Harley to pay the premium for a bike that isn’t all that premium to give Victory and Indian enough sales to cause a ruckus in the marketplace. The Challenger is a bridge product: those who have some nostalgia, and US home-bias, and want an American V-Twin but not enough to go get an air cooled machine. They also want performance and technology, but not enough to go get a BMW or a GoldWing. They want reliability, not the promise that “If you break down there’s Harley dealers everywhere!”
This motorcycle is a bridge for all those who want technology and dial-tone reliability, gas mileage and turn by turn directions, but who also have to admit that an American muscle machine is just plain cooler than a GoldWing. People who appreciate the engineering of a turbocharged Subaru but who might buy a Dodge Challenger or a Mustang instead for the exhaust sound and the body style.
As I was typing this, Harley unveiled the new Revolution Max engine on it’s 2021 Pan America.
60 degree V-twin. Liquid cooled. High horsepower. An engine that may not appeal to those for whom an air-cooled pushrod motor is the One True Way. This engine did not come out overnight in response to the Power Plus – Harley is looking in the same crystal ball as Indian and trying to be ready for the future. I think they’re both doing the right things, and I think competition is good for everyone.
My friend Harley Mark is often in a rough spot: Harley tends to unveil new stuff at the end of August. I’m planning big trips right around the time he’s working on top secret stuff for The Motor Company, so he’s stuck at work looking at my pics on Facebook. He missed the trip to Idaho.
Luckily Mr.s Roadrunner can be bribed, so for the cost of a 1 hour massage I got a 3 day weekend. I’ve been wanting to do the famous Hurricane Highway and the Tunnel of Trees in Michigan for a while. The last time I came through here it was an Iron Butt ride and there wasn’t time for anything but getting miles. The planned route looked like this:
Day 1
The fun you have when planning bike trips: since we had to leave after work on Friday, I want to stop in Escanaba, MI. There was a logging convention in Escanaba and every hotel within a wide radius was booked. We wound up finding an AirBnB in Garden, MI.
Like a lot of people, we have a “no chain restaurant” rule on bike trips. I’m seriously wondering if we can do a “no chain hotels” rule as well. I’ll miss the occasional hot tub but haven’t had bad luck yet with a small family-run B&B.
I was thinking that a Lake Michigan town on a Friday night would be jumpin’.
It wasn’t.
We got to our AirBnB, which at night looked like you could just as easily film a horror movie there as have a good sleep. The hosts were incredibly kind and helpful, but informed us that most things around were closed – we had crossed into Eastern time and the season was winding down. We did find a fantastic place that said they could still make us “anything fried”, so I had the first great night with Michigan microbrews and Walleye at Sherry’s Port Bar in Garden. People warned us about deer. Yes, we said, we’re bikers and we know to watch for deer. They insisted there were lots of deer. Yes, we said, we’re basically experts at bike touring.
We saw 16 deer on the 9 mile ride to dinner. We were extremely careful.
Day 2
We got up and had breakfast pasties and great conversation with the owners and then prepared for a day with a lot of miles. We backtracked just a few miles and took a recently paved forrest road straight through Hiawatha National Forest, basically riding all the way north across the UP from Lake Michigan to Lake Superior.
Seeing the area around Garden during the day, I began to appreciate just how sparsely populated and wild the UP of Michigan is. I also immediately fell in love with how the land looks, feels, and smells. This was like a quadruple dose of what I experienced riding to Tomahawk last year – the UP is wilder and more beautiful than Northern Wisconsin.
Doomsday prepping feels like it could be a fun hobby to me. While I’m not really worried about alien attack, the collapse of society, or a Zombie Apocalypse, having an off the grid cabin in the north woods sure seems like a lot of fun. Remote, and close to 20% of the world’s fresh water, you could do a lot worse than the UP.
Michigan H-58 “the hurricane highway” has been on my list to hit for a long time. It runs between Munising and Grand Marais along Lake Superior and it boasts some 300 curves depending on who you ask. It was a slow start, but by after a while I was repeatedly leaning the bike low at 55+ mph and I couldn’t stop smiling. Lake Superior is a great view as well.
After leaving Grand Marais, we needed to head South and East and make it across Mackinac bridge into Michigan proper to get to the famous tunnel of trees road on the Western side of Michigan. As we headed East and looked for lunch, I found myself completely falling in love with Michigan. This place is wild and beautiful, and barely a day’s ride from home. I began… making plans…
Lunch was a fantastic local diner on the shore of Lake Michigan, and I caved in and had Walleye again, it was so damn good.
We stopped briefly after crossing the bridge at Mackinac in order to take pics in front of Lake Huron: our 3rd Great Lake of the day.
Whatever I was expecting, the tunnel of trees was not it.
It’s a two-lane road and much narrower than I thought, barely wide enough for a car and a motorcycle. The road is curvy and has enough dips and potholes that I found the speed limit (35-45) to be a bit laughable: especially given how little reaction time you’d have if meeting a car around a curve. Other than that, it was truly beautiful: a nearly closed canopy of leaves overhead, rustic homes, homes displaying outrageous wealth, and views of lake Michigan over my right shoulder as we headed South.
Getting through the tunnel of trees, I had planned to follow the coast all the way south to Ludington, which was the bed for the night. Given how far we had to go, and how late the bourbon had fueled the conversation the night before, we cut off part of the coast and headed for Ludington.
My goal was to take the ferry across the lake, partly for fun and partly to avoid Chicago. Ludington seemed to be a busy town as far as Michigan goes, and this time I wasn’t disappointed. We stayed at a hotel with an excellent hot tub: I can’t say enough about the healing powers of a hot tub on my middle-aged ass after a 700 mile day. We had dinner at the excellent Jamesport Brewing company, and they even sent us home with some tallboys to drink in the hottub back at the hotel.
Day 3
The SS Badger is an old, huge, coal-fired boat that runs between Ludington, MI and Manitowoc, WI just about every day until the lake starts freezing. It was a new experience waiting in a long line of cars waiting to get on the boat. The cars are valet parked by a crew, but bikes are ridden up into the boat by the riders. You ratchet-strap your bike to a grate on the lower deck, and then find stuff to do for the 4 hour trip. There’s bingo and movies and whatever on the boat, but we found entertainment in some bloody mary’s and microbrews and talking about rides past and future.
When you’re on the shores of the Great Lakes, or out on a boat, your body and mind realize that this might as well be the Pacific Ocean. It’s a little crazy that so many of us that live so close to the Great Lakes really don’t take advantage of them much.
Being on a riding trip just puts you in a certain frame of mind. Harley Mark and I talked about our buddy Lefty, who wasn’t able to come on this trip at the last second due to a serious injury in his family. We talked about bikes, and our families, and trips we’d like to take in the coming years. When it was time to roll off the SS Badger, I was awash in the temporary peace that always comes from riding like this.
I’ve always wanted some land to have In The Family: I dream of an off-grid cabin with solar power, an outhouse, and a cast iron stove to cook on. I’ve looked in North Carolina, I’ve looked in Idaho. Given that family keeps me in Wisconsin and I’m not rich, the UP of Michigan makes a lot more sense. The wild, gorgeous, remote North Woods have really got me thinking.
two wheeled thoughts 