Held in various venues from one end of town to the other under different promoters in the Ruidoso area over the years, the present incarnation, the Golden Aspen Rally, is at the Inn of The Mountain Gods on the Mescalaro Apache Reservation, the ancestral home of Geronimo. Now you can lose your money with an unregulated casino or visit one of the three lawyer referral...

    In a rare move, the city has taken over the event, turning the entire town into a party. During Prohibition, the area was notoriously known as a hub for the production and risky distribution of illegal spirits. None other than the dastardly likes of Capone and his ilk were known to walk the same streets and back alleys as law biding bikers travel today.   The event attracted a...

It’s a dangerous time as I’ve got to know when to call it quits and not overwork it until it looks like lipstick on a pig. I’m okay with the paint job for now as I’m only going to patina it to death until I come up with the time, money, and some sort of paint scheme worthy of spending that time and money on. The drivetrain, wheels, and brakes are all now fine as is for my...

  Carmel is a tourist vacation village south of Monterey with one of California’s few dog-friendly beaches. Next to Carmel is world famous Pebble Beach with hotels, golf links, rich folks’ residences. Some of its 17-miles of roads made up California’s first sports car race course. When that became too dangerous and ended, then Laguna Seca race track was built about...

    The guy who is the head honcho of this entire operation has a glitzzier title than the President of the United States. He is The Hon. Sir Michael Kadoorie GBS, LL.D. (Hon), DSc (Hon), Officier de la Légion d’Honneur, Commandeur de l’Ordre de Leopold II, Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.      After years of trying, we finally got credentialed into the creme de la...

    For the past several years, motorcycles have been a major part of the concours, Brits, American, Italian, German and this year French. I stopped in at the Concours office in Carmel Valley and was joking with Peeble Beach media boss, Kandace Hawkinson, about French motorcycles and she pulled out a list of entrants with French brand names I had never heard of and probably neither...

     I’ve heard about Jeff for years, but never had the opportunity to go visit his restoration shop, Indian Motor Works in Bayfield, Colorado, just a few miles north of the Ute Indian Reservation. So, I gave him a ring and, a little phone tag later as he was out golfing, we connected and made arrangements for me to visit his shop.     Jeff greeted me at the door and I walked...

The various booths and exhibits in the main hall displaying all the new products were staffed with engineers, engineers who had spent months questioning riders and passengers at rallies. They listened carefully to criticisms and instead of designing sales courses to overcome and get around customer objections, they went to work fixing them. And, they promised there was more to come...

    With no pain-in-the-butt track credentials to get and a lot of freetime on my hands, I opted to spend the evening down on Monterey’s historic Cannery Row made famous by John Steinbeck in his novel of the same name. Steinbeck ain’t as famous as Hemingway, but was a better story teller and didn’t eat the end of a shotgun  Since bikes didn’t start to arrive...

   I learned you have go with the cards you’re dealt and make the best of it. I now ride very little because of my back issues but that’s okay because I still can do it. Just not as much. Motorcycles have been a big piece of my life and 50 years of riding has been good to me. I had the opportunity to meet great people, see great places, and express myself through motorcycles. Life...