Category Archives: Uncategorized

I heard recently, a piece on the BBC about a pilgrimage taking place annually in Norway, honoring St. Olaf. A local guide opined that in these times of great troubles all over the world, people need the focus and solitude … Continue reading →

One of the many good things about retirement, offsetting somewhat the “getting old” bit, is the ability to get up and go for a ride for a day or two or more when the opportunity presents itself. In late February … Continue reading →

(With winter still firmly in charge in my part of the country, motorcycle travel is limited to day trips. Here’s an account of a longer trip in 2008) For years, my brother-in-law Jay Smythe and I had contemplated another western … Continue reading →

(In 2010, Brenda and I took our first, and so far only, organized motorcycle tour after winning it at a rally. See the previous post, 2010 African Tour https://johngrice.wordpress.com/2023/04/24/african-tour-2010/) At 7 AM on Sunday morning, February 14th, Darrel and his … Continue reading →

(This took place in 2010, back in those long-ago times when air travel was not so much of a nightmare. Brenda and I have traveled by motorcycle, alone or with her brother, for more than 40 years. This was to … Continue reading →

RUSSIA 2013 (This tour took place a decade before the horrific invasion of Ukraine, during a brief lull in hostilities between Russia and the western world) As a child of the Cold War era, I always had this image in … Continue reading →

(In May of 1994, Brenda and I flew to London and rented a motorcycle with the intention of riding down into Cornwall and up through the West Country and over to the Isle of Man. A huge “100 year” rain … Continue reading →

This was a spur of the moment trip, the spur being a few days of cool but dry weather predicted on the weather channel and no pressing obligations to keep me at home. On a November Sunday morning I loaded … Continue reading →

We left our superannuated wanderers pondering a map in Ellsworth, Maine) Thursday, No breakfast offered here, in our overpriced motel, so off we go in the early cold wet foggy morning in search of sustenance. We soon found it at … Continue reading →

(Our peripatetic seniors are back on the road, flat tire fixed, thanks to Canadian kindness) In the morning, we checked Jay’s tire for leaks. None so far. We found our way to the back roads leading to the coastal road … Continue reading →

We left our geriatric travelers in a dimly lit basement bar, waiting in vain for Bogart and Bacall) On a cold, clear Pennsylvania morning, breakfast comes at the Diner on the corner, a replica dining car like that we all … Continue reading →

Travel by motorcycle can be sometimes inconvenient, sometimes uncomfortably hot or cold, but it is for some of us, the best of all possible means. Mid-September perhaps is not the best time to be going north to Canada, but we … Continue reading →

I know this will creep out some folks and for that I apologize in advance. I’ve been watching this spider for some time now and have come to appreciate her. I think of her as female, based on reading about … Continue reading →

Laying in bed in Nebraska City, getting used to the new time zone . The trip is nearly over now. From here is familiar territory, just getting home. The urge to travel exists in some of us, absent in others, … Continue reading →

Sunday, June 4 Now two weeks into the journey, leaving Gillette, Wyoming this morning for Devils Tower, or as the original name was, Bear’s Lodge. Straight roads across flat plains get me to the slight terrain change as the path … Continue reading →

West of Soccoro, Rt. 60 begins the slow climb toward the Continental Divide which I cross just before reaching Pie Town. Everywhere out here in the west are vast vistas, scenes one cannot take in with even the best camera, … Continue reading →

“On a long and lonesome highway, east of Omaha…”. Bob Segar sang about that experience, but he added, “you don’t feel much like ridin’, you just wish the trip was through .” I’ve never had that feeling. In six decades … Continue reading →

There are so many cliches about competition that have become part of our collective thought. “Winning isn’t the important thing…it’s the only thing” “Second place is the first loser” Yada, yada, yada Viewing the world as a constant competition with … Continue reading →

I’m going west again. I don’t know why I want to do this….but then it occurs to me that I don’t have to have a reason that satisfies anyone else. I will complete my 75th year this fall and one … Continue reading →

We ride motorcycles because we like it. Each of us does it slightly differently from any of the rest of us and each of us wonders if the other one knows something about it that we don’t. We start out … Continue reading →

I have always thought February was the longest month, at least 6 or 8 or 10 weeks of miserable cold, snowy weather in Kentucky (is it really a southern state?) and each year I long to be somewhere else…anywhere else… … Continue reading →

Casi was an accident of fate. I was a new social worker, in my very early 20’s, fresh out of college and out in the world supposedly solving other peoples’ problems when I didn’t yet know enough about the world … Continue reading →

My father was born in the very beginning of the 20th Century, not long after the Wright Brothers made their trip to Kitty Hawk, and came of age in the eastern Kentucky hills before going north to Ohio for work … Continue reading →

Another long narrative, but it was five week trip! Thursday morning, July 19th. The waiting is over, for this year at least. Vintage Days begins at the Mid Ohio track tomorrow, an event I’ve attended annually since the very first … Continue reading →

(In 2009, to celebrate my wife’s retirement, we decided to take a “bucket list” trip, a month long excursion to New Zealand. I know this post is excessively long, but it was a wonderful trip !) NEW ZEALAND BLOG, 2009 … Continue reading →

In 1981, after several decades of mixed motorcycling, on and off road, I acquired a six year old BMW touring bike and found that the marque fit me like the proverbial glove. ( See previous post, https://johngrice.wordpress.com/2021/06/02/long-term-relationship/) While I was … Continue reading →

(With the inclement weather and some necessary “senior maintenance” medical procedures keeping me off the road for a bit, I thought I’d offer this fictional account inspired by my love of sidecars) With the publicity surrounding the centennial rides commemorating … Continue reading →

This story was written in 1993. In the years since, I have ridden up and down Highway One and its tributaries and crossed the Golden Gate Bridge many times, but the initial thrill of being there still stands out. “You … Continue reading →

On the first of September, I went from my home in central Kentucky to Nashville Indiana on my motorcycle just for the experience of having the “savory French Toast” breakfast at the Bird’s Nest Cafe just off the Main Street … Continue reading →

Brenda and I have been fortunate enough to have explored far and wide by motorcycle and sidecar over our many decades together. Travel, we have learned by this time in our dotage, does not always have to be pushing into … Continue reading →

There is an old cliche, several versions of it, the gist of which is “he died when he was 25 and was buried 50 years later”. I do not want that to be my epitaph It is on a motorcycle … Continue reading →

My first BMW motorcycle owner’s rally was in 1982, at Shreve, Ohio, the 15th such gathering, I believe. Friend Tom Sutherland took me there, the “new kid” in the Bluegrass Beemer world, riding my green R90 I had acquired the … Continue reading →

How often do you get a perfect day ? Our wives, Brenda and Marimac, had put together an overnight stay at a rented cottage in Stanford, Kentucky leaving Jay and I the open day to get there on our motorcycles … Continue reading →

When I was a teenager, and therefore knew everything about the world, I would come up with solutions for the problems that faced the world and the benighted people in it who weren’t blessed with my complete understanding of how … Continue reading →

It is an excuse for a trip, really, but it also fills a need, a silly need perhaps, not anything “real” but existential in its own way. I have, over more than a half-century of touring by motorcycle, ridden in … Continue reading →

When this started, my intention, really more of an excuse for an extended ride somewhere in the first sort-of-nice April days of spring, was to follow the path of my first real overnight motorcycle trip, from 1965. My memory is … Continue reading →

“GOIN’ SOUTH” (No, not the neat 1978 movie with Jack Nicholson and Mary Steenburgen, this is the mid-March 2022 trip with two geriatric riders on BMW 310’s.) This trip was the “consolation prize” after the planned two-week February bikes-on-trailer excursion … Continue reading →

Everyone has a place that stays in the mind as a refuge, the quiet place where the real world stops intruding and one can be still, wrapped in one’s own thoughts. For me, that place is the Blue Ridge Parkway. … Continue reading →

(A story from back in the days when BMW motorcycle dealers were small, often one-man operations, there were no cell phones or GPS navigation systems on motorcycles and we were young enough to camp and still get up off the … Continue reading →

We thought we could get in one last trip in late November when a brief respite from the cold appeared on the Weather Channel. Brother-in-law Jay had an appointment on Wednesday, so we left on Sunday with three days, two … Continue reading →