Musings from one who writes, and rides…
Originally published in On the Level, the magazine of the BMW Riders Association. They say if you find a job you love, you’ll never work a day in your life. I’ve had a bunch of jobs that I liked well enough, but I only loved them if I rode a motorcycle to get there. I spent…
The other evening, I was surveying the wreckage that is otherwise known as my garage, and realized that those fun-loving folks in Munich have siphoned off a good portion of my lifetime earnings. Across the decades I have owned an airhead, an oilhead, a hexhead, and a waterhead. Plus an assortment of BMW automobiles. If…
Originally published in “On the Level,” the official magazine of the BMW Riders Association. The common perception is that when it’s time to die, motorcyclists go in great, dramatic bursts of fire and smoldering metal. In my experience, the truth is far more mundane, and involves CT scans, insidious cell reproduction, and shelves of prescription drugs.…
This Could be the Most Fun-per-Dollar Motorcycle I’ve Ever Owned This article was originally published in the November/December issue of “On the Level,” the magazine of the BMW Riders Association. Not long ago, having decided that my motorcycling life is entirely too sanitary, I bought a Honda CRF250L dirt bike on Craigslist, for $2,000. A…
Originally published in RoadRUNNER Magazine. Riders who have not experienced an electric motorcycle often think the power output will be quaint, like a supercharged electric toothbrush, or perhaps one of those ubiquitous city scooters. And, despite warnings to the contrary, these same riders have a come-to-Jesus moment when they whack open the throttle. This is…
Originally published on the Seafood Watch blog. You could say that Seafood Watch, the organization at the forefront of the sustainable seafood movement for the last 20 years, got its start from a little bit of well-intended theft. In 1997, the Monterey Bay Aquarium opened its first major exhibition devoted to a conservation topic, called…
Originally published on the Seafood Watch and Monterey Bay Aquarium Conservation blogs. Imagine you’re a young father, from Myanmar, who has come to Thailand with this simple goal: to find work as a fisherman and support your family. But once aboard, your time at sea stretches to weeks, months, or even a year. You find yourself…
Originally published in Good Times Santa Cruz. Suna Lock reaches over and picks up a decaying, decades-old can of “Emergency Drinking Water” from the shelf of her downtown store, Stripe. The military-issue can still contains liquid, but probably not the kind you would want to drink. No matter—she’s already sold a bunch of them, which is…
This article was originally published on Motorcycle.com. Photos by Randy Wilder. Forty sweaty high school kids are on a group mountain bike ride in the Fort Ord National Monument, outside Salinas, California. They don’t seem to know, or care, about the identity of the tall guy in their midst. To them, he’s just another well-meaning…
Originally published on Motorcycle.com. Photos by Randy Wilder. In the pantheon of vintage motorcycle shows, the Quail Motorcycle Gathering is a little like your neighborhood block party. Part Concours d’Elegance, part custom show and part biker bash, it’s a place where a hardtail chopper with springer forks sits happily alongside an impeccable Manx Norton. Vincents, Velocettes,…