“Within a ten-month period, Neil Peart lost both his 19-year-old daughter, Selena, and his wife, Jackie. Faced with overwhelming sadness and isolated from the world in his home on the lake, Peart was left without direction. This memoir tells of the sense of personal devastation that led him on a 55,000-mile journey by motorcycle across much of North America, down through Mexico to Belize, and back again.
Peart chronicles his personal odyssey and includes stories of reuniting with friends and family, grieving, and reminiscing. He recorded with dazzling artistry the enormous range of his travel adventures, from the mountains to the seas, from the deserts to the Arctic ice, and the memorable people who contributed to his healing.
Ghost Rider is a brilliantly written and ultimately triumphant narrative memoir from a gifted writer and the drummer and lyricist of the legendary rock band Rush.”
This was an impactful read for me as I was emerging from the seemingly endless chaos of hospital life during a pandemic. While in no way as soul-crushing as his experience, Peart’s observations from the perspective of a true saddle-tramp facing immense loss, grief and hopelessness are a reminder of the resiliency of the human spirit and the mental health found behind a front fork and some handlebars. An absolute MUST READ
The book that set me to the task of finding the less (or least) traveled path.
The “blue highways” were the ones found on those folding paper maps they kept on the counter at old country store/gas station/deli/post office/etc. establishments of yesteryear. The “red highways” were the main roads and those colored blue were less-than-main (and occasionally not even roads).
“William Least Heat-Moon set out with little more than the need to put home behind him and a sense of curiosity about "those little towns that get on the map -- if they get on at all -- only because some cartographer has a blank space to fill: Remote, Oregon; Simplicity, Virginia; New Freedom, Pennsylvania; New Hope, Tennessee; Why, Arizona; Whynot, Mississippi."
His adventures, his discoveries, and his recollections of the extraordinary people he encountered along the way amount to a revelation of the true American experience.”
If you want to really saddle-tramp and put some miles behind you, especially on the challenging Blue Highways, it’s best to be well-trained and well-geared. Nick Ienatsch is the founder and lead instructor for Yamaha Champions Riding School. I was honored to meet him, Mark Schellinger and Chris Peris for a session with YCRS called ChampStreet.
This was, without question, the most important activity I could have undertaken to improve my safety and enjoyment on 2-wheels. I am now a disciple and will advocate for anyone wishing to hone the craft of maneuvering 500lbs of metal and plastic through traffic, on the slab, around twisty country roads or any combination of all three, there is no better way to elevate your skill than this course. No matter what mastery level you think you ride, you’ll be better at the end of the day.
Check it out at www.ridelikeachampion.com
“Contemporary sport bikes accelerate faster, brake harder, and cut through corners deeper than ever before. These technologically advanced motorcycles are exhilarating to ride, but to really get the most out of a motorcycle’s performance capabilities a rider must develop his or her own personal performance. Riders need to take their skills to the next level. Now, in this book written specifically for sport riders, well-known journalist, racer, and riding school instructor Nick Ienatsch provides the tools and techniques to help riders analyze and develop that personal performance. If you’re an experienced rider, Nick will help you hone and perfect your skills, operate controls with even greater finesse, and apply race-proven techniques on the track―as well as on the street. If you’re a beginning rider, Nick will show you how to develop proper skills and safety habits that will add to your motorcycling enjoyment and build your confidence. Whatever your current riding ability, Nick will teach you to safely find the absolute limit of bike and rider.”
A seminal piece of literature that I read in my youth and didn’t grasp. Now, as the years and miles have piled on, it is a well-worn staple in my library.
“A penetrating examination of how we live and how to live better
A narration of a summer motorcycle trip undertaken by a father and his son, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance becomes a personal and philosophical odyssey into fundamental questions on how to live. The narrator's relationship with his son leads to a powerful self-reckoning; the craft of motorcycle maintenance leads to an austerely beautiful process for reconciling science, religion, and humanism.
Resonant with the confusions of existence, this classic is a touching and transcendent book of life.”
If you were one of the 3 people to actually read my “About” section, you will recognize this as the text that finally clued me in to why I am like I am. Unlike what many thought of me in my youth (and I embraced at many twists of the river or road), I was never an adrenalin-junkie. I now know I am a FLOW-chaser.
There is a foundational difference between the two and I’m grateful to reside in the latter. I now live in search of the ever-changing “Challenge-Skill Balance” and hope to keep finding new ways to stretch and touch the edges of the envelope.
“Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's famous investigations of "optimal experience" have revealed that what makes an experience genuinely satisfying is a state of consciousness called flow. During flow, people typically experience deep enjoyment, creativity, and a total involvement with life.
In this new edition of his groundbreaking classic work, Csikszentmihalyi demonstrates the ways this positive state can be controlled, not just left to chance. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience teaches how, by ordering the information that enters our consciousness, we can discover true happiness and greatly improve the quality of our lives.
Nothing to do with motorcycles or flow-chasing and everything to do with discovery and honoring the native American heritage
“In 1992 author Douglas Preston and his wife and daughter rode horseback across 400 miles of desert in Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. They were retracing the route of a Navajo deity, the Slayer of Alien Gods, on his quest to restore beauty and balance to the Earth. More than a travelogue, Preston’s account of their “one tough journey, luminously remembered” (Kirkus Reviews) is a tale of two cultures meeting in a sacred land and is “like traveling across unknown territory with Lewis and Clark to the Pacific” (Dee Brown, author of Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee).”
Another awesome read about discovery and pushing the boundaries of curiosity and physical endurance. Great read!
“Since the days of conquistador Hernán Cortés, rumors have circulated about a lost city of immense wealth hidden somewhere in the Honduran interior, called the White City or the Lost City of the Monkey God. Indigenous tribes speak of ancestors who fled there to escape the Spanish invaders, and they warn that anyone who enters this sacred city will fall ill and die. In 1940, swashbuckling journalist Theodore Morde returned from the rainforest with hundreds of artifacts and an electrifying story of having found the Lost City of the Monkey God-but then committed suicide without revealing its location.
Three quarters of a century later, bestselling author Doug Preston joined a team of scientists on a groundbreaking new quest. In 2012 he climbed aboard a rickety, single-engine plane carrying the machine that would change everything: LiDAR, a highly advanced, classified technology that could map the terrain under the densest rainforest canopy. In an unexplored valley ringed by steep mountains, that flight revealed the unmistakable image of a sprawling metropolis, tantalizing evidence of not just an undiscovered city but an enigmatic, lost civilization.
Venturing into this raw, treacherous, but breathtakingly beautiful wilderness to confirm the discovery, Preston and the team battled torrential rains, quickmud, disease-carrying insects, jaguars, and deadly snakes. But it wasn't until they returned that tragedy struck: Preston and others found they had contracted in the ruins a horrifying, sometimes lethal-and incurable-disease.
Suspenseful and shocking, filled with colorful history, hair-raising adventure, and dramatic twists of fortune, THE LOST CITY OF THE MONKEY GOD is the absolutely true, eyewitness account of one of the great discoveries of the twenty-first century.”