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BACKLASH Hi Brian & Shira Thanks a bunch for the fantastic review of Cornering Confidence in the November issue. I’m sure it wasn’t easy writing that, as I could see bits and pieces of all the promos I’ve sent around here and there! Maybe sometime soon I can call you to get some feedback from you on my latest project: the Trail Braking Camp. I taught my first camp on the Grom-style bikes at Americade. It went really well. If we could find a place to do a class, I’d love have you guys and your readers to take the course. I’m certainly doing some courses near me in Rochester. But I was also thinking of taking the show on the road. Jon DelVecchio
Tic Tock Tic Tock I would like to thank Contributor Mark Byers for “A Wastrel’s Obsession, and Confession” in the October issue of Backroads. I also have OCD. It is rare that I meet people who talk about their OCD; let alone write about it in a top moto-journal. Thank you for being so forthright and brave Mark. You taught me the clinical term for what I call my “fear of aging.” You state the term “Chronophobia;” meaning fear or concern over the passage of time or aging. These thoughts can be constant, intrusive, and quite uncomfortable. Mark gives suggestions on how to manage chronophobia while riding motorcycles. We could stop while riding, look at the view, take a photo, have an ice cream cone, get there around something-ish. Take the pressure off. Focus on the moment rather than having to “stay on the cam” and arrive at our destination at a specific hour. Mark’s main point, however, is to get a motorcycle and ride. I agree that riding a motorcycle forces a person to focus in the moment. The focus and sense of control I get riding motorcycles is what draws me to them. The future, getting old, or what might happen will take care of itself; but I must be in the moment while riding my Ducati or Honda CB 1100.
BACKROADS • DECEMBER 2021
Letters to the Editor I feel ashamed of my obsessive concerns over aging and the passage of time. Mark, you have comforted me in your writing. You have affected me profoundly. You have let me I know I am not alone. Father Time marches right along doing what he does. In the meantime, …let’s ride! Gratefully, your reader, Bruce Kagan L.I. N.Y. Shira & Brian, As I read you opening editorials, it occurred to us that it is not just the varied motorcycles that we ride, but also where we ride them and with whom we ride. When Lotus Tours was a functioning adventure tour company we took over 8,000 riders to 150 countries around the world. These trips were not necessarily ‘challenging’ rides, but they were certainly adventures, immersing our riders in history, culture, geo-politics, unique accommodations and interesting local cuisine. Once we stopped doing commercial trips, there were those folks, who you mentioned, who become part of your motorcycle family. They continue to insist on asking where are you taking us next year? “We do not run commercial trips anymore!” we would tell them. These people are friends who do not take no for an answer… So, once or twice a year, we include them on a trip that we are taking for ourselves. In 2018 I was in a vintage car rally in Argentina which was mostly along their version of our Route 66, known as Ruta 40 along the Andes. I vowed that I would return to do a similar route by motorcycle. I leaned on Skip Mascorro at MotoDiscovery, in 2019, to handle the ground logistics and bikes on the route I laid out and book the hotels I had stayed at and enjoyed. We had a great time and all those riders had an outstanding adventure with a fair amount of dirt or gravel roads. Dirt bike experience proved to be an asset! Virtually all of those friends (not customers) wanted to know where we would be going in 2020 – answer: Nowhere, due to Covid-19! We did plan a trip to my version of 2 weeks of a Tail of the Dragon type route on the tight undulating coastal roads of Corsica & Sardenia for May 2021 that had to be shifted to September due to Europe being closed to tourism. At
