Motorcyclist USA – September-October 2018

THE ROYAL ENFIELD HIMALAYAN PAG E

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M E ET S H I N J I K A Z A M A PAG E

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Where Bikes Go to Die PAG E

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FRAMED

AIR FRANCE P H O T O G R A P H Y

B Y

J A I M E

O L I VA R E S

Jakub Kornfeil was chasing the leaders during the Moto3 race at Le Mans in May when Enea Bastianini went down in front of him. Kornfeil used his experience racing motocross, grabbed a handful of throttle, and launched his KTM over the downed Honda in a spectacular save. Re-entry deployed his air bag and shattered his carbon-ďŹ ber seat, but he stayed upright and rode to a sixth-place ďŹ nish.

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FRAMED

BITTEN BY BEARS EARS p h o t o g r a p h y

b y

d r e w

r u i z

Off-Road Editor Andrew Oldar was reminded of an important lesson while riding a Suzuki DR650SE for our feature “Tender Ground,” on page 34. A former pro trials rider, Oldar’s no stranger to putting on a show, so when photographer Drew Ruiz pointed his lens at the setting sun over Cedar Mesa, Utah, Oldar kicked up some dust and popped the clutch for an easy slide. It’s a move he’s done a thousand times on motocross bikes from every manufacturer, but the DR650 isn’t a motocross bike. It’s a 366-pound dual-sport from the ’90s with road-legal rubber, a fact Oldar remembered about the time Ruiz took this photo.

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CONTENTS SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

42

15

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O C TO B E R 2018

50

56

Thad Wolff was cut out of these leathers in 1983.

He’s back in them—and riding his restored Suzuki superbike—on page 82

COVER 10 Contributors

12 15

Roads

Hard Parts

Unstoppable

Risk & Reward

MC Tested

Where motorcycles go to die

Garage

MotoQuest’s Alaskan workshop

How To

What Went Wrong

78 82

Smart Money

End of the Road

74 76

Bowman falls in love with trousers, Waheed gets grippy, and Cantle writes a book report

Exploring the changing shape of Bears Ears National Monument

70 72

Track Time

Tender Ground

56 65

Answers

Insight

42 50

We ride a Royal Enfield Himalayan into the bowels of the Earth

Me & My Bike

32 34

Shinji Kazama will ride a motorcycle anywhere on Earth—or off it

Crowd Question

28 30

Alta’s upgraded battery pack

Riding a trials bike in a ghost town

22 26

Versus

Shift

18 20

Gear

In This Issue

Project

90 98

Megaphone

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Editor–in–Chief C H RIS CANTLE Senior Editor ADAM WAH EED Group Features Editor ZAC K C OURTS Contributing Editor ZAC H BOW M AN EDITORIA L

CON TRIBU TORS

Creative Director RALPH H ERM ENS Photo Director JEFF ALLEN Art Director ROBERT M ARTIN Group Road Test Editor ARI H ENNING Off-Road Editor ANDREW OLDAR Managing Editors IRENE GONZALEZ, TERRY M ASAOKA Social Media Manager JOH N ZAM ORA Motorcycle Service Specialists JON M C DEVITT, W ILL STEENROD Video Director SPENSER ROBERT Associate Video Producer BERT BELTRAN Production Manager ERIC H SC H LITZ Copy Editor NIC OLE PASKOWSKY YV E ASSAD, ABH I ESWARAPPA, RYAN INZANA, M IC H AEL KOELSC H , N AT H AN M AY, JAIM E OLIVARES, AARON RIC H ARDSON, DREW RUIZ, Y ELE NA SOPH IA, JAY WATSON, BRENDA W EAVER, NATH ANIEL W ILDER Vice President, Editorial Director M ARK H OYER Director, Digital Operations BRIAN SC H RADER In-Market Director M ATTH EW M ILES

BON N IER MOTORCYCLE GROU P

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This product is from sustainably managed forests and controlled sources.

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IN THIS ISSUE

BOUNDARIES FOUND AND CROSSED • we ’re at our best when we push against boundaries. We feel and smell the dirt

NATHAN MAY

when we pick ourselves up out of it, like off-road editor Andrew Oldar was obliged to do after he slid across a Utah road, on page 4, and like contributing editor Zach Bowman did as he traced the shifting shape of Bears Ears National Monument, on page 34.

Shinji Kazama, the adventurer and explorer featured on page 42, has left tracks through the Sahara, the Arctic, and up Everest. As a youngster, Thad Wolff— featured on our cover and on page 82—wanted to make the swap from dirt bikes to roadracing. He went on to spend the early ’80s racing superbikes, a privateer alongside a generation of legends. It doesn’t take being extraordinary to redefine boundaries, but it helps.

Sometimes the limits we face are as simple as the languages we speak. And, as contributor Aaron Richardson discovered on page 98, riding and wrenching can wash them away faster than any translation.

Boundary crossing comes naturally to us because motorcycling is an act of rebellion. In choosing two wheels, we thumb our bug-spattered noses at luxuries like air conditioning. Or doors. Cars are more convenient. Airplanes are faster. Almost everything is statistically safer. It begs the question: why?

We’re confronted with the answer every time there’s a leap in technology, or we ride in a new place. We are elevated by our machines, by these complex yet ephemeral objects, their elemental metals on loan from the Earth and destined to return to it (page 50). The bonds we have with our motorcycles are tied up in that conspiracy: That when it comes to pushing boundaries, there’s nothing better. —Chris Cantle

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CONTRIBUTORS

Boundary-pushing bike boffins

•

•

•

•

• AARON RICHARDSON Richardson grew up loving cars but switched allegiances to two wheels in college.

A decent rider and a bad mechanic, Richardson penned our story on Shinji Kazama on page 42 as well as an ode to the bonds formed by mechanical entropy on page 98. In the real world, he’s the editor of a daily newspaper in Charlottesville, Virginia.

• N AT H A N I E L W I L D E R A lifelong Alaskan based in Anchorage, Nathaniel specializes in outdoor life style photography with an emphasis on the Arctic. He’s drawn to wide-open spaces with few people but interesting characters—perfect for our look at MotoQuest’s Anchorage garage on page 65. He can be found crossing his fingers and awaiting a call from the Hells Angels for a promised group photo shoot.

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• RYAN INZANA

• THAD WOLFF

Illustrator and comic artist Ryan Inzana’s work has been recognized by the Society of Illustrators and American Illustration, and his comics have been inducted into the Library of Congress’ perma nent collection of art. A graduate of Pratt Institute, Inzana has lectured at the School of Visual Arts and Parsons School of Design. In this issue, Inzana illustrated Megaphone on page 98.

For decades, Wolff was a go-to photo model for maga zines and manufacturers. It’s an anonymous job: show up, look good, don’t break things.

But Wolff’s ride to our pages was a wild one. We turn the tables and spotlight the former racer while he restores the Suzuki superbike he used to harass a generation of racing stars on page 82.

o c t o b e r 2018

•

• N AT H A N M AY Photographer and filmmaker Nathan May is always down for a moto adventure. From navigating LA traffic on his Triumph Thruxton to racing across the desert on his Husky FX 350, if it has two wheels, he’s interested. In this issue, May accompanied Abhi Eswarappa into the bowels of the Earth for “Risk & Reward” on page 56.

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BALLARAT BALLET Ballarat, California, is a shadow of the West. A relic of a desert supply town that has nearly returned to the dust. A smattering of obstacles and heat on the fading edge of civilization, Ballarat makes a perfect playground for a trials bike.

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RIGHT

Pentagrams and stars inside the cab of this Power Wagon are the only clue that this truck was last driven by Tex Watson, a member of the Manson Family, as he fled authorities.

BELOW

Off-Road Editor Andrew Oldar goes vertical on his Beta.

ABOVE

Ballarat has just one full-time resident, Rock Novak, and he spends his days watching the ruins come down around him.

LEFT Disgarded equipment, tires, and sand make the town a trials training heaven.

motorcyclistonline

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YVE ASSAD

S H I F T

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ROADS

Maryhill Loops Road, Washington Sam Hill once said that good roads were more than his hobby—they were his religion. In 1909, he spent four years and $100,000 of his own money to build 10 miles of experimental tarmac in southern Washington, creating the Pacific Northwest’s first asphalt road.

Having circumnavigated the globe, ridden the Trans-Siberian Railway, and traveled to Europe no less than 50 times, all before commercial flight, Hill understood the challenges and importance of surface-bound transit. His enthusiasm was contagious. After the governor of Oregon visited Maryhill Loops Road in 1913, the state began construction of the Columbia River Highway, a 3.6-mile thread with 25 curves and eight hairpins that still winds its way through the scenic Columbia River Gorge.

—Yve Assad m o t o r c y c l i s t o n l i n e . c o m | 19

S H I F T

CROWD QUESTION

Motorcyclist readers know their limits “What won’t you do on a motorcycle?”

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4.

“I won’t ride in a

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manner to give any of my fellow bikers a b a d r e p u t a t i o n .”

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“Ride through an

BLAIR MACMILLAN

intersection with the assumption t h a t i t ’s s a f e , o r that other drivers see me coming and will yield. Blaming others for turning in front of you doesn’t accomplish anything if you a r e d e a d .”

ANDERSON, E N F I E L D , N O VA S C O T I A

5.

3.

“Show off. I’ve been riding motorcycles for over 40 years and have some extremely good skills. But showing off... that c a n g e t y o u .”

ALAN TITECA,

REX DECKER,

H A M I LT O N , M O N T A N A

B A R T O W, F L O R I D A

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6.

2.

“I won’t ride without a quality helmet from a brand with some h i s t o r y b e h i n d i t .”

“I avoid taking any type of highstakes risks beyond what riding a bike brings on its own.

DA N I E L S H O E M A K E , NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE

Excessive speeds (in relation to a given setting), burnouts, and

5.

wheelies are all t h i n g s I a v o i d .”

A D A M VA N W I N K L E , ANTIOCH, CALIFORNIA

3.

“Ride without a h i g h - q u a l i t y, w e l l fitting helmet. No excuses, and not even ‘just to the end of the block’ d u r i n g a t e s t r i d e .”

H E AT H E R M I C H E L L E , C L AV E T, S A S K A T C H E W A N

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S H I F T

GEAR

LIGHT READING

• my grandfather had a mind for machines. He could tease apart the inner workings of an engine, see them all splayed out in his mind long before pulling the first bolt, their choreography as obvious to him as the words on this page. It was a gift grown from a lifetime of curiosity, intuition, and countless hours spent pulling broken and bent pieces from oily hollows. Of everything he gave me, his gait and his grin and his temper, a quirk of genetics meant I missed that innate understanding.

Instead, I’ve relied on a library of service manuals to carry me through the projects that have punctuated my mechanical life. Some I’ve bought.

Others have showed up in the boxes of spares that seem to come with every old bike. All of them—from 22 |

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the pulp-paper Haynes to the factory service manuals with their exquisite exploded diagrams and part numbers—have been a torch in the darkness of my ignorance.

They are the passports to the hidden places inside every engine. They’ve led the way through dizzying labyrinths of valve trains and transmissions, giving me the much-needed confidence to dive in and suss out the ticks and grinds that plague all well-loved machines. Even now, when every scrap of human knowledge is just a keystroke away, I prefer leafing through grease-smudged pages to scrolling down pixelated PDFs, placing my own fingerprints on paper that will be around long after I’ve gone on to catch up with my grandfather. —Zach Bowman

JEFF ALLEN

The places a Haynes manual can take you

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FLIGHT SUIT

T h e d u d s Tr a v i s P a s t r a n a w o r e f o r E v e l L i v e • flying through the air at 70 mph presents a unique set of problems. The most important: looking good—especially when you’re following in Evel Knievel’s skid marks. The Nitro Circus squad tapped Roland Sands Design for help designing Travis Pastrana’s kit for Evel Live, a made-for-TV tribute to Knievel’s original three record-breaking Las Vegas jumps. RSD tweaked existing apparel from the catalog to the rigors of flight, complete with a satin cape. —Adam Waheed

1. HELMET Evel donned a Bell Helmet, so Travis had to as well. He chose Bell’s Snell-rated Star Classic auto-racing helmet, because it appeared most similar to the original.

Besides having special paint and Red Bull graphics, Roland Sands wrapped black gaffer tape around the D-ring straps to cover the yellow-colored fabric moments before Travis prepared to hit the ramp.

retro-inspired Clash jacket. The jacket was tailored to Travis’ torso for a tighter fit, similar to a race suit. It also features a painted white leather exterior. The cape is silk and attaches with snaps. Tailors stitched in a zipper to affix the custommade pants. The jacket features armor in the elbow and shoulder areas. Travis also wore a back protector—a sensible addition, even if you’re paying homage to Evel.

2. JACKET AND CAPE Next to the helmet, Evel’s jacket is the most iconic piece of the riding kit. Travis’ stars-and-stripes-emblazoned coat began life as a production version of RSD’s

3. GLOVES Travis’ gloves were bone-stock RSD Peristyles. These short cuff mitts feature a soft and grippy motocross-style palm with a simple stitched leather top.

4 . PA N T S Designed from scratch, the leather pants were custom-fit to Travis’ physique and feature knee armor just in case things went sideways.

5. BOOTS Because Travis has a fused ankle from prior wrecks, Bates had to reconfigure the boot zipper to accommodate his oversize joint. In the end, the size 13 boot ended up being a custom one-off piece. Appearing more like a vintage-style dress boot than an actual riding boot, it featured a supersized raised heel for extra sketchiness, just the way Evel would have liked.

2

3

4

5

JEFF ALLEN

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ME & MY BIKE

BIKE 2001 KTM 640 Adventure RIDER Chris Grimm AGE 55 H O M E C h a r l o t t e s v i l l e , VA O C C U P AT I O N I n s u r a n c e A u d i t o r

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• all my buddies had ktms, so I had to have one. Then a friend of mine found the Heroes Legend Rally online. I was sitting in the family room of our old house, and Patty was sitting in the chair when I asked her, “Hey, do you mind if I go do this thing where we go from Paris to Dakar?” I had no idea what I was getting into.

I trained for a year. I rode, lifted. It was all cardio stuff. I didn’t ride my big adventure bike, though. I was going to be on that piece of s—t for 15 days. Why the 640? It looked like the real deal. That was the only thing that looked like the 660. That, and

ZACH BOWMAN

I talked to Chris Jones, a former Dakar finisher from Atlanta. I relied on him to tell me what failed on his bike. He was like, you can put two spare levers here, your CDI goes there, your spare coil goes here, you can take this much fuel line.

This was the year the French tourists were killed by the Islamic Maghreb, the year they canceled Dakar. The organizers felt it was too dangerous for their group. Our group was maybe 300 people, so they said, we’re still going. At home, I was watching the news, but at that point in time, al-Qaida wasn’t even on our radar. Neither was the Taliban.

The Valley of Death was the hardest day. It was a 120-kilometer stage, and the entire roadbook read sable sand, silver sand, khaki sand, rock and sand. I was riding with a few guys, and I dropped my bike. I was starting to feel it already.

We all got down the dune, regrouped with a couple of people who were injured, and they were just done. There were plenty of guys that just stopped. We had 20, maybe 30 kilometers left. Not far, but it was just blazing heat. We were in these little dunes only 6 or 8 feet tall, little piles, winding through, and I kept dropping my bike. When I dropped it going too slow, I was just like, “That’s it.

F—k it. I’m tired of picking this f—king pig up, I’m not f—king doing it anymore, I’m f—king tired of this s—t.”

I was riding with a Dutch kid on a little Honda 450X, and I was picking my bike up, and I can still remember his look. He looked over his shoulder and was like, “Come on.” He could see the bivouac. It was only 40, 50 feet away. I just couldn’t see it because it was right below the level of the dunes.

I rolled up, and Clive Dredge, our crew chief, looked at me and said, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I had no expectation of seeing you at the end of today.”

He’s lived in the desert most of his life.

His saying was: “I haven’t taken a single picture of the desert as long as I’ve lived.

If you want to go see it, get off your ass and go see it.” motorcyclistonline

. c o m | 27

S H I F T

VERSUS

RED VS. BLUE

And all the colors of the Loctite rainbow MOTORCYCLES ARE HELLBENT on breaking themselves apart. The vibrations caused by the pulse of their cylinders and miles of punishing asphalt both work to undo all the carefully torqued fasteners that hold the show together.

Loctite, manufacturer of thread-locking compounds, has been making certain the world’s nuts and bolts stay put since 1956. Clearly the stuff works, but experience tells us that choosing the wrong formula for the application at hand can cause as much grief as losing a fastener altogether.

Purple Loctite Threadlocker 222 is made specifically for small fasteners, formulated for hardware up to 1/4 inch in diameter like set or adjustment screws, or anything that goes into low-strength metals like brass or aluminum.

Best used on small threads, it’s removable without resorting to heat.

Likewise, Blue Loctite Threadlocker 243 is a medium-strength formula designed for fasteners up to 3/4 inch in diameter that are meant to be disassembled with hand tools. Perfect for body-panel bolts, tank hardware, bash plates, or anything else that you may want or need to remove once a season, the blue goo tolerates contaminants and cleaning products without degrading.

Red Loctite Threadlocker 263 is for hardware you hope you’ll never have to take apart again; subframe bolts, engine mounts, and kickstands all itch for the stuff. It’s good for bolts up to one inch in diameter and usually requires some heat for disassembly.

Finally, Green Loctite Threadlocker 290 is a wicking compound, which means it’s made for pre-assembled pieces.

Drop it on, and it will work its way into a fastener’s nooks and crannies, sealing everything in place. It’s also great for electrical connectors you don’t want coming apart. —Zach Bowman

Loctite Threadlocker 243 $24.99 / 36 ml tube

For pieces you don’t want coming apart

JEFF ALLEN

The not-quite permanent Threadlocker

Loctite Threadlocker 263 $23 / 50 ml tube

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S H I F T

INSIGHT

WHERE HAVE ALL THE ROTAX GONE?

ROTAX HAS SUPPLIED powerful, stonereliable engines for anything and everything wonderful in the world. Airplanes, karts, snowmobiles, and watercraft have all benefited from power provided by the storied Austrian engine manufacturer. If it could thrill you, it could be powered by Rotax, which is why the company thrived alongside motorcycle manufacturers, building power plants for the likes of Aprilia, BMW, and KTM. By the time Rotax helped Buell shake the yoke of Harley-Davidson in the early part of this decade, it

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was building four-stroke twins with better than 150 horses, and the 1,000cc V-twin it shipped Aprilia for its flagship RSV Mille literbike made close to 140 horsepower.

There was a legacy to uphold, after all. Those V-twins were descendents of brawny two-stroke engines built for some of the scariest dirt bikes of the ’70s and ’80s. The Rotax Type 486, for instance. Named for its displacement, it was famous as the only redeeming quality of the Can-Am 500 MX. But that long run might have come to a quiet end.

Engines made by BRP-Rotax have all but vanished from motorcycles. The holdout is something of a technicality: Can-Am’s three-wheeled Spyder runs a 1,330cc Rotax inline three-cylinder.

You can still find Rotax’s fingerprints in the usual, weird places—and some new ones. BRP’s UTVs are obvious homes for Rotax power, and the flat-four 912 line is a hit with the light aircraft community. Rotax might be missed by motorcyclists, but the company seems poised to thrill the pants off humanity for years to come. —Aaron Richardson

ROTAX

T h e A u s t r ian c o m p an y ’s ab s e n c e f r o m t h e t w o - w h e el m a r k e t h a s b e c o m e c o n s p ic u o u s

Photos: Larry Pangilinan

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Current affairs

• according to alta , the 2017 Redshift MX never had a range problem: The issue was heat. Electric vehicles strive to maximize the energy transfer rate from the battery to the motor. The faster the rate, the quicker the motor can spin, the faster the vehicle can go, and the more heat the system will produce.

If any one of the many temperature sending units monitoring the dozens of individual 18650-size cells within the bike’s battery pack sensed temperatures over 150 degrees Fahrenheit, the machine automatically limited power to prevent long-term damage.

For riders who grew up ripping around tracks on internal combustion power, it felt like a machine on its way to dead.

Alta says this happened in very specific situations. Both the 2017 Redshift MX and the 2018 Redshift MXR feature four throttle maps. The fourth, Overclocked, is the most aggressive, offering the highest-possible energy-transfer rate. On loose or muddy

tracks with either a hardcore racer or a throttle-happy amateur behind the bars, the battery on the outgoing 2017 model could quickly reach that 150-degree threshold.

The solution came in the form of some cleverness. The 2018 Redshift MXR and EXR use Alta’s updated R5.8 battery pack with a unique battery chemistry designed to yield maximum energy release over longer periods at lower temperatures. The company won’t say what’s in the mix or exactly what it changed compared to the 2017 pack. Alta claims that information—and even the identity of the manufacturer of those cells—is proprietary. But with new software and an upgraded high-voltage chain, including all the wiring strung from the battery to the inverter and on to the motor itself, the 2018 Redshift MXR produces 50 horsepower and 42 pound-feet of torque. That’s 10 better than the old bike, all while using an identical motor. —Zach Bowman motorcyclistonline

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TENDER GROUND Exploring Bears Ears National Monument

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BY ZACH BOWMAN PHOTOGRAPHY BY DREW RUIZ

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b e low Local Britt Barton is deeply passionate about where he lives but believes the initial monument designation was a mistake.

Stretching from Four Corners in the southeast of the state to just shy of Moab in the north, San Juan County, Utah, is as far from anywhere as you’re likely to find. It’s almost 8,000 square miles of lonely desert, a place larger than Connecticut with a population of fewer than 17,000. In the waning days of the Obama administration, it became a national focal point when the federal government designated 1.4 million of the county’s acres as Bears Ears National Monument, all of which were already under federal management. Less than a year later, President Donald Trump signed an executive order reducing that expanse by 85 percent.

The area has become the physical manifestation of America’s bifurcated political landscape. We have no interest left versus right, but the decisions around the monument designation have large and serious implications for motorcyclists. We went to find out what’s at stake for riders like us, those who love and need the wide outdoors.

Utah is a riding wonderland, strung through with endless, winding pavement over bone and blood hills, spiderwebbed with a vast tangle of trails that hunt out forgotten washes, their walls 36 |

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painted with 3,000-year-old pictographs. So much of it is public land.

Federal agencies like the Bureau of Land Management, the National Forest Service, and others manage more than 70 percent of the state, making it second only to Nevada in the total number of public acres.

Britt Barton has lived in San Juan County his entire life and has spent his 47 years here riding, building a business and a family. He’s warm and open with clear eyes and a stiff gait, a gift from a wayward SUV that took him off his R1200GS earlier this year and put him into a spinal brace. He’s optimistic about getting back on a bike, despite six fractured vertebrae, a fractured ankle and scapula, and a traumatic brain injury.

“They think I’m going to recover,” he says at his desk at a mortgage company in downtown Blanding.

“It’s cool. I feel lucky.”

He also feels lucky to live where he does, in the heart of one of the most beautiful areas in the United States. When asked if the land in San Juan County is in need of protection, he took a long pause.

“You have those who live here and care about the land and have done a great job of taking care of it forever who

b e low The landscape changed as the road climbed up from the valley floor, the hillside greening up with scrub and cedar.

definitely feel a threat, but it’s more a threat of additional visitation,” he says.

“And then you have the camp who claims that there’s a threat of damage to cultural resources or the threat of mineral extraction, which, I don’t necessarily think those threats exist. I don’t know that they believe that either. I think that they use that as a pawn to get what they want, which is locking up the land.”

There is no official count of the number of visitors who come to Bears Ears National Monument or San Juan County each year. Friends of Cedar Mesa, a nonprofit aimed at protecting San Juan County’s public lands, says that visitation to the area has quadrupled since 2015. The group agrees with Barton. Of all the dangers facing the original Bears Ears National Monument, damage from tourists is the most pressing, with visitors pocketing relics, damaging ruins, and traipsing

over burial sites. But while Friends of Cedar Mesa believes a monument is the best way to protect the area from more damage moving forward, Barton says the designation would only bring more feet to the trails he’s known for decades.

“What’s additional visitation going to do? Is it going to hurt it or help it? It can only hurt it,” he says. “As that visitation increases, you get more and more government involvement in providing services, whether it’s building a road or visitor’s centers or law enforcement or whatever, it’s just going to increase the impact on the land.”

Like Barton, Bill Boyle is a San Juan County native. As the publisher and editor of the San Juan Record for 24 years, he’s watched his forgotten corner of the West move steadily away from obscurity. The problem, Boyle says, is that the on-again, off-again monument has created a perfect storm. motorcyclistonline.com

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“I think the federal government employees, not knowing what to do or what was going to happen, just kind of froze in place,” Boyle says. “We have no management. No administration, nothing happening except unprecedented awareness of the area. We get literally hundreds of thousands of visitors who come and want to know what to do and no one will tell them. Even more importantly, no one will tell them what not to do.”

Worse, the national dust-up over the initial designation and the later reduction has turned the monument issue into political quicksand.

“Federal agencies are working towards developing the sorts of mechanisms that need to be there, but it’s a long, involved public process, and everyone is so scared of their shadow because of the political controversy. I think the loser is the land itself,” Boyle says.

It would take a lifetime to hunt out every forgotten corner of San Juan County. We took what we could get, a couple of days’ worth of riding, starting at the Bears Ears Buttes.

I am giddy with it, both the prospect of riding through Bears Ears and throwing a leg over a Husqvarna 701 Enduro. Here is a bike I have pined for.

On paper, it is everything I want out of a sure-footed dual-sport machine, the modern equivalent of the plodding Suzuki DRZ sitting in my shed at home.

With 70 horsepower, I expect it to be a thrasher, an eye-widening colt, but it isn’t. The muscle comes on smooth and easy, giving me plenty of time to consider my right wrist’s intentions.

A motorcycle is immersive by nature, baptizing you in the world, washing you in dust and light, and Bears Ears is deep with both. It would be better than 90 degrees by noon, but at sunrise, the air was cool and clear, the sky rich and blue. It was a long climb from the valley floor, the wide and graded forest road snaking its way up through the stones and sand. Bull elk darted from the shadows, a blur of hide and antler stirred by our passing, close enough for the earth smell of their fur to linger long after they’d vanished again.

The land greened up as we climbed, a rash of ponderosa pine and aspen blooming from the red soil, needles and leaves shimmering in the breeze. We split the buttes, stopping for a moment at nearly 8,500 feet above sea level. The desert’s more alive up there, birds and 38 |

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bugs all singing their hearts out. Around the corner, a herd of cattle grazed in the sharp light of the morning.

Despite the altitude, the 701 was glad to fill its single cylinder in a press for more speed, but the road turned to ruin, falling to deep silt again and again as we worked our way deeper into the monument. The bike and I do fine until I fail to adequately slow for a deep patch. The front tire washes, and I take a dust bath, the fine grit sticking to the layer of sweat and sunblock coating my exposed skin.

We rode a circuit, a short 40-mile blast that put us at the trailhead for the House on Fire Ruin, a stone-and-mud silo built beneath a looming sandstone overhang. The rock ripples and contorts, doing its best impression of an inferno frozen in time. It’s an odd thing to step off a modern, fuel-injected motorcycle, the best that contemporary engineering can achieve, and stand before an ancient

a b ov e There’s no describing the texture of the Utah desert, where spines and stones meet sand and shadows.

structure, to admire the quirks of time and chance.

The ruins are nothing more than a few small chambers, but it was impossible to ignore their weight. There are over 100,000 archaeological sites within the boundaries of the original Bears Ears Monument, ranging from impressive cliff dwellings to pictographs and small artifact scatterings, some of which are more than 2,400 years old.

It’s difficult to grasp that gulf in time until you find yourself standing in the same spot as humans who lived and worked and loved some four centuries before Christ took his first trembling breaths. And when you see the lines they drew or the stones they stacked, there is no denying the spark of connection that lights inside you. A shortcut across the millennia.

The night before, we’d met Brett Williams, a 28-year-old West Virginia

native living and studying in Monterey, California, perfectly at home camping alone on the torn edge of the mesa. Her glasses and smile shined in the last light of the day when I asked her why she was there.

“I wanted to make the communion with Bears Ears,” she said. “It’s been such a focal point, I wanted to see it for myself. It’s sacred. I study land conservation. In California, there’s definitely intact pieces of land, but here, it’s so uniquely intact. It’s such a broad swath of functional ecosystem.”

In a way, Williams and I are the visitors Boyle and Barton worry about, the ones who’ve heard the call of a place so unique and came to see the land firsthand. Neither of us will leave the same.

She isn’t pro-monument for the sake of locking up the land.

“I think keeping a land whole is a good thing,” she said. “It can be a state park for all I care, it can be a county park if people are willing to invest the time and energy to manage it, that would be fine by me.

As long as you can keep the land not deteriorated, actively deteriorated, this is a good thing. Once it’s gone, you’re not really going to get it back.”

We sat on the trunk of her car

and watched the sun slide below the horizon, setting that previously blue sky on fire before a chorus of stars splattered their way from east to west.

Williams said that was the hard thing about protected land. You have to keep protecting it, again, and again.

That’s not an easy thing for motorcyclists. Public land is part and parcel to our hobby. We want to be there, want to protect those places from development or closure, but that protection so often excludes motorcycle use.

The question is whether that’s any great loss in Bears Ears. While beautiful, the riding proved no more challenging than plodding down a gravel driveway.

Moab, less than 80 miles north, offers some of the most spectacular OHV riding in the world, far from the cultural sites and sensitive ecology strewn across Cedar Mesa. But the thought of Bears Ears becoming well-trodden like Moab is enough to make you heartsick. Maybe that’s why everyone we spoke to, regardless of their stance on the monument, believes the land is under threat. No one who knows Bears Ears feels it isn’t worth protecting, guarding so that future generations can come and marvel at America’s human home.

a b ov e Brett Williams came to Bears Ears because to her the place is sacred. It’s a symbol of what’s worth protecting in the West.

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The remarkable resilience of Shinji Kazama

BY AARON RICHARDSON

PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF SHINJI KAZAMA

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SHINJI KAZAMA WANTS TO RIDE A MOTORCYCLE ON THE MOON.

It is the kind of thing a 5-year-old might say, or a billionaire.

It’s a goal that, if uttered by anyone else, would have us laughing.

But Kazama isn’t anyone else. He has ridden motorcycles to both poles, the summits of Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Fuji, and much of the way up Mount Everest. Twice. He was also the first Japanese national to compete in the Paris-Dakar Rally, later won the race’s 500cc class, and survived a collision with a truck on another attempt. History has proven that Shinji Kazama’s ambitions are not to be scoffed at.

Shinji Kazama in full attack during an ascent of Mount Everest aboard a Honda TLR200. Kazama sought glory on Everest twice, reaching 19,701 feet in 1986. l e f t Kazama celebrates his conquest of the North Pole on a Yamaha TW200 with Yamaha TY250 two-stroke power. a b ov e The extreme cold, wind, and exposure on the North Pole expedition meant Kazama was forced to perform near-constant maintenance and repairs to his TW200. The going sometimes was as slow as 10 meters an hour. fa r l e f t

Kazama will turn 68 this year, a fact that doesn’t seem to slow him down. He’s coached his son, Shinnosuke, in the Dakar Rally for the past five years, and is personally planning to compete in a car in 2020 and on a motorcycle in 2021.

Between now and then, he needs to convince his injured left knee to bend to 90 degrees.

Kazama was born in 1950. Bikes took him early, and he blended his passion for motorcycles with a love of nature, summiting a 1,640-foot mountain near his hometown when he was 14.

“The mountain slope was quite steep, not a mountain that was easy to climb with a motorcycle,” he recalls. “I tried a number of routes and pushing my bike. When I arrived at the summit, it was evening. A dazzling air and a refreshing breeze played over my cheeks. I found the sparkling Fuefuki River in the distance, and below was my hometown. I remembered tremendous fulfillment and satisfaction. This was the original experience and original scenery of my adventure.”

Kazama does not exude the frenetic energy you get from the motorcyclistonline.com

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Kazama takes a juice break next to his Suzuki DR500 during his 1982 Dakar Rally campaign. Kazama was the first Japanese national to finish the race on his inaugural try in 1982; he won the 500cc class in ’84. b e low Kazama coaxes his TW along an ice sheet flanked by his support team. The water was so cold that rescue would have been impossible had he gone in. left

Guy Martins of the world. He’s frank and realistic, candid about his fear of freezing to death or being eaten by a polar bear.

Maybe most surprising is the fact that, for someone who’s done what he’s done and seen what he’s seen, he doesn’t feel suffocated by everyday life. He’s not afraid of dying quietly of old age.

“What I learned through several adventures is that ‘daily life’ fosters dreams, ‘daily life’ supports dreams,” he says. “A wonderful adventure will be brought up for the first time with wonderful daily life, family, society, and friends.”

Even so, Kazama says, nobody is going to hand you the opportunity to run away when your office walls start to close in.

“At first, everyone thinks that their way of living and actions are not ‘I am being forced,’ but are their choices,” he says. “My motorcycle expeditions were mostly long-term, which cost a huge amount of money, but I wanted to go there all the way.”

Even if “all the way” means “all the way to the moon.” In a strange twist, Kazama’s humility is matched only by his

confidence in technology and a thick vein of bravado.

“I think that there is no place I cannot go by motorcycle.

Even though technically impossible now, technology evolves indefinitely,” he says.

Kazama doesn’t have a religious or philosophical dedication to bikes. He initially set out to show people in Japan that motorcycles are viable transportation, that they are not just the domain of the tattooed, drunken woolly mammoths made famous by Marlon Brando and Hunter S. Thompson.

“Riding a motorcycle is often seen from the world, the general public in Japan, with cold eyes,” he says. “I tried to show the validity of the motorcycle by my ideas and behavior.”

That desire nearly cost him everything. In 2004, racing a Dakar Rally stage in Morocco, Kazama collided head-on with a 10-ton, 750-horsepower big rig competing in the event’s truck class.

The accident left him hospitalized for 14 months and required 18 surgeries and 500 stitches. It nearly claimed his left leg. motorcyclistonline.com

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Odds weren’t the only thing stacked against Shinji Kazama on his trips to the North and South poles. Huge voids in the ice threatened to swallow him and the bike while frigid weather compounded his exhaustion. Here, judicious application of throttle was the only answer. b e low

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There was no guarantee that he would get around well enough to do another few Dakars, let alone aim to ride a motorcycle on the moon.

“I have not overcome [the injury] for 14 years. In the case of many people with disabilities, it seems to take 10 to 20 years to reset the wounds of the heart. I do not like giving up, but it may be sometimes important to give up in such a case,” he says.

“Although giving up is not permitted for dreams, resignation is important [to keep from] envying others. I was able to learn from having a disability.”

His injury led him to become an ambassador for the Bone and Joint Decade, spreading awareness with increasingly difficult treks. In 2009, he drove a Subaru Forester from the top of Africa to its southernmost tip. In 2010, he and three others rode motorcycles, bicycles, and dog sleds from the southern tip of Chile to the top of Sweden on a pole-to-pole excursion.

The man seems unstoppable like the physical, concentrated force that compels all of us to ride. But long before he began summiting the world’s highest peaks, racing through the planet’s most challenging terrain, and putting motorcycles where they’ve never been before, Kazama’s motivations were much simpler.

“The secret...is that I liked the bike more than anything. And second, I tried to convey the excellence of riding motorcycles to the world in my own way,” he says.

It’s a succinct summation of why any of us ever straps on a helmet and slips off down a winding road to nowhere, or a new length of jagged single-track. Forget the twaddle about the Zen of man and machine, or the higher purpose of exploring what it really means to be free. Shinji Kazama has spent his life in the pursuit of doing something that he enjoys. That’s all the motivation any of us should need.

THERE’S FUN ON THE HORIZON.

Learn more at Slingshot.Polaris.com/Joyride Slingshot® is a three-wheeled motorcycle. It is not an automobile. It does not have airbags and it does not meet automotive safety standards. Three wheel vehicles may handle differently than other vehicles, especially in wet conditions. Always wear a DOT-approved full-face helmet and fasten seatbelts. The Driver may need a valid motorcycle endorsement. Don’t drink and drive. ©2018 Polaris Industries Inc.

END OF

THE ROAD WHERE MOTORCYCLES GO TO DIE

BY CHRIS CANTLE

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DEATH’S DOOR LOOKS LIKE THE SUN-BLEACHED CORRUGATED STEEL of every other old industrial building off the Avenue. The condemned wait there while their paperwork clears. A motley crew of Vespas and Kawasakis and Hondas with caved-in fairings and twisted forks and dangling mirrors.

Threading his way through the tangle is Greg Sussex, the pleasantly smiling executioner of thousands of motorcycles.

Tri-County Motorcycle Salvage in Ventura, California, stretches through a handful of buildings, two levels, and an old school bus. Broad awnings shade an endless collection of factory headers with attached mufflers. Grass grows through head-high stacks of spoked wheels and crumbling tires, and a gentle breeze through the rafters taps airboxes against each other with the hollow clatter of dry bones.

Salvage operations like Tri-County are rare and getting rarer. Today you’d probably stumble into business with Sussex on eBay, or you might reach him by 52 |

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phone. “Guys try 15 numbers before they find a place that’s still in business,” he laughs. Even if you walked in—like I did when I was a college student trying desperately to afford the parts I was sanding off a long-suffering 1988 Honda Hawk—you still wouldn’t see the good stuff.

There are insurance mandates and fire codes that keep the public from poking around the library stacks of deceased machines. Crossing a flexing catwalk between two-story stacks of ’90s bike tanks and ’80s speedometers, those policies seem unusually sensible.

Persuade Sussex to show you the back rooms and you’re greeted by mountains of the familiar but indistinguishable. It’s like seeing friends of your parents on the street. Here and there is a bright color. The baby blue of a Vespa. The purples and whites and greens of a certain era of Kawasaki. Let your eye do the driving and it gravitates to things you know. A stock DRZ exhaust.

Beautiful Interceptor fairings. Rein it in and look for details, and what you find can be more desirable.

Seemingly perfect pieces of a Ducati Paso. RD tanks. CR125 engines and whole shifter karts waiting to give them a home.

Motorcycle writer Kevin Cameron once declared an organized workbench the sign of a disorganized mind. He meant it as a hedge against prettily painted outlines of wrenches on pegboards, an encouragement toward thought and practice rather than decorative neatness. When you see the inside of Tri-County, you wonder if Sussex has the most organized mind of all.

At its peak in the ’90s, Tri-County was buying and dismantling about a bike a day. It seems like an impossible volume until you see the triple clamps hung feet deep on long racks, or the neatly organized forks that fill cubbyholes that stretch from floor to ceiling, or the dirt bike fenders that nestle one into the next making yard-long rainbows of lurid color. motorcyclistonline.com

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“Find a buyer and every $30 treasure is important, a nudge keeping one more motorcycle on the road and the doors of Tri-County clogged with derelict machines.”

The yard made perfect sense here in 1986. Not so long ago, Ventura Avenue was all oil patch and industry. Shell struck it big up the Avenue before the war. There were refineries and miles of drilling rigs. And when the boom started to cool and the refinery shuttered, and smaller operators shipped off to Texas or Alaska, little shops like Tri-County filled the gaps and made a home.

If there’s sense to be made of the sprawl, it’s private. Sussex counted on help dismantling his machines, but this week, and the last and the next and maybe more, he’s working alone in the stacks. And, perhaps because of it, there are places where the forces of capitalism have overcome the forces of order. Gold Wing blocks have been shifted to the floor in the effort to mine something from them, and then left to form a kind of thrombosis in the path of further commerce. A shopping cart laden with heads and valves and other important things will travel that far into the stacks, and no further. And then it will acquire a layer of things set aside for later. And, eventually, Sussex will bend his lean frame over this clogged artery and peer into the darkness with his flashlight and have to do the math, whether finding a $15 or $30 part is worth attending to those hours of deferred organization.

It’s painful seeing all those good things bound up. Knowing that every starter motor and carburetor sold is a hedge against the steady creep of new condos up the Avenue. Find a buyer and every $30 treasure is important, a nudge keeping one more motorcycle on the road and the doors of Tri-County clogged with derelict machines. Stop finding those buyers and the scrap man will pay cents on the pound for that precious metal, all day long.

You’d think there’d be a big score laid away in those mountains of parts.

CBX exhausts and other unobtanium.

Sussex is quick to disabuse that notion.

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“I wouldn’t still have the stuff that’s worth something. I’m not going to be here in 30 years, right? So, I just look at how to maximize profits for the next seven years, you know.” That means eBay, online listings in this, the most analog of places. “We kind of had to reinvent things, and this is going to be the last time I reinvent it. Next time things need changing, I’ll be gone. I’ll have to be done.”

Today the bay where Tri-County drains, guts, and fillets bikes is dotted in the oily remains of a Ducati Super Sport.

“We got it from a guy that was almost killed on it,” Sussex says as he steps around the engine. He’s tall, lanky. Made for fitting down the crowded aisles, for stretching his spiderlike legs over stacked cases or half-packed boxes. “I don’t hear the stories, I don’t usually want to hear it because, well, there’s a lot of bad stories, you know?”

A bit of melancholy fades his smile.

“Sometimes you can’t help but hear it, you know? ‘My son was killed on this thing,’ or something like this. Sometimes you know the accident, you know the guy.”

It’s motorcycling. It’s dangerous, and sometimes delicate, and you’ve been there too, and you do know. And for an uncomfortable minute, it’s quiet and weirdly religious, the rows of engines and final drives in deep shadow, and the soft, dusty, oily floor a mechanical catacomb around you.

Then the phone rings and business crowds out the mood. Sussex pulls a cordless from a sparse tool belt where it lives with his flashlight and hunts off into the darkness. motorcyclistonline.com

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RISK REWARD The Royal Enfield Himalayan is light at the end of the tunnel

BY ABHI ESWARAPPA

PHOTOGRAPHY BY NATHAN MAY

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THE BUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT HAS A

straightforward policy on riding a motorcycle into the Reward Mine, an abandoned silver and gold digs a short ride from Manzanar in eastern California: “Enter at your own risk.” That should be the adventure-motorcycling motto, as applicable to riders as the manufacturers who build the bikes they love. Royal Enfield is no stranger to the gamble that comes with making and selling motorcycles, and the company’s newest wager, the Himalayan, is an inexpensive dual-sport aimed at those of us with an itch to go where wise riders don’t dare. Places like the gaping mouth of the Reward.

The Royal Enfield Himalayan traveled an unexpected path to the U.S. It took the company’s American arm two years to convince headquarters to bring the bike stateside. Originally developed for the Indian market, the Himalayan gets an all-new 411cc single that produces 24 horsepower, about the same as a Honda CRF250L Rally. Dainty, but a counterbalancer means the engine can sit at redline for hours on end without shaking apart.

Riding north on Route 395 with the snowcapped Sierras rolling endlessly along, I’m glad of the engineering. The Himalayan has been near its top speed of 85 mph for hours, happy to spin up the highway. Despite an MSRP of just $4,499, this bike comes standard with features you won’t see on ADV bikes twice the price: a centerstand, front and rear luggage racks, and an aluminum skid plate.

It’s also incredibly comfortable. My right wrist is unhappy keeping the throttle wide open, but the ergonomics are well-suited for my 6-foot-2-inch frame, and the seat is agreeable all day long. It’s a pleasant surprise from a small displacement bike.

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“THE CLIMB STARTS WITH TREPIDATION, BUT THE HIMALAYAN MOCKS MY CAUTION, HANDLING EVERYTHING THE TRAIL PRESENTS WITHOUT TROUBLE.” 60 |

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But the Himalayan isn’t built for glassy asphalt, and shortly after turning onto the Manzanar-Reward Road, the flat, graded surface gives way to a double track thick with sharp rocks. The climb starts with trepidation, but the Himalayan mocks my caution, handling everything the trail presents without trouble. My pace increases with the elevation until loose rocks start banging up against the skid plate, providing a staccato metallic soundtrack to the ascent. The Himalayan is so well-suited for this trail that once I get to the top, I turn around and do it all over again. And again. And again.

Getting to the top of the trail affords a moment to relax and enjoy one last view of the Sierras before dropping into the Reward Mine. The operation was named after the town of Reward, which was established in 1900, a year before Royal Enfield began making motorcycles. But while RE has been in business in one form or another all that time, the town did not enjoy similar success. The local post office lasted just six years.

None of that does much to quell my nerves. This is what I’ve been waiting for, but the rational side of me isn’t in a rush to ride into a pitch-black tunnel that hasn’t been maintained in decades. Rock-slide protection covers the top of the entrance, reminding explorers that this is a stupid idea, a risk.

The mouth of the mine is a doorway to a different world. Outside, it’s nearly 100 degrees, and the high desert sun finds a way to reflect off every natural surface in an attempt to blind you. Inside, the temperature is 30 degrees cooler and so dark that you lose one of your five senses. Ten feet inside the cave is the perfect balance. A slow draft of cool air moderates the desert heat while the last vestiges of light illuminate the jagged surface of the interior wall.

Every movement is slow and deliberate. The tunnel isn’t straight, so the headlight only buys 50 feet of visibility at a time. For the first time, the Himalayan feels like it has plenty motorcyclistonline.com

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of power for the task at hand. The mine branches out occasionally, tempting you to explore dead ends. There’s no right answer, just excuses to explore more of the mine.

Some detours reveal old wooden ladders that extend several floors up, teasing the fact that the mine stretches eight stories and over 500 feet.

It feels like I’m alone, but there are signs of other visitors. Graffiti seems to be the most common. Another calling sign is an occasional empty can of cheap American lager. I didn’t come for a reminder that people can be slobs.

The best way to ignore the mess is to go dark, to isolate myself, so I turn the bike off and instantly plunge into the void. It’s surreal, so dark that I can’t tell if my eyelids are open or closed. The silence would be calming in any other environment, but in the absence of light, it’s ominous. I fire the long-stroke thumper back up to life. In here, the timid exhaust thunders like a 411cc chain saw. Maybe I’m the villain in this story.

It’s less than a quarter-mile to a large room. The headlight and taillight provide the only illumination, a wash of red and a ray of white that reflect off all surfaces. It’s the way out. The Himalayan has conquered the bowels of the earth. It looks purposeful there. A little proud. Waiting for the next challenge and without a concern of what it might be.

We find the exit, and as my pupils adjust to the sun, I realize that I’m seeing the Himalayan in a new light. Sure, it’s slow. It’s also capable, comfortable, efficient, cheap, and fun. It’s the best motorcycle Royal Enfield has made in 50 years. And it’s finally on our shores.

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“THE HIMALAYAN HAS CONQUERED THE BOWELS OF THE EARTH. IT LOOKS PURPOSEFUL THERE.”

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9/10 70.ANSW ERS 72 .HOW TO: TIE- DYE YOUR MOTORCYCLE 74 .T R A C K T I M E 7 6 . W H AT W E N T W R O N G 7 8 . MC T E ST E D 8 2 . P R O J E C T: S U Z U K I G S 1 0 0 0 S U P E R B I K E 9 0. SM A RT MON EY 9 8 . M E GA

NATHANIEL WILDER

GARAGE

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WRENCH ROOM

THE BIKE SHOP ON THE EDGE OF AMERICA Mot oQuest ’s gar age in Anchorage, Alaska b y

z a c h

b o w m a n

• there are few places in the world as hostile to a motorcycle as Alaska. The riding season is brief, nipping from June to September so long as the weather holds. Half of the state’s highway system is pocked and cratered dirt roads, and the paved surfaces are fractured with frost heaves and potholes. Much of it is doused in calcium chloride to keep dust low or ice at bay, and the chemical accelerates corrosion on everything it touches. The state is also staggeringly beautiful, situated on the teetering, undeveloped edge of the North

American continent. That’s why, despite the challenges, MotoQuest Alaska has operated out of Anchorage in one form or another for more than 20 years.

Founder Phil Freeman began with a humble stable of small bikes, a tarp, a beater Subaru support vehicle, and a dog back when the company went by Alaska Rider Tours. Now MotoQuest operates in 20 countries, owns more than 75 motorcycles, and has four permanent outposts, including Portland, San Francisco, and the headquarters in Long Beach, California. But the company’s darling is

r i g h t During the riding season, the shop is a hub of activity. With a steady stream of customers arriving and departing, MotoQuest’s workers have to do constant maintenance and repairs just to keep up.

MotoQuest Anchorage attracts a cast of characters, all driven by a love of motorcycles and the adventure of living in Alaska. The seasonal work means most of the crew spends only half of their year here.

left

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the shop in Anchorage.

“Even with a well-maintained, wellcared-for motorcycle, it can feel a bit like triage,” says Brenden Anders, a guide and managing partner with the company. “If you look at a 1200GS, for example, when we buy it in March or April and send it up north for one season, the thing looks like it’s aged five years in five months. You really have to have a well-stocked facility, not only with wear-and-tear parts, but parts that don’t usually need replacing.”

The Anchorage base is as much a

logistics center as it is a motorcycle shop, with workers scrambling to keep the necessary bits and pieces in stock. The job requires everyone on staff to think on their feet, to be the kind of resourceful that doesn’t come from dealership training. It also attracts workers who don’t tend to fit into the 9-to-5 workforce.

“We have a number of people who have other gigs the rest of the year,” Anders says. “We’ve employed quite a number of ski bums and school teachers and people who have the summers off and want to do something interesting.

We also have a growing contingent of what I like to call shepherds, who follow the flock. They’re typically younger individuals who still have a lot of autonomy in their lives. They aren’t married, they don’t have kids, but they really love the travel and the motorcycles. Right now, I have two full-time employees in Alaska who come down to California the other half of the year.”

MotoQuest rents everything from the big BMWs to Harleys to Suzuki’s V-Strom. Anders says that while the premium German bikes may rack up

b e l o w MotoQuest caters to street-oriented riders with a number of HarleyDavidson rentals, but big adventure machines like the BMW GS are made for Alaska’s long dirt roads.

a b o v e The Anchorage base is as much an explorer’s club as it is a motorcycle shop. Souvenirs plucked from around the globe serve as decor.

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r i g h t Each bike may go out for 2,000 to 2,500 miles at a time, which means MotoQuest goes through plenty of tires. They make good scootercourse obstacles, though.

r i g h t The crew works to diagnose an issue on a BMW GS. It takes time to deliver parts, and the crew has to rely on its own resourcefulness at times.

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30,000 to 40,000 miles in a season, the Japanese machines may see as much as 60,000 miles over the course of 18 months. That intense use means the workers in Anchorage are constantly working to keep up with maintenance.

“We have to look at service in a different way,” Anders says. “We can’t just say, oh, every 5,000 miles we’re going to change the oil, because let’s say a bike has 3,000 miles on an oil change and it’s going to go out for another two weeks. The average person who rents a motorcycle goes about 250 to 300 miles a day on the high end, so in addition to what’s already on the clock since the last service interval, you have to anticipate what the rider’s likely to use.”

Much of that anticipation means changing parts ahead of time, and that means that by the end of the season, MotoQuest has stacks of tires with 40 or 50 percent wear on them.

“The last thing you want to do is send out a renter for two weeks on a premium bike for a once-in-a-lifetime trip on rubber that’s not going to last.”

And these are once-in-a-lifetime treks. Customers can disembark on solo or guided rides right from the shop, gunning for the Arctic Ocean at Prudhoe Bay, exploring the state’s wild and remote interior, or waiting for the sun to ebb late in the season for a chance to glimpse the aurora borealis, all accessible thanks to the bike shop on the edge of America.

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Z1R.COM

G A R AG E

ANSWERS

SLIP-ON SWAP A R I

Q: I recently installed a slip-on exhaust on my 2016 Suzuki GSX-R1000. Because I figured performance gains would be small, I didn’t want to spend the money on a new pipe. I found a crashed Yoshimura for $80 for a different bike, took it apart, and started bashing out the metal. Then I found out that Yoshimura makes a repacking kit for $40 that comes with rivets, straps, and a brand-new badge. So, how important is it to get the exact slip-on that’s listed for your bike? So long as the brackets line up and the pipe fits, can you interchange years and bike brands?

Fred Astaire / Tucker, GA

H E N N I N G

A: That thing was pretty hammered, Fred, nice work bringing it back to life! Pipe builders design exhausts for specific bikes, and features like pipe length, diameter, and the shape/ length/angle of the coupling all affect engine performance, but it’s highly unlikely that a mismatched muffler is going to have any impact on the way your engine runs. Most modern motorcycles do the majority of their muffling and pressuretuning upstream of the muffler anyway, so you’re in the clear.

Got a question you want answered?

Send it to mcmail@bonniercorp.com

FRED ASTAIRE

B Y

OCTOBER 2-6

ride-in shows • stunts shows live music • food • vendors bike-build off • giveaways FREE to the public

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B E L L M O N T, A Z

G A R AG E

HOW TO

TIE-DYE YOUR MOTORCYCLE b y

y e l e n a

s o p h i a

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

1. Strip

2. Sand

3. Prep

Take a photograph of your bike before you start pulling it apart. Remove the body panels that you want to paint and organize them from small to large.

Confidence in your painting technique will improve as you go.

Using 400- to 500-grit sandpaper and a sanding block, take the glossy, smooth finish of your plastics to a dull matte, and smooth over any abrasions they might have suffered in the course of your riding.

Using an industrial solvent like brake cleaner or paint thinner, give each panel a good scrub. If you encounter any still-glossy surfaces, take the time to do a little more sanding. Good prep is the most important step in the process.

4. Spray

5. Dip

6. Preserve

Fill a plastic tub with lukewarm water, shake your spray cans well, then spray paint over the surface. Splatters and streaks look fantastic. A swizzle stick dragged through your masterpiece can create galaxylike spirals.

Wearing gloves, grab hold of your bodywork from one of its mounting points, then gently dip at a 90-degree angle and roll the panel through paint on the surface of your tub. It’ll adhere instantly, transferring the design.

Allow the paint to dry, then use a sprayed-on clear coat to seal in all your artsy cleverness. Finish-sanding and respraying your clear coat can create a glossy, finished look—and make for plenty of double-takes on your next ride.

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BRENDA WEAVER

Motorcycles have always served as a perfect canvas for personal expression. If your bike is just begging to be experimented with, or even if your plastics just need a freshening up, paint-dipping your motorcycle’s body panels makes for a simple and cheap weekend project guaranteed to produce a unique result.

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D.I.D. chains are implemented within the top ranks of racing competition, and now that same championship-winning technology is available for your motorcycle.

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G A R AG E

T R AC K T I M E

WHEELIE UNIVERSITY

• anyone who’s seen Ari casually loft the front wheel of a motorcycle seems to fall into one of two camps: “I can’t wait to do that” or “I wish I knew how to do that.” If you’re in the latter camp, I sympathize.

Wheelies have a steep learning curve, and they aren’t easy to practice—especially when your survival instinct is to chop the throttle the instant your front wheel starts rising. Wheelie University has a solution.

The school is run by Brian Steeves on a dragstrip in Barona, California. To get you over that first heartpounding hurdle, a tool called the Wheelie Height Controller (WHC) helps you feel what it’s like to gently kiss the sky without the risk of looping and violently eating pavement.

It’s not straight to the track, though. First, students sit on a bike that’s been secured at its balance point to learn body position and to get accustomed to looking past the gauge cluster. Then new wheelie riders will try to attempt to achieve the balance point themselves—in a wheelchair. Never mind any thought of 74 |

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foreshadowing, a rider’s next stop is one of Wheelie University’s Triumph Speed Triples.

Steeves’ focus is on power wheelies: accelerate, cut throttle so the fork dives, and whack the throttle back open as the suspension rebounds upward. The proprietary WHC limits how high the front wheel goes with a combination of digital and mechanical trickery. As you ride, a binocular-equipped Steeves pinpoints your mistakes and identifies fixes with infectious enthusiasm. Once you’re comfortable with the timing, it’s all about keeping the wheel up. Do it consistently and Steeves will adjust the WHC so that riders are able to aim the front wheel of the Triumph further aloft.

Wheelies are a joyous expression of riding aptitude, but this class is about more than mastering a trick. Consider Wheelie University a thoughtful and skills-focused riding clinic: You’ll improve your balance, coordination, throttle modulation, and rearbrake control. All important skills, whether you’re on one wheel or two. —Abhi Eswarappa

NATHAN MAY

Home w or k has ne v er been t his much f un

G A R AG E

WHAT WENT WRONG

MOTO BEACH YARD SALE

Bar banging and left turns on 500-pound street bikes

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THE SCENARIO Nobody was thinking that 500-pound street bikes and slick short tracks don’t mix, but that was the point of the inaugural Moto Beach Classic. Taking place just steps from the sand, the Super Hooligan circus rolled into Huntington Beach sliding their porky modified street bikes around a tiny clay course. Fast forward to the main event, and I was on the back row. Yikes.

THE LESSON Ride faster during practice and qualifying. Like any form of racing, starting on the front row is always best. Pair that positioning with precisely timed gas-clutch coordination, quick reflexes, and of course, a little bit of luck, and you’re at the front with nothing but clear track ahead. Now it’s more difficult for an erratic rider

to knock you down. Be wary, because when you’re in the lead, jitters may run high. Focus on your lines, stay inside, and more often than not, the race will come to you. On the other hand, if you find yourself starting from the back row, keep your eyes up.

• • \ \ So, there we were, sprawled across the ground like Jenga pieces a t t h e e n d o f a p a r t y.

•/ •/ You’ll be able to bob and weave more effectively when you can see what’s ahead. About to collide with a downed bike or rider? Stay light on the front and wheelie over them. It may not always work, but it’s worth a shot. —Adam Waheed

MICHEAL KOELSCH

THE CRASH After hours of waiting and talking smack on a summer afternoon, we finally found ourselves on the starting line, ready to race. Twin-cylinder engines roared, the flag dropped, and clutches released. All 13 of us shot off. Thing is, hunting for that keyhole-size gap for the inside line into the first turn on a big, heavy street bike, things can go wrong in a hurry. You can’t bang bars like you can with a 200-pound dirt bike. When you try, the results always end the same: bikes careen out of control, usually landing atop someone. So, there we were, sprawled across the ground like Jenga pieces at the end of a party. A light ring of the bell here, some bumps and bruises there—for the most part, we escaped unmangled.

G A R AG E

MC TESTED

FUEL SERGEANT SAHARA PANTS One handy pair of pants

STYLISH , COMFORTABLE GEAR can make the difference between leaving your bike in the shed and gambling against the rain clouds for a better ride to work.

Such is the case with these pants. Heavy 11.5-ounce cotton twill feels sturdy, and a para-aramid liner backs up the design with real protection. We like the removable CE Level 2 Smooth Ways armor in the hips and knees, as well as the dapper quilting over the thigh. Functional touches like strategic suede panels and the waterproof YKK zipper are nice too—though the latter may be overkill, because unsealed pockets don’t do much to keep water out.

A Heavy cotton, suede, and removable armor work to make a new favorite pair of pants. $325

Accordion panels above the knee and below the rear waist give the pants excellent articulation too. The straightleg cut offers a wide-enough opening to cover most riding boots but can easily be stuffed into tall uppers if you prefer.

Combined, the result is a pair of riding pants that feel great on the bike and off, handsome, well-constructed, and featuring legitimate protection, all without looking like they hail from the year 3000.

Our complaints are minor and hinge on the Velcro closure for the knee armor.

More often than not, it pulls open in a good tuck. The pads stay put well enough, though. Fuel sells the Sergeant pants in black or waxed cotton for 315 euro, but the Sahara color seen here is the cheapest of the bunch, setting you back 275 euro— or about $325. Cheap money for a piece of kit that makes you want to ride all that much more. —Zach Bowman 78 |

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ZACH BOWMAN

fuelmotorcycles.eu

MC TESTED

DUNLOP SPORTMAX Q4

BRIAN J. NELSON

Road-legal tires built for the track

DUNLOP ’S CURRENT SPORTMAX Q 3

and Q3+ tires are good, but they aren’t quite up to par with other options on the market. That’s changed with the all-new Sportmax Q4. Aimed squarely at Pirelli and its racy Diablo Supercorsa SP V2, the Sportmax Q4 levels the playing field by incorporating more track-grade grip and feedback. Available only in America and in big-bike sizes for now, the Q4 borrows features from its competition slick, including Jointless Tread Technology—a manufacturing process in which rubber is printed in bands around the tire’s carcass. A new, uniform compound solution performs in a wider range of temperatures, especially in sweltering, knee-puck-melting conditions.

Since it’s a pure performance trackday option, tread is few and far between. Like the rest of the Dunlop Sportmax family, warm-up time is nearly instantaneous.

Big D’s shoes have a pleasing contour, and the taller 200/60-section rear made

our YZF-R1 handle almost as nimbly as an R6. Edge grip is great, but not quite as solid as the Supercorsa SP V2. But what the Q4 misses in grip, it makes up for in rider feedback. Simply put, there isn’t a street tire that’s more communicative or that allows a rider to flirt as aggressively with the astounding cornering performance of a modern-day superbike. Power slides are easier to control, and the front hoop has just the right amount of flex for deep-trail braking. If you’re the kind of rider who values feel over everything, you’ve found your next sport tire. —Adam Waheed

A Developed for sport riders seeking the utmost in road feel and handling feedback. $201.27–$358.86 dunlopmotorcycletires.com

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G A R AG E

MC TESTED

ROBERTSON’S BOOK OF FIRSTS Who did what for the first time

across the line. Finding a boundary and crossing it, whether it’s mechanical (the first escalator, p. 178) or personal (the first Medals of Honor, p. 286). As we humans

A A guide to limits pushed past. $20/Hardcover

continually ascend and improve, real frontiers grow ever more rare.

Having a catalog of boundaries crossed and conquered by others on your coffee table or tucked among your shop manuals is as fine an incentive as any to go searching for your own. —Chris Cantle

CLEANER. SMOOTHER. LONGER.

JEFF ALLEN

ROBERTSON ’S BOOK OF FIRSTS is an endlessly digestible reference, a long, alphabetical list of accomplishments that takes pleasure in bawdy tangents. Motorcycles, naturally, get a mention. We learn that among the first American motorcycles were the inventions of E.S. Pennington, “a somewhat dubious character,” who made wild claims of his machines, took orders in quantity and failed to fill them, then disposed of his patents for an outrageous sum. A note on the first American motorcycle fatality sits conveniently adjacent to one of the first motor hearses.

But Robertson’s Book of Firsts isn’t about riding. It’s not about achievement either, really. It’s about innovation. Being the first

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RACER RESURRECTION

A Suzuki GS1000 Superbike finds its way home—and back to the racetrack

BY MATTHEW MILES

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JAY WATSON

T

had Wolff was a wheelie-popping teen like many other American kids in the early 1970s when he met Japanese emigrants Hideo “Pops” Yoshimura, his son Fujio, Suehiro Watanabe, and Minoru Matsuzawa. That chance encounter at a Southern California storefront—the nascent Yoshimura Research and Development of America Inc.—changed Wolff’s life forever.

“Yoshimura was just starting with Yvon Duhamel and the Kawasaki Z1,” Wolff recalls. “I was a dirt-bike kid; I had no idea about all this roadracing stuff. When it was time for lunch, they crouched down in a circle, eating fish heads and rice with chopsticks. I was 12 or 13, and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.”

A few years later, Wolff walked into the Cycle magazine editorial offices and asked to speak with the editor, Cook Neilson. “I know you won Daytona, and I think I want to try roadracing. Would you give me some advice?” Neilson tossed an AFM rule book into Wolff’s open hands. “Read this,” he instructed.

“And remember to safety-wire your drain plug.”

Wolff progressed quickly through the club ranks and then won the 1980 AMA 250cc Novice title, which led to a reunion with Matsuzawa. “Matsu had gone off on his own and started Escargot Enterprises of America, a little speed shop in Van Nuys. We went to Riverside Raceway for a private test with his Suzuki GS1000, and I went pretty doggone fast.”

Matsuzawa and Wolff made a plan to contest the ’81 AMA nationals. Suzuki’s American subsidiary—known at that time as US Suzuki Motor Corp.—agreed to help, Yoshimura chipped in with cams and pistons and other engine parts, and Matsuzawa built the first-year GS1000 that Wolff tested at Riverside into a fullblown Superbike.

Matsuzawa had another surprise for his new rider. “We drove to Suzuki and went around back to the shop,” Wolff recalls. “The Japanese in their suits and ties rolled up the door, and 84 |

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there sat an RG500 with a big spares kit for us. So, I went from 250cc novice on a Yamaha TZ250 one season to an AMA Superbike and Formula One the next—a real trial by fire.”

Matsuzawa and Wolff campaigned both classes for two years. “The next season, 1982, was the pinnacle for Superbike,” Wolff says. “Freddie Spencer, Eddie Lawson, Wayne Rainey, Mike Baldwin, Wes Cooley, David Aldana, Steve Wise, and Roberto Pietri were all racing that class, and I finished sixth. F1 was technically the premier class, and I was fourth on the RG500.

“There couldn’t have been two more different motorcycles. The RG500 was faster than stock but harder to ride. I was constantly bouncing from one bike to the other. Sometimes I had to talk to Matsu about the first session after the second session. If I had concentrated on just one machine, I probably would have done even better.”

Wolff podiumed at Loudon alongside Rainey and Lawson (“passing Cooley fair and square in the process”), but he never raced another full AMA season. No longer Superbike-legal, the GS1000 met its end at the ’83 Willow Springs 6-Hour when the spun aluminum Mitchell rear wheel failed while Wolff was leading the race. The RG500 was destroyed a couple of weeks later at Road America when Wolff was taken out by a fellow competitor.

I was a dirt-bike kid; I had no idea about all this roadracing stuff.

Once his injuries from the two wrecks healed, Wolff revived his photomodeling/bike-wrangling career that began in ’79 with the help of Cycle

r i g h t Thirty-five years after it was last raced, the Escargot Suzuki GS1000 resurfaced at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca. b e low Thad Wolff spent two AMA Superbike seasons looking through the windscreen of the Minoru “Matsu” Matsuzawa-built inline-four, with a best finish of third at Bryar Motorsports Park in Loudon, New Hampshire.

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Wolff at speed aboard the Escargot GS1000 on the Pocono International Raceway road course, his knees layered in pre-slider duct tape.

The 19-inch magnesium Morris front wheel and 18-inch Mitchell spun aluminum rear wheel originally wore bias-ply Goodyear slicks.

editor Phil Schilling. “My racing career was short and sweet,” he says, “but it led to working not only for magazines but also manufacturers.” (Remember the Honda V45 Interceptor ad, “Bring the world to your knees”? Wolff was featured in that and countless other print and TV campaigns.)

Like so many obsolete racebikes, the GS1000 was put up for sale. “Matsu owned the bike,” Wolff says. “He sold the expensive brakes, but I kept the fairing, fender, gas tank, and custom seat, the 86 |

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only one we ever used. A customer wanted a GS like the one I had raced, so the bike went to that guy. He later died and left it to a mutual friend.

“A couple of years ago, that guy— we called him ‘Freeway’ because he often tested his racebikes on the 10 freeway—called me. ‘Hey, Thad. I’ve got something for you.’ And he gave me the motorcycle. I can’t describe the feeling I had with that motorcycle coming back into my possession. It was very emotional.”

First order of business was to strip off all the parts that weren’t part of the original machine. “I started scrounging around and found the bodywork, seat, and even the front number plate. I had to come up with different brakes and other pieces that were wrong or missing, but I got the bike back to where it is today. It’s not 100 percent original, but most of it is correct.”

Matsuzawa went on to build race engines for Mat Mladin. He was later diagnosed with prostate cancer and died

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in 1999, one race before the Australian won the first of seven Superbike titles with Yoshimura Suzuki. “I thought that Matsu and I were going to grow old together and have all these memories,” Wolff says, “but it wasn’t meant to be.”

Matsuzawa’s spirit is still present in Wolff’s garage in the form of two framed photos. “One is from Pocono in the pits—I always liked that picture of Matsu. In the other, I’m holding up three fingers. That was after we finished third at Loudon.” Wolff taped copies of the photos to the Suzuki’s gas tank for the Classic Bike Revival this past June at Laguna Seca Raceway.

“To work on the bike, to resurrect it to this point, and to be able to jump on it again, looking through that same fairing, sitting on that same seat, and riding it around the racetrack, thinking about the good times with Matsu, all those memories, was an emotional roller coaster. It just blew me away.

“Matsu and I were so close,” Wolff says softly. “We had our highs and lows racing together, but the bond we formed was so special. I joke that I’m reliving the glory days of my youth through this motorcycle. Well, not so much joking because it was a wonderful time in my life, as you can imagine. The only thing missing is Matsu.”

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WE’VE NEVER BEEN EASY ON

THE GEAR WE TEST, WHICH IS PRECISELY WHY YOU CAN TRUST

THE GEAR WE MAKE. INTRODUCING OUTDOOR GEAR DESIGNED WITH THE EDITORS OF

OUTDOORLIFE.COM/GUIDELIFE @OLGUIDELIFE

#GUIDELIFE

G A R AG E

SMART MONEY

TWO-WHEEL EXPERIMENTS Boundary-breaking bikes that won’t break the bank

• playing with the newest motorcycle technology is expensive, but yesterday’s breakthroughs—successful or not—are reasonably priced and are still brilliant to ride.

In 1977, BMW redefined the sporttouring market with the Hans Muthdesigned fairing on the R100RS. It enabled comfortable touring for hours on end at triple-digit speeds and unprecedented weather protection. The 980cc twin was reliable and easy to maintain.

BMW made the usual evolutionary updates until production ended in 1993, but there are a few special versions to look out for.

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First-year bikes are worth a little extra due to year-specific features like silver-blue paint, spoked wheels, blue anodized ATE calipers, and blue pinstriping. The most interesting year of production might be 1984; that’s when BMW announced it was departing from the boxer twin motor that had defined the company for decades. The German firm produced 250 Last Edition examples of the RS, but consumers pushed back and BMW decided to keep the flat twin engine in production, much to the chagrin of Last Edition owners.

In 1988, the RS came back to America with some updates, including a

single-sided swingarm, upgraded Brembo brakes, and an engine tuned for torque at the expense of peak horsepower. Expect to snag a quality rider for $4,000 to $5,000.

RS77s and some limited-edition models can command a 50 percent premium.

While the BMW appealed to riders who wanted smooth, reliable power, Japanese manufacturers were busy chasing the future with a raft of turbo bikes. Kawasaki was the first to enter the game with the Z1R-TC, but it worked and felt like an early effort, and the company built just 500 examples. Regardless, the appeal of forced induction was irresistible. In 1982, Honda released the CX500

The CX500’s exhaust tells you everything you need to know.

Yamaha’s Omega chassis was named for its resemblance to the Greek letter.

The internal designation of the Hawk was RC-31, a very significant prefix within Honda.

Turbo with the promise of heavyweight power in a middleweight package.

Like the Kawasaki, the Honda had teething issues, and it was replaced by the entirely new CX650 Turbo after just a year. Still, it was an impressive technological package that featured liquid-cooling, a TRAC anti-dive front end, Pro-Link rear suspension, and Honda’s first use of fuel injection. It also boasted an IHI-built turbo that provided peak boost of 19 psi and nearly doubled the 497cc V-twin’s horsepower. Honda built just 2,833 examples, and their sparsity means prices are all over the place. With some patience, you should be able to find a lowmileage example for around $4,000.

Other manufacturers focused their efforts on controlling the power they already had. Telescopic forks have long been the standard, but manufacturers have experimented with “funny front ends” (FFEs) for decades. The definitive modern effort is the Bimota Tesi, but you can get a much cheaper taste of the FFE life with the 1993 Yamaha GTS1000 sport-tourer. It boasted ABS, fuel injection, and an engine plucked from the FJR1000. The James Parker-designed RADD front suspension, though, is the star of the show. The design isolated braking from damping, which was meant to increase the performance of both.

Unfortunately, the design was expensive, and consumers weren’t ready for it.

The bike was a commercial flop and only lasted through 1994 stateside, though it sold for a few more years outside of the United States. Current owners are very passionate and have developed communities to keep these machines alive.

Parts are still available for the front end, and the rest of the bike is straightforward enough. They don’t come up for sale often, and when they do, you’ll need between $5,000 and $6,000.

Sometimes a motorcycle isn’t about one defining feature. The Honda NT650, or Hawk GT, was a sweetheart of a machine that debuted a decade ahead of its time. It was gifted the internal designation of RC-31—which references HRC, or Honda Racing Corp.—and it earned that designation with trick features like a single-sided swingarm designed by Elf Racing, a Pro-Link monoshock, and a twin-beam aluminum frame. —Abhi Eswarappa motorcyclistonline

. c o m | 91

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MEGAPHONE

UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE

Communication through a love of combustion

• i was focused on entropy. On the spasm of the universe that caused the voltage regulator in my ’86 Yamaha Radian to retire from the perfectly timed symphony between my shins. I was trying not to think about how far I was from civilization. Or how tenuous my access to a tow truck was. Or the 480th straight hour of pouring rain.

Geert, a hirsute Dutchman I’d met at a hostel, was focused on the problem too, but his interpretation had to be thought through in his native tongue, translated, and repeated to me in his not-quite-there-yet English.

“It is maybe the bougie. The, ahh…”

aa r o n

r i c h a r d s o n

He stuck out one index finger and tapped with the other.

“Spark plug?”

“Yes! This is how it is called.”

We were wrong in our assumptions but used the same back-and-forth to get to the root of the matter. The stator, never one to leave a buddy behind, had followed the voltage regulator to its death.

The universal truth that fuel, air, and spark make a bang dissolved the linguistic boundaries between two men on a wet road in the middle of nowhere, Nova Scotia, because the lessons of internal combustion are our common tongue.

Anyone who rides, who has stared at a lifeless machine, who has cursed and failed their way back to idle, has been taught by the same stern teacher.

The tricks required to coax a stubborn bolt from its bore or sweeten an air-fuel ratio to a proper burn are the same in Indiana as they are in Tibet.

The recipe for the combustion that pushes us along the tree-lined roads of our lives is a road map for communication—as universal as medicine, dance, sex, or calculus. So long as two people know the basic steps, they needn’t share a single syllable.

Even when the bougie won’t boogie.

MOTORCYCLIST (ISSN 0027-2205, USPS 517-970), September/October 2018, issue No. 1805, is published 6 times per year in January/February, March/April, May/June, July/August, September/October, November/ December by Bonnier Corp., 2 Park Ave., New York, NY 10016. Periodical postage paid at New York, NY and additional mailing offices. Copyright 2018 by Bonnier Corp. All rights reserved. Reprinting in whole or part is forbidden except by permission of Bonnier Corp. Mailing List: Occasionally, we make a portion of our subscriber list available to carefully screened companies that offer products and services we think might be of interest to you. If you do not want to receive these offers, please advise us at (515) 237-3697. POSTMASTER: Send all address changes and all UAA to CFS, NON-POSTAL and MILITARY FACILITIES: to MOTORCYCLIST, PO Box 6364, Harlan, IA 51593-1864. Subscription rates: $18 for 1 year. Please add $12 per year for Canadian addresses and $24 per year for all other international addresses. Canada Post Publication agreement # 40612608. Canada Return Mail: IMEX, PO Box 25542, London, ON N6C 6B2, Canada.

98 |

september

|

o c to b e r 2018

RYAN INZANA

by

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