MotoBrief

Discovery Turbo has launched Twist the Throttle. It’s awesome stuff. There’s more than four hours of video here as father/son team Milt and Dylan Weiss explore eight famous motorcycle brands.

The show looks inside each marque, covering its history, looking at how the bikes are designed and built, and then taking them for rides in some awe-inspiring locations. The high-definition video looks gorgeous and the Weiss’ commentary is spot on. I love this show.

Given the bad rap that motorcyclists sometimes get, it’s nice when a state makes an effort to invite riders to visit. The Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism has a section of its website devoted to motorcycling in the state.

The site provides some video, suggests some places to ride and points out some hot spots and rallies for motorcycles. There are even some safety tips for riding in Arkansas, which is apparently “The Natural State.” (As opposed to all the artificial states.) There’s a brochure available for download and even an email newsletter you can sign up for that’s specifically about motorcycling in the state.

Talk about rolling out the red carpet. Thanks, Arkansas.

Richard Foster has posted a fantastic ride report in the BMW Bikers of Metropolitan Washington forums.

Foster authored a short story that appeared in a 1973 issue of Road & Track. That story was Neil Peart’s inspiration for the song “Red Barchetta” from the 1981 Rush album Moving Pictures. Peart couldn’t locate Foster at the time and simply included a credit to Richard Foster’s story in the liner notes.

Foster didn’t learn of the connection until the mid-90s. In 2006 he read Peart’s book, Ghost Rider, about his travels on his BMW GS. I’ve meant to read this for years; by all accounts, it’s an incredibly moving story about Peart’s efforts to cope with the loss of both his daughter and his wife in the space of one year.

After exchanging some letters and emails, Foster and Peart finally met and took a ride through West Virginia — more than 33 years after Foster the grad student mailed off his short story to Road & Track. Foster’s write-up of the trip is just great; be sure to take a look.

I love the way motorcycling brings people together. It’s possible that Foster and Peart would have met anyway, but unlikely that Foster would have spent two days with the legendary drummer if it weren’t for their shared love of motorcycles.

I guess Forbes Traveler is trying to be edgy. In between articles on first class travel to India and luxury beach destinations, they’ve put together a piece on America’s greatest motorcycling roads. The rides were compiled from recommendations from their expert panel and they do a pretty good job of representing America. Predictable favorites like Deal’s Gap are there but you’ll also find some obscure choices like a 410-mile cruise across the high plains from Trinidad, CO to Kansas.

The high plains route came from Peter Jones, whom Forbes Traveler calls a “writer/freelance journalist for Biking Pubs.” I’ve never heard of Biking Pubs; is this shorthand for “biking publications” that someone at Forbes thought referred to a motorcycling magazine?

Anyway, I’d like to try Jones’s route, which the article claims “all makes sense when you look at the map.” Unfortunately, they didn’t include the map. In fact, the entire article on famous motorcycling routes doesn’t include a single map.

I hate their website, too. Bleh. Still, the article’s worth a read since it’s the only place that describes Jones’s route; if the high plains route doesn’t thrill you, you can go directly to the slideshow and browse all ten of the rides.

It’s worth a look, even if the article was bungled by stuffy big media types.

The Long Way Down team has arrived in Africa and the challenges have started. In this latest update Russ Malkin describes some of the problems they had with Customs in Tunisia.

Heads up for Mac users — the BBC video isn’t very Mac-friendly. I can’t watch it in Firefox or Safari, despite having the Flip4Mac Windows Media plugin. Grrrr.

The BBC has a Long Way Down site with video, photos and journals from the trip. The journals aren’t current — right now, they contain one entry each from May 5 — but I’m hoping that they get updated soon and we can all follow along on the way to Cape Town. Their proposed route is shown and looks pretty exciting. I wish them luck.

A UK Honda Trail Bike forum thread says that Charlie and Ewan have started their new motorcycle adventure, The Long Way Down. Following up on their round the world trip chronicled in The Long Way Round television series and book, this time they’re riding from John O’Groats, Scotland to Cape Town, South Africa.

I loved the Long Way Round and have mentioned Boorman’s Race to Dakar series in the past. I can’t wait for this show to air.