Motorcycle Dream Garages

Motorcycle Dream Garages

by Lee Klancher

Published by Motorbooks International

ISBN-13: 978-0-7603-3550-5

$35.00 Hardcover, 9.25 x 10.87”

192 pages, 213 color photos

 

Reviewed by Ken Aiken

        Every motorcyclist has a dream garage, that list of bikes desired to be owned or ridden and a special space in which to park them that doesn’t take second place to family or four-wheel transportation. The dream garage might have every tool needed to repair, restore, or custom build any motorcycle in existence. It could have showcases and wall spaces for rare memorabilia and racks to hold gear for any possible riding scenario. In any case, it would be unique, an extension of your own personality and passion.

         Lee Klancher has found and photographed 17 very real dream garages. Some these, like Jay Leno’s Big Dog Garage, are well known while others, such as one Hollywood garage that includes a MTT Superbike powered by a Rolls-Royce Allison gas turbine engine and a V-Max concept bike designed by Tim Cameron and built by Christian Travert, are understandably anonymous. Regardless whether these garages are famous or practically unheard of, publicly accessible or kept on a need-to-know basis, house the rarest bikes on the planet or people’s favorite rides, all 17 of these are quite different in style and scope.

        There are dozens of luscious machines featured in this book, but unlike so many coffee-table volumes this one focuses on the spaces that house motorcycles and the individuals who created these mechanical refuges. There’s a bit of inspiration, no matter how modest, to be found on these 192 pages and among the 213 color photos in Kancher’s book.

Dreaming of Jupiter

Dreaming of Jupiter

By Ted Simon

Published by Jupitalia Productions, 2008

ISBN 978-0-9654785-4-0

24.95 softcover, 429 pages, 5.5 x 8.5 inches

Reviewed by Ken Aiken

Ted Simon is “Jupiter.”  His first book, “Jupiter’s Travels” came out in 1978 and inspired many riders to throw caution to the wind and set out on “round-the-world” motorcycle tours. He certainly was not the first to do so, but his book definitely inspired my generation of long-distance motorcycle touring enthusiasts. But that was then, and decades have passed since the 42-year-old rider mounted up for a four-year, 78,000-mile, exploratory ride of our planet.

Fast forward to January of 2001. The rider is now 69-years old and plans to follow the same path taken so many years ago. The world has changed—especially in the wake of 9/11--but in which direction and to what extent?  This is a journey filled with questions, not only of how the world has changed, but also of the rider’s own sense of whom he really is and even his purpose for doing such.

Four hundred and twenty-nine pages are not sufficient to relate the experience of a three-year, 59,000-mile journey across five continents. Nor are they extensive enough to compare this journey with that of an earlier one. It would take a truly great writer to invoke the spirit of “Jupiter” in the Ted Simon who made the second journey and in this he understandably falls short. The book has its literary shortcomings, but there can be no criticism of a man who made such a journey, not once, but twice. This book is subjective, yet very much “real world” – it’s not an adventure novel. It’s one man’s account of one man’s experience weighed in reflection of one man’s life.

Having said all this, I must confess that my frustration with this book is that it doesn’t provide more. The planet is changing and I’m growing older and Simon wrestles with both during this epic journey. This story is also about relationships and, like ripples from a stone thrown into slow-moving water, actions can influence people one has never met. On these pages are examples of the generosity of both strangers and friends; there are also those of pettiness and corruption. The book provides social and political perspectives that U.S. policy makers would prefer we not be aware of, but the author has no political agenda or religious dogma to espouse.

“I thought I might have stumbled on the most beautiful road in the world . . . a brand-new highway, in perfect condition, was not to be sniffed at when it meant that I could take my eyes off the road in confidence and dwell on the beauty around me.”  This was the route that Simon took into the highlands of Peru. More prevalent were roads of deep sand, slippery mud, and corrugated, pot-holed and rock-filled gravel. In many places it was difficult for him to determine whether a track was the correct highway or a goat path.

Ted’s journey included a number of spills and a couple of injuries; impromptu repairs to his bike in the most unlikely of places; falling in love and trying to build a relationship while on the road; finding old friends and making new ones; and everything short of being thrown in jail or kidnapped. Sometimes he lingers on a subject that’s not very interesting; sometimes he briefly mentions an experience that I would prefer he expounded upon. Still, there’s a palatable honesty to his story that strips away the romance and transforms it into a practical anyone-could-do-this account.

That fact that the author is able to make comparisons between the mid-1970’s and a quarter of a century later makes the book different from the accounts of other round-the-world travelers. This makes it more than just another motorcycle adventure, and those who wonder about the state of our planet—whether they ride or not—will find this to be a worthy read.

Around The World On A Motorcycle

Around The World On A Motorcycle: 1928 to 1936

By Zoltán Sulkowky

Published by Whitehorse Press

Hardcover, 410 pages

ISBN 978-1-884313-77-6

$29.95

Reviewed by Ken Aiken

“This book was not written by a scholar. Neither did I set out on my adventurous journey after thorough scientific preparations or precise planning. What I did pack in my proverbial rucksack was an intense desire to see and to learn, and a healthy helping of determination. . . . My determination, hard work, and a well-chosen vehicle, the motorcycle, carried me not only to railroad junctions and busy seaports, but also off the ‘ridden’ path, hummed its way into the real lives of real people, into isolated villages, forest, and untried mountains. . . .‘Traveling around the world no longer means what it meant a few decades ago, however, wandering around the highways and byway of the world for eight years straight remains a daring accomplishment. It would be that very few cyclists or other species of travelers would be up for such a trek, and the difficulties of the venture are underscored by the fact that nobody before us ever undertook a similar journey.”  – Zoltán Sulkowky, November 1937

Mounted on a 1922 Model J Harley-Davidson with an oversized sidecar, Zoltán Sulkowky and his friend Gyula Bartha spent seven years traveling through 68 countries on six continents. Along the way they met some of the notables of their time--Mussolini, General Chiang Kai-shek, Prime Minister Hamaguchi, Greta Garbo, and Charlie Chaplin—experienced the last of “colonialism,” ventured to places where people had never seen a motor vehicle, and documented a slice of the world that we now call history. There are a number of “round-the-world” motorcycle-touring books, but this was the first one. Originally published in Hungary in 1937, this 2008 edition is the first time it has been translated into English and contains B&W photos from the original printing.

Obviously the world has changed during the past 70 years, but some of Sulkowky’s words seem timeless. “I am entirely familiar with the mechanisms of the motorcycle, down to its nuts and bolts. I had learned the names of all the parts while still in college, I knew rpms and pistons, but I had no idea what to do then the engine shut down.”  He continues, “And so we consulted our book, troubleshooting systematically, part by part and line by line, and still, we found nothing out of the ordinary. Then we gave the bike a push, desperately: nothing.”  In the end the travelers discover that they hadn’t turned the ignition key to the on position. Such confessions make them seem real and identifiable as neophytes setting out on a journey that wasn’t really planned.

This epic journey was taken at the silent cusp of modern world history. These intrepid travelers left Europe just prior to The Great Depression and returned to Hungary on the eve of World War II. They witnessed the final chapter of colonialism and the last vestiges of tribal culture. They observed Jews trying to build a state in Palestine, were in India during Gandhi’s activism, and rode through China when civil war first erupted between the communists and Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalists. Sulkowky describes environmental ravaging through the eyes of an educated man of that era and his keen observations regarding the status of women, colonial rule, the caste system, tourist sites, prices, food, weather, and religious practices of various cultures makes this far more than just another motorcycle adventure story.

Above and beyond the author’s eye-witness account of the world, the central story is about motorcycling and their adventures make modern RTW travelers’ exploits look like a trip to Club Med. “Nobody traveled on wheels [in Turkey], and nobody was able to give us any directions worth following. We weren’t even sure of the direction in which to get started.” They plowed through desert sands, balanced on railway tracks over raging rivers, were towed by buffalo through rice paddies, built roads over mountains, and even dismantled the Harley and its sidecar to cross countless rivers in small boats. “Passing through towns [in Korea] we always stocked up on various logs and boards, which we then used to build impromptu bridges, sometimes working for hours at a single site.”  Maps were often useless, some languages incomprehensible, and many locals had no idea of lay beyond the immediate vicinity of their remote villages. However the journey was not all struggle and adversity. “A road ran through this primeval wilderness [in Java] To our right and to our left lay hundreds of kilometers of mysterious lush vegetation, and yet, we had the great fortune of traveling along some of the best roads we had encountered, smooth paved road of asphalt and bitumen, straight as the flight of an arrow, without the smallest bump or hindrance. . . . What extraordinary countryside and what an extraordinary road!”

This amazing tale was published in Hungary and so the author’s frequently inclusions regarding Hungarians met during their journey are excusable. The fact that he was able to condense this story to a mere 408 pages is commendable for a diarist who dutifully kept notes, wrote articles for newspapers, and collected botanical and mineralogical specimens that were sent back to European museums. So much was left out, yet what remains offers fascinating reading. My only disappointment with this book is with the quality of the published photos, which was reduced by printing them on the same pages as the text. Image clarity would have been enhanced if they had been printed on high-quality glossy paper and placed as center pages in the book. Still, I consider this to be one of the best RTW accounts in my library and can only wonder why it took 70 years for it to be translated into English.