This article was originally printed in the Moto Guzzi National Owners Club monthly newsletter. http://www.mgnoc.com
I no longer do long distance motorcycle trips, but I have done quite a lot of that when I was a bit younger. It was fun to ride to far away places, but I finally got to the point where weather extremes bothered me. I don't know why it was my luck, but too many times I would end up riding in drowning rain, freezing temperatures or triple digit heat, or maybe all of that on the same motorcycle trip. Now I ride shorter distances and even then I am selective about the weather when I do that. Still, I enjoy hearing about others who do long distance trips on their sickles. Recently I learned about an old friend's latest long distance motorcycle tour.
Old Duane is near his 70th birthday, but he does stay up to date. After so many years of sickle trips to places across the nation on his '48 tank shifter, kick starting antique, he went modern and bought a later model with foot shift lever, electric starter and real brakes. Just in case he needs it, he kept the old one. He knows he can depend on that one, but he is not so sure about later models.
For this most recent trip he planned to ride to Alaska from his home in New York state, not so far from Canada. One of his old friends rides a '47 Indian Chief and he decided to go on this trip with Duane. For this trip he went modern too and used a later model sickle with those new goodies like Duane's newer one. As it turned out he probably wished he had made this trip on his Indian because it is dependable, but the newer one he bought was not so trouble free as he found out on this trip.
Sometimes when Duane is on a sickle trip, I receive a postcard from him. I heard from him this trip several times while he was enroute to Alaska. I was a little surprised to receive one of his postcards from Montana, but the next one came from Anchorage, so they did fine on their way to Alaska.
Yesterday I received a letter from him after he was back home in the Empire State. He said the trip was six weeks long and they returned through the Texas Panhandle, but did finally get back home. He also sent a book he bought while in Alaska, MOOSE DROPPING & OTHER CRIMES AGAINST NATURE, funny stories from Alaska.
So as you can see, I am not missing out on the thrills of long distance sickle trips and I did not have to dodge moose droppings while in Alaska.