Well, a very ordinary guy. I just happen to ride motorcycles and that's my passion (with my wife and kids of course but they're not the topic of this blog). I've been doing it for the last 23 years on mostly BMW and Triumph (Beemers and Trumpets for those in the know). I also have an old (1980) Moto Guzzi le Mans II that I bought last year in Massachusetts and that I love (but not to the point of riding it across the States). I'll post a photo of it later.
I started riding motorcycles when I was 22, thanks to my friend Etienne. He doesn't ride anymore but I am still eternally grateful to him. We did together a wonderful trip in 1988 to the "Elefanttreffen" in Austria, riding through the Alps in winter on the Deutscher Alpenstrasse. One of my best trip but boy it was cold !!! I had a BMW K100 at the time and he had a BMW R8OST (I bought this bike from him later and still have it, stored in France).
Then I rode the Alps again in 1988 with my friend Alain on my K75 with him on a BMW R100/7 (gorgeous bike, I wish he still had it). It was June and it never stopped raining !!! We then did the Pyrénées in 1989.
In 1990 I rode a 1987 Triumph Bonneville (one of the last produced at the now defunct Meriden factory) ) to Boden in the north of Sweden to Stockholm where I lived at the time. About 400 hundred miles. The beast was vibrating so much that it disloged a tooth filing. I later killed that bike trying to ride it back from Stockholm to Paris. The engine seized near Malmö in the south of Sweden and I finished the trip on a train and the bike on a truck.
I then had from 1992 to 1996 the "new" Triumph models built at the new Hinckley factory (a Trident 750cc and then a 900cc) in France and Belgium where I moved in 1993. I bought them new to support the rebirth of this old and famous English marque and I am glad I did. They are now flourishing and giving BMW and the Japanese a run for their money. I travelled to Alsace, Germany and Luxembourg and did a trip to the UK as well with my soon to be wife Elizabeth as pillion. An old Englishman told us in Gladstonbury that we were "handsome bikers" and an old lady enquired in Salisbury whether "we had any money" to stay in a B&B, seemingly implying that one would only ride motorcycles if broke. I love England (and Scotland, and Wales and Ireland, by the way). Elizabeth doesn't ride with me anymore now we have two little boys.
We moved to New York in 1997 and I had to spend three "dry" years without a motorcycle (very hard, indeed). I rented one once (A R100R) to travel to the Catskills and hit (and killed) a deer on the way back. Elizabeth was with me and we did not crash but that's still the biggest scare of my life (and her's as well I guess...). I foreseewild life as the biggest danger during the coming trip but there is nothing much you can do about it, just be aware and cautious.
We moved to Washington in 2000 and I bought a BMW F650. Very nice bike but I was already planning this big trip across the U.S. and it would have been too small and underpowered to take it (though a lot of Chain Gangers would disagree...). So in 2002 I sold it (*) to buy the Sprint ST secondhand with 9K miles on it (in Lynchburg, Viriginia). It's by far the best motorcycle I've ever owned. Fast, comfortable and altogether very nimble. The engine is an vertical three (cylinders) which is an absolute dream, smooth and powerful with a nice roar.
I rode it back from Waco (Texas) to Washington in September 2003. That's the biggest trip I ever took until now in the U.S. (1,800 miles in four days). I seldom ride on highways and Interstates and wear my rubber (tires) on backroads. They're empty, beautiful and this is how you get to meet the "real America" and its people. A very nice bunch I must say.
I'll take the trip in September with a friend, Steve, that I've met in Waco. He will be riding a Ducati ST4s which belongs to his wife Celia. I'll ride down alone from Washington to Waco between the 1st and the 4th and then we'll go on together to New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado and back to New Mexico and Texas. I'll then ride back by myself to Chincoteague on the Atlantic coast where I plan to meet Elizabeth and the kids for a weekend rest before going back to work. That's the plan anyway.
Oh, one last thing. "English is not the tongue of my mother" as the mayor of Brussels used to say (it's actually my father's mother tongue because his mother was a Scot). Anyway, I grew up speaking mostly French, so please don't take ombrage of mistakes and mispellings.
(*) The funny twist is that a colleague of mine at work wanted to buy a motorcycle to commute and ended up buying back the BMW650ST. He lives basically next door so I rode it again with great pleasure.
