#trip

Does Kevin Cameron still have to change tires? I mean, riding your choice of the latest bikes to Laguna Seca for World Superbike weekend, followed by a Pirelli-sponsored track day Monday, is a dream come true for any motorcycle person, but maybe you don’t want to see how the MO sausage is made. Pirelli wanted us to mount up its new Supercorsa TD (Track Day) tires ahead of time, and they drop-shipped me two sets. Two sets because when Troy couldn’t make the ride this year, I volunteered my son Ryan to ride the Ducati Supersport in his place. Ryan was, to say the least, excited.

I’ve been writing about motorcycles for over 20 years, and while riding the bikes we test is a huge part of my job, there have only been a handful of times that I’ve been given the opportunity to put together extended multi-day rides. Even rarer are the chances to spend that time riding solo – an activity I find good for the moto-soul. So, you can imagine my surprise when both Honda and my boss gave me the okay on my long-shot pitch to ride the 2018 Honda Gold Wing Tour from Austin, TX, back to Los Angeles. They called my bluff, and I suddenly found myself with a Gold Wing Tour, four days, and as many miles as I could cram into the adventure. A direct path home would be around 1,400 miles of freeway droning – not a recipe for much fun. And riding motorcycles is all about fun, right?

If someone told me that the best sport riding in the West was going to be in Idaho, I would have laughed, called them crazy, and booked my ticket to Colorado. Yes, the scenery in some of the other states will attract attention with Facebook posts showing pictures of incredible twisting roads scaling epic mountains, but this trip is for true riders, not just bragging rights between friends. This is for the kind of riders who would rather get after it on a racetrack with a blurred desert than look over a cliff on a weather-beaten switchback while the bike strains for air at 12,000 feet.