I always try to motorcycle on the “road less traveled” whenever possible, so here are some scenes from another of those wonderful roads. It’s such a joy having such vistas pretty much to myself, without a sea of RVs, trucks, and cars all around me. This narrow, winding, seldom used, 9,655 foot high, snowy mountain pass is on Highway 31, between Fairview and Huntington in the Manti-La Sal National Forest in central Utah. The song for the video is “Snow” from the CD “Eventide” by Grey Eye Glances.

Here’s another of the national parks I motorcycled through on a recent trip around the Southwest. This national park has always been my favorite for seeing arches, natural caves, and huge monolithic stone spires, so I wanted to share it with you. It’s difficult to fully grasp the enormity of how many millennia it took for erosion and weather to create these amazing works of art. On a side topic, non-motorcycling friends have asked me over my 40 years of motorcycling why I SO much prefer to travel by motorcycle versus inside my 4 wheeled vehicles. I was really happy when a friend recently sent me the internet link to a great article by a motorcyclist that states the many “whys”. I’ve made this article website one of my browser favorites for the next time somebody asks me “why?” :) Here is a great quote from the article: “No longer isolated, huddled behind a wheel disconnected from nature, motorcycles bring you into the world at large. It's Lawrence of Arabia in Cinerama versus a daguerreotype of a camel.” http://editorial.autos.msn.com/article.aspx?cp-documentid=518431&topart=pickups The song for this video is “Come Along” by Titiyo. I had never heard of this musical artist until today. I found out about her via a serendipity moment, by listening to one of her songs that happened to be on the MySpace page of a person who had linked to one of my videos, and since I enjoyed that song, I went onto iTunes to listen to more of her interesting music, and I found this song which I really liked for this video project.

Yosemite is my favorite National Park, and I’ve probably now been there over sixty times in my life, and I never tire of the beauty of the scenery there, so when I was motorcycling from the San Francisco Bay Area eastward on my recent trip around the Southwest, it was a no brainer type decision for me that I’d go through Yosemite once again, and take Tioga Pass Road over the summit, and on down to Lee Vining at Mono Lake, California. Tioga Pass Road had only recently been cleared of winter snow and opened for traffic again, so it was great seeing all the snow and seasonal waterfalls beside the road. The song choice is “Gravity” by Alison Krauss and Union Station, which I relate to really well, ‘cause I’ve had wanderlust all my life, and have always wanted to know what was over the next mountain, or around the next bend in the road.

I always enjoy visiting the Grand Canyon. You can never truly grasp the enormity and vastness of the vistas before your eyes when you’re there, because you lose ALL sense of scale, nor can you truly comprehend that the oldest rocks within the Inner Gorge at the bottom of Grand Canyon date back to almost two billion years ago. The song for the video is Jimmy Buffett’s “Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On”. I really like the life message within the lyrics: “I bought a cheap watch from the crazy man Floating down Canal It doesn’t use numbers or moving hands It always just says "now" . . . “Now you may be thinking that I was had But this watch is never wrong And if I had trouble the warranty said: Breathe in, breathe out, move on . . . “According to my watch, the time is now The past is dead and gone Don't try to shake it, just nod your head Breathe in, breathe out, move on . . . “Don’t try to explain it, just bow your head Breathe in, Breathe Out, Move on....”

Here are some more video clips taken along Pacific Coast Highway during my recent motorcycle trip around the Southwest. One of the areas shown in the video is the “Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreation Area”. I believe this is the only place left in California where you can still legally drive your vehicles on the beach. The speed limit on the beach THESE days is an OH so boring 15 miles per hour, but, BUT in the early 1970s when I went to a nearby university (and BEFORE!!!! all the annoying “Do” and “Don’t” regulations popped up at this beach!!), I had this fantastic beach pretty much to myself on most days, and I spent a lot of time there, racing my motorcycle at 70 mph through the sand at the surf line, with sand and water flying out from under the speeding tires, as I zigzagged in and out, just BARELY avoiding all the incoming waves. It was SO . . . MUCH . . . FUN!!! I would of course have gone FASTER than 70 mph, but that’s as fast as my hard working first motorcycle would GO! LOL The song choice is “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes” by Jimmy Buffett, which has the GREAT classic line: “If we couldn’t laugh. . . we would ALL go insane.”

Here are some scenes from my favorite stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway, in California, which is the dramatic, rugged, winding, cliff-bound portion running from Morro Bay up to Carmel; this section has, and always will be, a favorite among travelers and particularly among motorcyclists like me, who has been motorcycling this beautiful stretch of highway for 40 years now. The highway is also known as “PCH” and “Highway 1”, and the vistas along this portion of the road are truly breathtaking. As a journalist once wrote: “"Traveling Highway 1 is more than just a scenic drive, it's a pilgrimage, a reconnection to California's history, environment, mythology - its spirit." One of the bridges in the video is the “Bixby Creek Bridge”, constructed in 1932. This bridge has been used in countless TV commercials, movies, and TV shows (like the short-lived 1969 “Then Came Bronson”, about a nomadic guy wandering around the country on his V-Twin motorcycle (GEE, I wonder why I always related so well to THAT old TV show!? LOL)). Here is a good website that talks about the bridge: http://www.pelicannetwork.net/bigsur.bixby.bridge.htm , and a website that talks about “Then Came Bronson” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Then_Came_Bronson The quote at the beginning of the video, is a fragment of a larger poem by Lord Byron. Here is the entire quotation: “There is pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep sea, and music in its roar: I love not man the less, but Nature more, From these our interviews, in which I steal From all I may be, or have been before, To mingle with the Universe, and feel What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.” LORD BYRON, Childe Harold The song for the video is “The Wanderers” by Lacy J. Dalton, from her CD “The Last Wild Place Anthology”.

Here are some of the scenes I saw along Route 66 in Arizona and California, during my recent wonderful motorcycle ride around the Southwest. The video also includes some examples of the Burma Shave ads. Here are a few websites that talk about these famous, highly entertaining ads, which were seemingly EVERYWHERE on the highways “in the old days”: http://www.montgomerycollege.edu/Departments/hpolscrv/mthomas.htm http://www.fiftiesweb.com/burma.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma-Shave http://www.signindustry.com/outdoor/articles/2000-02-15-giveusbackourburmashave.php3 The "Hollow Mountain" store and gas station is actually on a road that's north of Route 66, but it's funky nature fits right in with many of the quirky places on Route 66, so I included it in the video as well. There's an entire store carved into that mountain, with restrooms and storage rooms, etc. The store owner confirmed for me that the rock is a great natural insulator, so they never have to use heat during the winter, and only need air conditioning in the summer because of the heat that the refrigerator cooling units put out. The song for the video is three different versions of “Route 66”, one by Depeche Mode, one by Chuck Berry, and the final version by the Rolling Stones.

This video is dedicated to anybody who loves trains as much as I do, and the video includes various trains I saw and/or rode on durin’ my recent wonderful motorcycle trip around the Southwest. As a kid my family and I rode on trains cross country quite a bit, and the trips were always magical journeys for kids. I particularly loved waking up while it was still dark outside and then gradually watching as the approaching sunlight slowly began to light up the beautiful desert scenes outside the windows :) We also knew that at that point, pancakes in the dining car were going to be served in the not TOO distant future LOL. Trains included in the video are a long freight train along Route 66 in Arizona; two of the Amtrak Coast Starlight trains that often times meet each other in San Luis Obispo, California; the new “FrontRunner” just recently opened between Salt Lake City and Ogden Utah; one of the old locomotives, which is one of the various engines on display at the Ogden Railroad Museum; the Grand Canyon Railway train as it departs Williams, Arizona for Grand Canyon Village at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon (I also have vid footage of the train AT Grand Canyon Village, but this YouTube video is ALREADY 9.5 minutes long so I didn’t add that footage as well! LOL); and finally, the video shows the Sacramento Southern Railroad train that visitors to Old Town Sacramento can ride on. That train is typically pulled by a steam locomotive, but unfortunately that engine is down for repairs at the moment, so the train is pulled by a more modern engine for now. As I get older it’s funny to me that the old “vintage railroad cars” on that train are some of the type I remember riding in as a kid when they were still in service on various railroad lines around the USA, so yeah “Tempus Fugits”!! When I was a kid, in the days before the “safetycrats” destroyed much of the FUN!! of life, I vividly remember being allowed to ride for HOURS at a time on the open platforms of such cars at the rear of the train, as the train raced across the deserts at high speeds. Now on most “new” trains, you can’t even open a window, let alone stand out where you might get hurt if you’re dumb enough not to hold on, and it’s become almost impossible to walk around the inside of modern train cars without finding LOTS of safety warning stickers plastered everywhere, with a seemingly never-ending dissertation of the Dos and Don’ts while you’re on board! I miss the old days, when you still got credit for having a brain and common sense! LOL The song for the video is “Catch That Train” by Billy Ray Hatley and The Show Dogs.

I’m back from another wonderful 3,300 mile, three and a half week motorcycle journey around the Southwest, so here’s the first video from the trip; I hope you like it :) To me, Oatman, Arizona is the most distinctive surviving “old west” town in the Southwest, so I always enjoy motorcycling through it whenever I’m in that part of the country. Oatman is on the famous old Route 66, known as “The Mother Road”, and when the “modern highway” (to ME, “modern highway” translates directly as: “BORRRING!!!” LOL) Interstate 40 was completed, negating the need to travel 63 miles on the narrow winding Route 66 via Oatman, one would THINK that Oatman would have gone the way of many similar small towns along Route 66, and would quietly have died away. The unique character of Oatman, however, has allowed it to continue to be a town frequented by other bikers, RVers, and those wanting to relive the old days via old Route 66. Often times you can still see old Model T Fords, and other vintage cars traveling slowly through town. About 30 minutes after I arrived in Oatman, a bunch of other bikers rumbled into town on their big V-twins, and it turned out they were travelers mainly from England, with some of the bikers also from Sweden and Greece, so they were all part of a tour that was biking the entire length of Route 66, from Chicago to Los Angeles. The mountainous portion of Route 66, with its tight turns and steep dropoffs, from Kingman, Arizona to Oatman was considered so intimidating to “flat landers” during the 1930s and 40s, that many of them would hire locals to drive their cars through that area, rather than attempt it themselves. (As you can imagine, most adrenaline junkie motorcyclists like me LOVE the challenge of that stretch of narrow, mountainous road LOL) One of the fun highlights of Oatman are the wild burros that roam around the town. These burros are the direct descendants of the burros that were used by Gold Miners as pack animals during the Gold Rush days. When the mines dried up, the miners released the burros to roam the arid Southwest. Here’s a website that talks about the burros of Oatman: http://www.oatmangoldroad.com/burros.htm and here’s a website describing the quirky nature of this interesting town: http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/13961 The song for the video is “Run Mustang Run” by Lacy J. Dalton. The song is obviously NOT about burros, but is about the wild mustangs which also inhabit the Southwest along with the burros, but I like the sentiments in the song and how it goes with the video clips, and, at the end of the day, they’re all “equine” :) Here’s one final website link that talks about both the mustangs and the burros: http://www.gatewaytosedona.com/article/id/518/page/1

This is the sequel to “Into The Desert”. After a few days in the heat of the deserts of Southern California and Nevada, I worked my way back towards San Diego, by motorcycling up into the mountains, to ride by Lake Arrowhead, Silverwood Lake, Lake Gregory, and along the beautiful “Rim of the World Drive” to Big Bear Lake. Rim of the World Drive is the two lane Highway 18, located northeast of San Bernardino, and, as I found out, FILLED with OTHER motorcyclists on weekends! It was QUITE a change bein’ around so many other motorcyclists again, after bein’ in the solitude of the deserts on my own. And once I got FURTHER back into civilization, it was even MORE of a change, havin’ to be impacted by damned TRAFFIC LIGHTS again!!, after ridin’ for DAYS without seein’ even ONE of those truly annoying inventions from Hell! LOL I wonder how many YEARS are wasted out of people’s lives by havin’ to sit still at traffic lights? . . . . but I digress LOL . . . On Memorial Day I head out from San Diego again on the motorcycle for a few weeks, and ride up the Pacific Coast Highway to the San Francisco Bay Area, then east through Yosemite National Park, then by Mono Lake and east on the wonderful two old U.S. 50 through Nevada, which is a GREAT motorcycling road that I’ve loved bein’ on many times over the decades. U.S. 50 was part of the old 3,400 mile long Lincoln Highway, which was a famed transcontinental highway, and the first practical automobile road to link the East and West coasts of the United States. The Nevada portion of U.S. 50 is rarely used any more, with most travelers opting to use 4 lane Interstate 80 to the north, which is fine by ME! since they leave U.S. 50 to the bikers and people in enclosed vehicles who have more time on their hands to enjoy the incredible vistas :) :) Once out of Nevada, I’ll wander around Utah and Arizona for a while, then spend a few days in Las Vegas, before headin’ back to San Diego. The song I used for this video is “Let It Ride” by Ryan Adams & The Cardinals.

I just got back from 5 days of motorcycling around the deserts and mountains of Southern California and Nevada, so here’s a video of some of the scenes along the way. The song for the video is America’s great desert song “A Horse With No Name”.

Here’s a sequel to my last video “On The Road Again”, so yeah, different day, different two wheeled vehicle LOL The photos in this video are from one of my typical 20 mile bicycle rides around Pacific Beach, Mission Beach, and Mission Bay in San Diego, California early in the mornin’ when things are still fairly deserted except for us exercise nuts LOL. The song I used for the video is “Dreadlock Holiday” by 10cc.

Here are some of the photos I took Monday and Tuesday on a 540 mile motorcycle ride on the desert and mountain backroads in Southern California. The route generally circled Salton Sea, with side trips to places like Palm Desert, Palm Springs, Indio, and Calexico. I’ve been motorcycling for almost 40 years, and it’s by far my favorite way to travel around the country, so shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that most of these photos include my current motorcycle LOL At one of the places I stopped to take a break, I met a Sheriff Sergeant who told me about a REALLY unusual area known as “Slab City” (which includes something called “Salvation Mountain”). Slab City is an area outside Niland (at Salton Sea) and is frequented by land squatters and RV owners. The “City” gets it name from the concrete slabs and pylons that remain from an abandoned World War II base and Marine Barracks Camp Dunlap. The area is also near a live bombing range called Chocolate Mountain Impact Area. Some of the recent movie "Into the Wild" was filmed at Slab City. Here are a couple of websites about the place: http://vagabonders-supreme.net/SlabCity.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slab_City The song I used for the video is “On The Road Again” by Canned Heat.

Here are some photos I took at a competition of worldwide professional kitesurfers on San Francisco Bay, and video clips I took at the “expert level” kitesurfing beach at Tourmaline in San Diego. The song is “4 Minutes” by Madonna, featuring Justin Timberlake and Timbaland.

Here are various scenes from a fun two day nationally televised event in San Diego where artists create beautiful sand sculptures, that are blown up randomly (at which point the artists start NEW sculptures) I think this is the third time this entertaining event has come to Pacific Beach. There always seems to be SOME fun event goin’ on here every weekend! In case you’re wondering WHY they periodically, randomly blow up perfectly good works of art sand sculptures as they are bein’ created, that just adds some visual excitement and drama to the event, which would otherwise be a typical two days of watchin’ these great artists doing their thing . . . and YES, they give the sand sculptor artists plenty of advance notice to clear the area before the explosions go off! LOL The song I chose for the video is “Love the World You Find” (great lyrics!) by the group “The Flaming Lips” (yeah, I know, weird name, but “Oh well!” LOL)

Here is the second part of my brief video tour around portions of Horsham, in the southern part of England. The song for the video is a beautiful version of “True Colors” done by Eva Cassidy.

Yep, another vid of me wandering aimlessly around LOL . . . I love exploring old towns and cities in England and other countries. It is SUCH a joy to wander around places NOT set up with the typical BORRRRING “grid pattern” that so many USA towns and cities embrace, so in places like the older parts of Horsham, England for instance, you’re sure to find quaint and VERY old meandering alleyways that exist to this day, as you walk around exploring the sights. The song choice is “100 Years” by Five For Fighting.

Here’s video footage of the air and space museum located in Balboa Park, San Diego. The song choice is “Space Oddity” by David Bowie.

I’m always fascinated at the ease and grace with which whales and dolphins swim, so it’s always a joy to watch them. Beluga Whales weigh between 3,000 and 3,300 pounds and grow to be between 10 and 15 feet long. Unlike the more popular dolphins and killer whales, the Beluga Whales have no dorsal fins, primarily because the beluga whales spend so much of their time in their natural habitat swimming very close to the ice sheets over their heads, as the whales look for breathing holes in the ice, so there’s no evolutionary advantage for Beluga Whales to have dorsal fins. The song I chose is “Ordinary Miracle” by Sarah McLachlan.

Not to be confused with nearby “Westminster Abbey” of the Church of England, “Westminster Cathedral” is the largest Roman Catholic cathedral in either England or Wales. Construction began in 1895, and the Byzantine style architectural style is HIGHLY distinctive in London. The interior of the cathedral is quite dark, but you can still see in these video clips some of the beauty of the architecture and can see the elaborately carved marble columns. One of the highlights of a visit to this cathedral is that you can go to the top of the 273 foot tall cathedral tower and see some great views of London. The song I chose is “The Prayer” by Andrea Bocelli and Celine Dion.