Author: N.J.

Motorcycle and automotive, travel and adventure writer, when I'm not being an alpha geek, coder, or technical project manager.

Epilogue – Rush Hour

Crawling under the towering cables of Lion’s Gate Bridge, we’re rolling into Vancouver on the final leg of our return from the Arctic and our welcome is an automotive slap in the face. Traffic is ornery, pushy, and demonstrating the road selfishness we’ve not had to deal with for 10,000 kilometers. Mainly because for a major portion of that distance there was no traffic…

The Internet, the Ducati Multistrada 1200 and Seals

By commenting on Motorcycle.com’s “leak” of the Multistrada 1200 this week, formerly known to the public as the Strada Aperta or Cayenne, we’ve been assailed by a storm of Internet traffic. So much so we’ve had to install a caching system to keep http://OneWheelDrive.Net up, running and vaguely responsive. This has me thinking about notoriety, the Internet and integrity.

Will Apple Apps Save Motorcycle Magazines and Journalism?

The print motorcycle magazine industry is not a healthy thing.  British magazines like Bike and TWO (now VisorDown taking the name of the magazines website) have developed content bulimia, shedding pages on a free-fall purge, and several American magazines are on the verge of anorexic extinction.  There is hope though in a confluence of consumer…

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The Salmon Glacier

Stewart, B.C. – We are overlooking the Salmon Glacier, on a road that curls up the ridges overtop of the great flowing track of ice driven forward by its own weight. In the sun it dazzles the eye, gliding imperceptibly around a corner, with race stripes of medial moraine rock debris giving it black curves like a remnant alien roadway from the last ice age.

Valdez, AK – Everything for a Reason

“We’re going to get wet.” That’s pretty much Glenn’s end statement on the matter as we look down the Richardson Highway from Gakona and into a black wall of cloud veiling the mountains in the distance and Valdez, AK beyond.

2009 GSX-R 1000 – The One-Litre Angel

Why? Why did I forsake the litre-bike? Why did I wait so long to begrudgingly throw a leg over the 2009 GSX-R 1000? True, I thought I’d grown up making litre-bike immaturity a thing of my past, and that I’d moved on to more upright and relaxed rides. Then the Suzuki GSX-R 1000 proved me utterly and completely wrong.

Denali Highway – One Yurt, Hold the Testicles

Can you really go wrong with a morning that starts in a yurt? Especially if the evening before was 100% boiled goat testicle free and featured a nice red wine rather than fermented yak milk? The yurt at Carlos Creek Campground in Denali is a long ways from roughing it in Mongolia and is more Ikea does yurt…

Top of the World

Awestruck by views so broad, so expansive, that the landscape and sky can barely contain them, the Top of the World out of Dawson, YT is one of the few highways we’ve encountered that truly, fully and completely lives up to its name.

Dempster Resplendent

Is this even the same road? I know the sign fading into our rearview mirrors says “Welcome to Inuvik”, but the Dempster Highway is transformed. Four days ago the infamously challenging adventure highway tossed us around like Cerberus using three souls as chew toys, today what was once the Mud-Beast is now asleep in the sun.