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Discover

Looking for a motorcycle hangout, or a place to stop for a break while riding through western states? Then turn to our Discover section where each month we take two short day rides. Below is a brief description of where we've been in previous issues. If you would like to order the magazine in which an article appeared, please fill out the subscription form indicating which issue(s) you'd like to receive.

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September 2010

Discover California | Livermore

National security, wineries, and guitars. What could possibly unite these three disparate items? Why, the city of Livermore, of course. Besides being home to the Lawrence Livermore and Sandia National Laboratories (both of which work with such high-tech goodies as directed energy weapons—'photon torpedoes' if you are a Star Trek fan), Livermore also has the perfect Mediterranean climate for grape propagation and is home to over 40 wineries. Sure, the Napa Valley may be more famous, but its wine industry is a comparative pup compared to that of Livermore. After all, folks have been stomping grapes here ever since the Spanish missionaries planted the first vines back in the 1760s. As for guitars, Guitar Player magazine will hold its second annual guitar pickin' competition September 17–19 at the Livermore Valley Performing Arts Center's Bankhead Theater (www.bankheadtheater.org). Naturally there will be more than just wannabe rock gods shredding their axes at this event (food, vendors, and clinics will be available), so you might want to check it out if the guitar is the instrument that plucks at your heartstrings. Unfortunately, it's too late to enter this year's competition, so you will have to practice your guitar hero chops for another year before you can attempt to win it all in the Guitar Player Guitar Superstar Competition… Download the Tankbag Tearsheet!

August 2010

Discover New Mexico | Espanola

A town named after a restaurant—it must have been a Gold Wing rider's idea. Well, maybe not, seeing as how Gold Wings were not around in 1880. Instead, the town of Espanola in north-central New Mexico got its name from workers for the narrow gauge Denver and Rio Grande Railroad (the Chile Line). The conversations likely went something like this. New guy: "Where is there a good place to eat around here?" Old guy: "Go to Espanola's—the Spanish woman's restaurant." It must have been a pretty popular place, because soon the name stuck, and the railroad was calling this area (the valley between the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in the east and the Jemez Mountains in the west) Espanola… Download the Tankbag Tearsheet!

July 2010

Discover California | North Fork

In the mid-1960s, the late Hunter S. Thompson wrote a book titled, Hells Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga. In this, the gonzo journalist's first book, he wrote of the year he spent hanging out with the Oakland chapter of the Hells Angels. He drank with them in their bars, peeked into their private lives in their homes, and witnessed first-hand their many brutalities—including the beating they eventually gave him when their trust ran out. He also accompanied them to their parties and rallies, and the high point of the book is Thompson's narration of the 1965 July 4th fete at Bass Lake, a tiny resort in the Sierra foothills northeast of Fresno. At this event, the Angels rolled into town, set up camp, and then drank, danced, fought, and raped their way through the holiday weekend—all under the watchful eye of a very nervous local constabulary who had expected a far greater turn-out than just a mere 200 riders. (One cop was told by Thompson that the Angels were "probably worse than you have heard.")… Download the Tankbag Tearsheet!

Discover California | Rainbow

Ten miles south of Temecula and far removed from the world of cookie-cutter sprawl sits the small town of Rainbow. Once named Vallecito ('little valley'), the village changed names in the late 1880s when early settler J.P.M. Rainbow proposed that it be renamed Larsen in honor of its first homesteader. Larsen had a more 'colorful' idea—he proposed that the town be renamed Rainbow because that name implied a pot of gold. The two men tossed a coin and the rest is history. And as we will discover later, the name Rainbow is much more appropriate…Download the Tankbag Tearsheet!

June 2010

Discover California | Paradise Store

Every summer in the hills behind the California coastal town of Santa Barbara, a certain type of migration takes place on an almost daily basis. This seasonal flow is akin to the wildebeest crossing the Serengeti or Pacific salmon swimming upstream, except in this instance the migrators are not animal in nature, but rather human teenagers and 20-something's. (Well, they are not all under 30—it just seems that way.) Each morning, a steady procession of cars streams up and over the hills on SR154's sweeping curves and then sails across Cold Springs Bridge, a high and arching span well-known for its attractiveness to both suicides and directors of car commercials. Beyond that, one after the other, as if they were hooked together on the rails of some amusement park ride, they turn onto Paradise Road and then head east and towards their various destinations—the swimming holes of the Santa Ynez River. See, they have a hard day of swimmin', sunnin', and flirtin' ahead of them, and those that get to the river early in the day are usually assured of the best spots… Download the Tankbag Tearsheet!

May 2010

Discover New Mexico | Los ALamos

An interesting dichotomy exists in and around the plateau town of Los Alamos. On the one hand, a strong feeling of ancient history pervades the area due to the nearby cliff dwellings of the Bandelier National Monument, as well as the million-year-old volcanic caldera that lies just west of the town. Conversely, the town itself has also become synonymous with advances in technology and science thanks to its largest employer—the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). This vast complex just south of Los Alamos proper is where the scientific envelope is pushed daily in the fields of nanotechnology, supercomputing, renewable energy, medicine, space exploration, and national defense. A radio that works underground, AIDS vaccines, and a ten-gigabit Ethernet adapter that smashed the internet land speed record—these are the types of advancements that are now coming out of LANL. (And for the curious, the speed record was broken by a team of folks who transferred a terabyte of data from California to Switzerland at a rate of speed that allows for the download of a feature length film in just four seconds.)… Download the Tankbag Tearsheet!

April 2010

Discover California | Prather

According to the United States Geological Survey, the geographic center of an area is defined as "that point on which the surface of the area would balance if it were a plane of uniform thickness." While some would claim that this definition merely determines said area's center of gravity, the folks at the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey found it to be perfectly acceptable when they set out to determine the geographic center of the nation in 1919. In order to do so, they cut an outline of the lower 48 states (Hawaii and Alaska had yet to join the union) from a piece of cardboard and then balanced it on a point. In this unscientific manner, they pinpointed that place in the nation which lay equal distance between the northern and southern borders, as well as equally between the coasts… Download the Tankbag Tearsheet!

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