Lost In America
Penned by the legendary and entertaining Fred Rau, you never know what he's going to talk about each month in his column 'Lost in America.' This section describes the Lost In America articles from previous issues. If you would like to order the
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February 2012 Who Packs Your Parachute?
The following is something I actually wrote more than ten years ago. I stumbled across it while exchanging files into a new hard drive, and honestly don't remember when, where, or even if it was ever published. But on re-reading, it brought home a lesson I had almost forgotten, and one I deemed worth sharing. I hope you think so, too…
January 2012 Watching the Big Picture
Due to the fact that my entire life, both private and professionally, revolves around motorcycling, I try to keep up with all the current news involving the industry. To help with that, I have a couple of programs on my computer that search news items from around the world daily, flagging and notifying me of any that contain certain key words like "motorcycle." On an average day, I receive about 85 such notices, though it has reached as high as 250 in a single 24-hour period. I know that sounds like a lot, but I usually skim through them pretty quickly, as fully two-thirds of the articles referenced in newspapers involve accidents. Unless there is some compelling special circumstance involved, I'm really not interested in reading about yet another motorcycle accident somewhere in England or Germany, so I jump through those fairly quickly, looking for actual industry-related news. Almost every day I flag one or two interesting snippets, which I then file away in a special folder I keep on an off-site hard drive. This provides me with a personal and rather extensive database which I can search for background information whenever I am researching a particular subject for a magazine or newspaper story…
December 2011 Unusual Ride Ideas
Going through my archives, I came across a flier for a ride my wife and went on several years ago. A local motorcycle club down in San Diego had arranged a deal with a drive-in movie theater where they had two or three rows of parking spaces blocked out "for motorcycles only." My local club from South Orange County rode down and met them (only about 60 miles), carrying folding chairs, tables, and coolers full of food and drinks, and we all had a picnic together while we watched the movie. Then we had a nice moonlight ride up the coast to come back home…
November 2011 Four Tips to Keep You from Overplanning Your Trip
As we head into the winter months, many motorcyclists transition from "riding mode" to "planning mode." I realize that isn't so true with us Southern California riders, but for most of our not-so-climatically-blessed brethren, it is a fact of life. Now comes the time for preparing for next season's great adventures, but beware of the deadly pitfall of overplanning…
October 2011 Techno-Cycling
When I tested the new BMW GTL last month, I was a bit flustered by the multitude of advanced electronic gizmos on the bike. In fact, it took me about three hours in the garage, thumbing through the owners manual while pushing buttons and twirling dials, trying to get the hang of how everything worked. I like gadgets and am fascinated by new technology, but at the same time I often feel a bit overwhelmed by it all. Still, I have no doubt that most of the advances we are seeing will become accepted as a normal part of the riding experience in the coming decade, much as ABS and fuel injection did in the past decade. I just hope I can keep up…
September 2011 Managing Time and Distance
During a four-day ride around the southwest, my riding companion noted that he was somewhat amazed at my ability to accurately estimate each day's riding schedule in advance. So long as we left at or near the planned time in the morning, we would make our destination that evening at almost exactly the time I predicted, despite taking routes neither of us had ridden before, and making unplanned rest stops and such…
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