My latest fantasy

I blame Matisse’s mother for this post.

It all started innocently enough. She, like most moms, wanted to include me as part of her Christmas. What to give the guy your daughter calls her “non-domestic partner” (or was that “non domesticated”?) Well knowing my penchant for motorcycles, or more my talent for falling off of them, and that anyone who dates her book crazy daughter must also enjoy them, or fake it very well, she sent me this book.



So, what the hell does book about motorcycle touring by an old guy have to do with Monk’s fantasy life?

Lots actually.

For anyone who has spent a long summer afternoon exploring the road less traveled in the saddle of a motorcycle knows, there is no better way to tour. This author captures the feeling perfectly, in another life he would be writing blog about his adventures on remote, winding roads and his love affair with the various machines that transport him to such places. This, this has always resonated with me. The desire to hop on my bike, loaded up with just enough to keep me from dying of exposure, and picking a direction. Having long traded out the “rocket sled” fast bikes of my youth for a bike that tops out at 55mph and can be rebuilt roadside with a pair of pliers and stout rock, I’ve taken to the back roads often over the years.

Now perhaps it is reading this collection of tales or perhaps it is that as the temperature is finally reaching a point where I can ride and not worry about my fingers going numb on the controls, but oh that spark of wanderlust is there. Not just to take my vintage Ural, Boris, and tear off into the local countryside. Nope, that lust has taken a turn for the exotic.

To throw a leg over one of Boris’ distant cousins* and roar along the Great Wall, or perhaps the Silk Road or across the remains of some former Eastern Block countryside. To climb off, dusty and sore, in the town square of some unpronounceable village and wander into the closest bar for a much deserved drink of whatever the locals are enjoying.

Yeah, that is my new fantasy. What can I say, I'm kinky like that.


*The Ural motorcycle is based off the BMW boxer twin engine. Considered by most to be the most popular motorcycle engine every designed with an estimated 3.5 million of them on the planet between the original BMW and other countless “clones” produced by the USSR, China and others over the course of the cold war.