New Stuff on the Website

A couple of big articles (meaning "long") from this spring and summer are now available on my personal website. Last spring, I wrote an article about making the Lake Superior Loop (Looping the Lake) that isn't available on-line, but my last draft before the editor went to work is on my website. The magazine turned the article into a marketing piece for the cruiser crowd, but I think the comments and recommendations at the end of the article are more biker-useful than all of the magazine's links to gangbanger touring companies. That's just me, though. The gangbangers themselves were so allergic to any connection to me that they "forgot" to include the author's name in their comments about the article. ("Recently the program gained a huge boost from our good friends and partners at Lake Superior Magazine. Paul, Cindy, Konny and Bob and their entire team recently featured motorcycle touring in their latest issue of the magazine in an article aptly titled 'Looping The Lake'.") Of course, Lake Superior Magazine was not in on that game and I was generously credited as the only author of the article, while the editor, Konnie LeMay, did a ton of work putting the text into the intended shape. Between my resistance to promoting the hippobike crowd and my incompetence due to pain medications and pain post-hip replacement, I was not the most flexible or competent author she'd worked with.

My MMM Yamaha XTZ1200Z Super Ténéré review will be out in a few days, minus about 400 words and a dozen pictures (mostly of the interior of that interesting motorcycle). Of course, readers who are not Minnesota residents or the rare MMM subscriber won't have the opportunity of seeing the contrast between Kevin Koncur and my take on that bike. So, the whole half that I contributed is available on my  aforementioned personal website.

I have a third article coming out in the September issue of Rider's Digest. That one will be on-line immediately, so look for it on the Rider's Digest site: #170.