Ride New England

We’ve all heard of “sticker shock.” That’s where something costs so much that the heart nearly stops beating upon discovery of the price, such as $495 for a single round of golf at Pebble Beach, cart not included. Less common but equally startling is “reverse sticker shock” where something costs …

It was a hometown car and motorcycle show on Saturday afternoon – a half-mile from my house and benefiting the Harwinton (CT) Lions Club – so naturally I brought

Burt Ives Honda has reopened. The motorcycle dealership on Route 66 in Columbia, CT that dates back to 1931 has been closed since December after

An auction date of June 18 has been set for the assets of electric scooter maker Vectrix, the New Bedford, MA-based company that launched in 2006 but which ceased operating in January and filed for bankruptcy on

The showroom is filled not with new Triumph models, but with the scent of fresh carpeting. The floor of the service department glistens from the newly-applied sealant that still hasn’t cured in one area. A sign on the exterior of Hamlin Cycles in Bethel, CT has a Union Jack as …

Motorcycle shows are always fun, but the New England Air Museum‘s inaugural indoor event today in Windsor Locks, CT was best summed up by Rick Price of Chester, CT. “It’s such a cool place to have it. There’s certainly a lot of shiny aluminum around,” said Price, who brought his …

It stands upright on a podium, secured from beneath by thin cables and bookended to the front and rear by two other uncommon motorcycles that are posed on platforms that are appropriately lower. Spotlights in the ceiling make its bright blue and pink paint sparkle. The race-bike rarity is so …

A neighbor recently thinned her bookshelves and deposited a plastic bag filled with paperbacks on my doorstep. Included in the discards that she thought I might enjoy was Robert Fulghum’s “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.”  In reading it, having missed its gentle wisdom when it was …

An enormous black-and-white photo showing the inside of the BMW motorcycle factory in Germany as it was in November 1923 adorns an end wall of Peter Nettesheim’s private museum on Long Island. In the picture, perched atop wooden tables and surrounded by serious-looking workers clad in overalls, are early R32 models …

Riding through Olympia Pass in Peru Rene Cormier jokes that the 2003 BMW F650GS Dakar that he no longer rides has been “put out to stud.” It’s still on the road, though, being trailered to speaking engagements so that it may be seen by other envious motorcyclists – riders who wish …

Lee Ann Sullivan with her collection of motorcycles As a children’s author with 23 titles to her credit, Lee Ann Sullivan of Salisbury, CT is accustomed to researching before sitting down at her laptop to write. It was an assignment a decade ago for what would eventually became the 2004 book …

Most activities have expressions and sayings that are associated with them. For instance, in golf, there’s the line “never up, never in” to describe a timid putt that fails to make it to the hole. In cooking, there’s the old favorite that “a watched pot never boils,” which can be …

Nathan Muscaro of New Hartford pops a wheelie on his 2014 KTM 500 EXC.  Winter is the time when most of us put our bikes into storage and stuff our riding gear into the closet, although there are a few hardy street riders who don’t mind a little salt on the …

Dave Rosen and his Thruxton at New York’s IMS When the January/February 2014 issue of “Motorcycle Classics” magazine arrived recently, I immediately noticed the full-page Triumph advertisement on the back cover. It shows a customized Thruxton model being ridden on the Bonneville Salt Flats by pro motorcycle racer Jason DiSalvo, its …

Kawasaki W80 It was at the end of last year that I was griping about the fact that Moto Guzzi doesn’t sell its Bellagio mid-sized cruiser here in the U.S. and that got me thinking about other models that never see our shores. While Honda withheld its CB1100 for a …