At Large
AT LARGE
Moto-Adventure Inc.
Steven L. Thompson
FOR SOME PEOPLE, MOTORCYCLING isn’t just recreation, it's all there is, both the means and the ends all wrapped up in one two-wheeled package. It's an obsession. Motorcyclists thus obsessed are a lot like bush pilots. Those pilots are usually people whose communion with airplanes is so profound that they've been able to cut loose from most of what we’d call normal society in order to maintain the communion as long as possible. day in and day out.
You don’t meet many motorcyclists as dedicated to riding as bush pilots are to flying, but not because there aren't riders who'd fit the profile. It’s mostly because few of us can find the commercial means to satisfy the motorcycle hunger. (Maybe you think motorcycle journalism is one such place. Sorry. Editorial jobs in this business are only half riding; the rest is brainwork. not wheelwork.) Motorcycle couriers sometimes are bush-pilot types, and. occasionally, racers are, but the truth is that the bush pilot enjoys a raison d'etre denied to most motorcyclists, no matter how besotted with two-wheeled life.
Most, but not all. A very few of us are guys like AÍ Jesse.
Jesse’s life is pure adventure. Not adventure in the vanilla-flavored, ersatz sense of theme-park amusement rides, or adventure in the “Join the Navy and See the World" sense, but1 raw, American West-style adventure.
You wouldn't expect this of a slender, ginger-haired, bespectacled guy who was born on a farm in Storm Lake, Iowa. 32 years ago. Probably few of the 8000 or so folks who live in Storm Lake would have expected it, except maybe Bill at Bill's Cycle Center, where a young AÍ worked to be in touch with the machines that he loved. A year of further education at Scott Community College in motorcycle mechanics bolstered his three years in Bill’s shop, and then Al hit the road. Which was his plan all along. He didn’t want to be a mechanic per se, see: it was just his way of supporting his long ride through life.
When he hit the road, he never stopped, not even to get married or otherwise tied down. On a literal shoestring budget, he’s been around the world on bikes; around Australia twice (once clockwise on a Suzuki GT500 two-stroke, once counterclockwise on a BMW GS), Africa (including. in '86, the Paris-Dakar route), most of Europe, the Near East, Japan and—well, you get the picture. Jesse’s never stopped riding.
Until very recently, he financed this truly nomadic life by being a journeyman mechanic in each country. Motorcycles, as we all know', are always broken somewhere, and dealers are always saddled with bikes that are too broken to be fixed at shop rates. So when Jesse shows up and offers to fix up the junk in the corner for resale, what harried shop manager will argue? Few. Result: cash in the jeans, gas in the tank, and sayonara until next time.
This is not a working strategy that just anybody can pull off. You have to have the right kind of personality, not to mention the right skills. Al has ’em. So he’s left a trail of satisfied shops all around the world; and since he’s as comfortable with BMWs and Harleys as with Hondas, he can be a wandering journeyman anywhere there are busted bikes. Which is just about everywhere, the motorcycle culture being transnational and. literally, worldwide.
íf you doubt that, consider Transcyclist International, an organization founded by Volker Lenzer to promote, in its constitution’s words, “a global framework of cross-national and cross-continental channels ... to allow for and encourage coordination and cooperation in motorcycle touring and sporting ventures.” Lenzer, a German, is based in Tokyo (CPO Box 2064. Tokyo, Japan); his organization is worldwide, and operates through a network of riders who provide advice, lodging and even machinery to each other. Some riders are so involved they become “national contacts’’ for Transcyclist. AÍ Jesse, not surprisingly, is the TI contact in America.
Some nomads would be content with this life, but Jesse, being of common-sense Iowa stock, knows that only the entrepreneur stands a chance of escaping from wage slavery. So he’s decided, like many a trailwise mountain man trapped by civilization’s economics, to capitalize on his highly specialized knowledge and skills, by leading motorcycle adventures for others.
He’s far from unique in this, of course, but his approach is. He’s bought and refurbished a Model 4104 Greyhound bus, outfitted it as a combination bike-hauler/peoplehauler/lounge capable of accommodating 16 riders and their gear and bikes. He figures he can handle four riding tours per year, covering such disparate adventures as an all-dirtbike riding/camping blitz across the American West, a similar jaunt through the Sahara, a riding tour to the Isle of Man and a racing holiday at Laguna Seca.
He expects Moto-Adventure Inc. (Route 1. Box 195. Storm Lake, Iowa 50588; 712/732-6074) mostly to cater to foreign riders—Japanese, European, Australian—but that’s only because he knows from his travels how intense many of the foreign riders are about taking such adventure tours in America, still the land of mystery and excitement to most of the rest of the world—if not to an Iowan.
Asked to extrapolate about his company and its future, he smiles. Does he want to get rich and famous? Does he want to have a MercedesBenz with a phone and fax, a secretary, a corporate HQ and a Lear Jet?
Ál Jesse responds to that exactly as you’d imagine a guy would who has spent his adult life on two wheels in search of whatever lies over the horizon. He wrinkles his bearded face into an infectious grin and says, “Nah. I just want to keep riding.”
And so the adventure, at least for one of us, continues. S
