In the early 60s a friend of mine rode his Royal Enfield 700 twin North from Pennsylvania into Canada to the Al-Can highway, which at the time was not paved, it was gravel. He went across to Alaska, then dropped down to Oregon where he did a top-end job on his engine because he ran no air-cleaners and the dirt roads had got the best of the bike. He continued down south, road back across the USA to the East Coast and back up to New England before he headed back west to his home in Pennsylvania. He slept in a pup tent which he packed on the bike and worked odd jobs including picking fruit in an orchard to help finance the trip.
Also in the early 1960s a friend of my father's who was stationed in California was discharged from the armed forces. He rode his 1957 Triumph Trophybird back east to Pennsylvania.
The old radiator repair man in my town, Harvey Lucore, rode across the country with a friend of his on Indian Scouts back in their youth. Crossing Death Valley something broke on his bike and he took his false teeth apart and used parts of them to effect a repair there in the middle of nowhere.
I was talking to a member of the White Plate Flat-trackers association once, and he said he had been riding with friends out in the desert around Baja. One of his friends rode off a cliff and was killed while they were many, many miles out in the wilderness. He tied his dead friend to himself back-to-back and rode him double back to civilization, not wanting to leave him out there for the desert animals to eat.
Neither of these men rode with any big planning or chase trucks etc., nor did I or other people I know on any of the hundreds of miles rides we ever went on.
Just an observation on how British bikes and those who ride them have changed, and are always changing. What used to be almost matter-of-fact is now supposed to be some sort of sensation.
There are even videos on YouTube people have made of themselves kick-starting old motorcycles, as if the act of kick-starting itself is some spellbinding event like watching someone walk a tightrope over a pit of poisonous snakes or something.......
