Longitude & Gratitude

Tag: Triumph

  • Switzerland via PA

    Switzerland via PA

    In order to ride from England to Switzerland via motorbike, you have to take the M20 and Channel Tunnel (affectionately known as the “Chunnel”) from Dover to Calais, and then motor south across roughy 700 kilometers of France to reach Basel in the northwest corner of the Alpen-state. But to ride from New England to…

  • September is the Cruelest Month

    September is the Cruelest Month

    I remember reading T.S. Eliot’s masterwork The Wasteland back when I was an arrogant, impudent sophomore at the University of Vermont, arguing with my professor (as arrogant and impudent sophomores will do) about the poem’s very premise. As a refresher (or if you’re unfamiliar): The Wasteland is a meditation on the teasing, soul-crushing nature of…

  • A Town Called Allis

    A Town Called Allis

    For American kids who came of age in the Eighties, The Jam were a slightly off-kilter band. Not as iconically punk as the Sex Pistols, not as commercially successful as the Clash (my first true love), and not as sonically original as Gang of Four. Nevertheless, one spin of This Is the Modern World and…

  • An Urbane Adventure

    An Urbane Adventure

    Greetings motorized tweed lovers, Goodyear welt-wishers, suspender fetishists, bowtie buffs and Members of the Loyal Order of the Pocket Square. This one is for you. For many riders, motorcycle adventuring has come to mean, almost definitionally, scrambling across hardscrabble terrain in far-off lands, riders clad neck-to-toe in armored, dust-crusted GoreTex spacesuits, their peaked helmet-visors pointing towards…