RIDER MAGAZINE – Motorcycles | Sports & Recreation

The Yuba River cleaves the heart of The Lost Sierra along this Northern California motorcycle ride. (Photos by the author) Editor’s note: This story was originally published in the October 2004 issue. The phone rings. It’s Werner Wachter calling from Austria. “You vill come to Sacramento this weekend to my Edelweiss presentation at A&S BMW?” It’s a question, but it sounds more like an order. I once asked Wachter, “What’s the difference between a German and an Austrian?” His response was subtle. He didn’t speak to me for months. Anyway, of course we will come to Sacramento this weekend. It’s the end of March. We are enjoying a temporary respite in the usually Stalingrad-like winter here in greater Bieber in Big Valley on the high plains of northeast California. My Gold Wing’s battery is beginning to need me. And it has been way too long since I’ve seen the… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.

Joel Samick’s garage is packed with retro motorcycles used for his RetroTours vintage motorcycle tours operation. (Photos by Kel Edge) Have you ever discovered something that has you asking yourself, Why hasn’t anyone ever done this before? It seems so obvious, and yet… (The “and yet” is usually the reason why not, but still…). That was my reaction when I first came across Joel Samick and his Northeast U.S.-based RetroTours operation seven years ago – and I’m still asking that very same question after spending two days visiting Joel and his wife, Lynn, in their spacious home on the Pennsylvania/Delaware border and riding a selection of their motorcycles. For this lovely semi-rural house comes complete with a large garage and workshop space to house 23 twin-cylinder motorcycles, plus two Fours – a 1976 Honda GL1000 Gold Wing (read my test ride review here) and a 1983 Suzuki GS550 ES,… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.

1975 GL1000 The histories of Rider magazine and the Honda Gold Wing have run parallel – and often intertwined – over the past 50 years. Rider’s first issue was published in the summer of 1974, and a few months later the Honda GL1000 Gold Wing was unveiled to the public. Honda GL1000 test in Rider’s Summer 1975 issue. The GL1000 debuted as a 1975 model, and sales in the U.S. began that year. Rider published a test of the Honda GL1000 in the Summer 1975 issue, which opened with this paragraph: It’s a bull in street clothing. A solid, low-to-the-ground animal from the breed that produced the classic 750 Four. An ultra-smooth, quick, fast, silent, powerful roadburner. A sophisticated touring machine. Over the past half century, Rider has tested every Gold Wing model multiple times, and we have included the Wing in… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.

The 1976 Honda GL1000 Gold Wing K0 in Sulfur Yellow ridden by the author is a restored barn find. It’s owned by Joel Samick, who runs Pennsylvania-based RetroTours. (Photos by Kel Edge) Honda stunned the two-wheeled world at the 1968 Tokyo Show by revealing its inline 4-cylinder CB750, the first series production superbike of the modern era. But six years later, the Japanese company unveiled something completely different at the 1974 Cologne Show – the GL1000 Gold Wing. It was the first in a family of bikes which continues in production today, albeit in flat-Six 1,833cc guise vs. the original flat-Four 999cc model. Now, 50 years and 650,000-plus motorcycles later, the Wing continues to be a cornerstone of Honda’s range (see “50 Years of the Honda Gold Wing” in Rider’s December 2024 issue). At its peak, the GWRRA global owners club boasted 80,000 members in 53 countries, split into… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.

We test the third edition of Touratech’s Aventuro Carbon Pro adventure helmet, which features many upgrades over the previous iterations. After releasing its now-iconic aluminum panniers in 1992, Touratech quickly became a trusted name in the adventure motorcycling community. I’m a huge fan and have used their Zega panniers on all my adventure bikes since 2012, from a Suzuki V-Strom DL1000 to a KTM 1190 Adventure R and now a Ducati DesertX.   The German-based company then moved into bike protection and apparel. When Touratech launched its Aventuro Carbon helmet manufactured by NEXX in 2015, it was okay – but not for me due to its shape that crushed my temples. The second edition arrived in 2018 with a much better fit, but it still had some quirks, such as poor ventilation and complicated removal of the peak visor.   But Touratech nailed it with the third edition, the… ...[TheTopNews] Read More.