The Riders: Motorcycle Adventurers, Cruisers, Outlaws, and Racers the World Over

Lots of great photos of motorcycles and motorcycling from all around the world and a few articles from noted moto journalists. The final line from Paul d'Orleans article says it all: "Motorcycling is good for the soul and makes the whole wide world our church."

A collection of fascinating essays by the author end four other motorcycle riders providing accounts , accompanied by numerous photographs, of their many riding adventures the world over. At 50, Henry von Wartenberg, a native of Mar del Plata, Argentina, is now on a solo cycling, 6000 km long, journey from San Francisco to New York, which started in the last week of April and which is expected to be completed by late June. Behind him, among other road feats,the writer has also a motorcycle ride, over 15,000 km long, from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego and a walk throughout the Argentinean province of Tierra del Fuego. His numerous fans and followers von Wartenberg continues updating on his web page.

I’m a lifelong motorcycle rider having logged more miles on two wheels than four. Riding a bike when you could sensibly slouch around in a four-wheeled steel cage or a six-wheeled bus makes no logical sense. My chances of death while riding are 35x that of a cager. Most of the time, I’m hot, cold, wet or bug spattered. Sometimes all simultaneously. I often arrive at my destination looking like a drowned rat that recently crawled out of a sewer.Yet here I am riding still. It’s the lure of the sport. I experience things, often to an extreme, that cagers don’t even know exist. I may arrive at a nice resort only to see the staff develop that frozen smile they reserve for guests they have to deal with but I don’t arrive numb like that group oozing from the Lexus does. They’re in line behind me and will enjoy the staff’s wide smile of relief now that I’m off to my room. But to the book.While I did enjoy this coffee table book, some aspects of it disappointed me. The photography, given the author, is excellent as I expected from him. The variety of snaps is likewise wide concentrating on rural third world areas more than any other. Well, that’s my estimate, anyway. There are some good essays highlighted Peter Egan’s. Egan is the closest thing moto journalists have to a legend. Maybe he actually is one.As a coffee table book, it fits the bill perfectly in the sense that it has interesting pictures to thumb through. This is also my first issue, really a quibble, with the book. The photos are rarely annotated beyond the location, the year they were taken and an editorial comment lacking any specifics. For example, there is a snap of the giant hand in Chile including three bikes and riders. The annotation gives information about the hand but nothing about the riders or the bikes. Where were they from? Where were they going?My other quibble is that some parts of the essays are too stuck in the time they were written. For example, one essay mentioned the Canadian/US border closed due to the Covid. Why was that included? This is a book rather than a newspaper. It’s a photo essay about we who ride. Talking about a current event that will be a distant memory while this book is still current strikes me as a poor choice.The photographs are top-notch. I did miss explanatory text a bit too much to thoroughly enjoy them, though.

OK, I’m 77 and don’t ride but found this book fascinating. My boys are enthusiasts and have spent hours inside this book. It covers every aspect of motorbikes and travels the world with photos, stories, and anecdotes. It features everything from “outlaw clubs to adventurers to racers to boulevard cruisers to those for whom a motorcycle is the only form of transportation as well a means to make a living”.I learned so much about motorcycles that I didn’t even know was a “thing”. This is the perfect gift for dad’s day or to donate to a senior center to help the oldsters relive their glory days. I thought I’d just thumb through to get the gist but ended up reading the amazing stories about these two-wheeled machines.

Between both of our families, an overwhelming majority of the people ride motorcycles. As a couple, we have gone on many trips together and I have ridden many, many miles solo. Literally within a day of receiving this book, a family member wanted to borrow it. As soon as I received it back, another family member wanted to borrow it. Before long, it seemed like everyone had borrowed and read the book, but I had not!I finally had a chance to sit down and read the book cover to cover and boy, I was not disappointed! As someone who has ridden all over the US, Mexico, and Canada, as well as several European and Asian countries, I was very intrigued by the stories Henry von Wartenberg told through both words and pictures. Even if you are not a motorcyclist, this book is engaging and interesting. However, if you ride, then this book should be on your coffee table! Good luck keeping your motorcycle friends from stealing it though!