Culture and Lifestyle

What on earth can persuade four grown men to ride their V-twins to a place where for decades gazillions of mosquitos, free range guerilleros, sinister paramilitary, paranoid drug runners and desperate indigenous people have been doing their level best to prevent Panamericana’s last missing miles being built. Some call this white area on the map the ‘Darien Gap‘, to the Four who went there it is the mother of all roads, the Mud of no Return. What they did was to try and to close this last gap in the road connecting the two Americas. They were using Milwaukee machinery, mildly modified using stuff from the W&W Cycles shelves. The ride included police encounters, homicidal truckdrivers, lousy hotel beds, stampeding cockroaches, DIY river crossings, tropical downpours, Panama beer and forcibly removed distributors, and ended – in the mud. Mud beyond all imagination. Mud, so bottomless that only a four wheel driven Big Foot truck could rescue the intrepid riders. A specimen of this mud of muds is still sitting in a climatized W&W safe, a warning to the world that no road is so pitiless as the Mother of all Roads, the Panamericana.

CUBIC INCHES AND CLARITY IN THE ARCTIC. The world all of a sudden gets clear, translucent and clean at 40 below. Only your own eyes are foggy with the exhaust of two Harley-Davidsons on the ice road, that on milder days as the Mackenzie River flows peacefully into Beaufort Bay. Up there, at Tuktoyaktuk, North West Territories, Canada. This book is a shot at trying to bring home some of the feelingS of riding two Harley-Davidsons in 2008 over ice roads to one of the most northern points on the American continent that can be reached with ROADGOING vehicles. Without getting into a well known situation round here: "Don’t get stuck in Tuk!“
Doing it can be a lot of things, but it isn’t half as dangerous as some people would like you to believe, given a certain amount of planning and preparation. And it wasn’t the first time, that W&W Cycles went out of everyones way to ride roads no one usually cares to call roads.
In 1995 it was the MUD OF NO RETURN. The Panamericana Highway between Panama and Colombia. The Problem: a gap in the road. Not any ole pothole, but the infamous Darien Gap. The attempt to cross 70 miles of trackless jungle on two specially prepared rigid framed Pans and Shovels ended in bottomless mud. In 2005 we went to EAT DUST. We took four vintage Harleys down the gravel Ruta 40 to Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, to the southernmost beer in the world. And just there, sipping a well earned Beagle beer, the question popped up, how the other end of the road might look like. No one around knew, so we decided to have a look.
Said, done, ridden, frozen, printed. So, get your fireplace going, grab a drink and turn the page. And don’t forget: A BIKER’S WORK IS NEVER DONE. ’Cos the next road is waiting around the corner.

4 men, 8 cylinders, 3000 miles, no mercy!
If you thought that “Operation Panamericana” (Darién/Panama 1996) had already reached peak rpm you better shift into the next gear now. In January 2004, from the dark and oily basements of W&W, 4 enthusiast staff members on 2 Knuckleheads, 1 Panhead (Panamericana proven) and 1 Evo Sportster took off for a bone-shaking test ride.
The plan
Starting in Buenos Aires/Argentina and ending in Ushuaia the journey will lead them along the famous Ruta 40 to Patagonia and Fireland, where the penguins meet the whales...you mean this sounds like a nice weekend trip, eh? Ok, let's take a closer look at it then: 3000 kilometers of asphalt (or what Argentinians consider as asphalt) plus 2000 kilometers of gravel roads of the type that makes your teeth want to fall out. Endless plains, bizarre mountain ranges and - wind. Wind that blows harder than the exhaust of a V-Rod on nitro.
True to the slogan ”We ride what we sell“ the four Patagonian riders sit astride the best what the W&W catalog has to offer so the 4x4 service truck can stay at home. After all, this ain't no disco.
Sleeping?
Just lost my tent!
Eating?
Penguin meets Leatherman!
Drinking?
The world's southernmost beer at the world's southernmost bar!
Toast:
It‘s not the end of the world, but we can see it from here.

¡QUE CUBA VIBRE! This latest idea of ours vibrated like a healthy mix of rum, Coca-Cola and lime juice. Let's go meet Paul's old Harlista friends. In Havana. Let’s go for a ride together, do some wrenching, if absolutely necessary. Let’s burn the days. We bring two W&W Harleys: The dual carb ’47 Knucklehead and the rigid ’48 Panhead.
The plan is to do some easy miles to meet Cuba's Harlistas first. Our Milwaukee tractors carry us deep into the tobacco growing country until the road just stops on a picture postcard caribbean beach. We cruise the setting sun on Malecon and greet the falling dusk in the Floridita bar, one of Ernest Hemingways favourite watering places.
The street in front of Sergio's becomes our home. We drink coffee, we chat, we do some wrenching, and there’s beer. What’s the point of bikes running like clockwork? Were not those days with Sergio the better life? Let's drink another Cuba libre to that. Oh, and go easy on the Coke. A squirt of lime juice is all it takes. ¡Vamonos!

How about some mud, dust, ice and sugar cane? Here’s some ready-made adventures for your coffee-table or fireside armchair: 4 photo books, which cover W&W’s epic rides on classic Harleys to the jungles of Panama, on Ruta 40 from Buenos Aires to Fireland, on Mackenzie Ice Road in Northern Canada and from Havana to the Caribbean beaches of Cuba. Severe side-effects like wanderlust, wrench attacks and wet Harley dreams cannot be excluded.

Greasy Kulture started in 1999 as an obsession and a love for the aesthetics of yesteryear, from the early motorcycle clubs that sprang up on America's west coast after WWII to the choppers and crazy customs of the 1960s. And today the publishers’ passion for old motorcycles and a life on two wheels is greater than ever. GKM is an independently published magazine about traditionally-styled old choppers and bobbers and yes, occasionally cars – from around the world: the USA, Europe, Japan, Australia and from as far away as Java and Malaysia. It is published six times a year.

In 1967, Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, car and motorcycle customizer and father of Rat Fink, launched the Choppers Magazine, the first true custom bike magazine. It featured wild choppers and the first paintings by David Mann. Unfortunately, the magazine was discontinued by Roth in 1970 and the first Easyriders magazine was launched. In 2018, former WRENCH editor Cary Brobeck decided the world needed a Choppers Magazine comeback. He was to be proven right, and involved all his Easyriders Magazine friends after that venerable magazine gave up the ghost.
Today, Choppers Magazine still covers the best custom creations, current road trips, artists in the scene and events. An important part of custom motorcycle history has now come back to life with this magazine.

In addition to the latest editions of the Choppers Magazine, these early days reprints of the magazine are available, too. The format corresponds exactly to the original issues. Highly interesting, especially for nostalgics of the Chopper culture.

Fast. Silent. Radical. And wildly fun. The future of vehicles is looking bright. Cutting edge design, vigorous acceleration and post fossil energy are a green utopia within reach. The new wave of electric motorcycles, bicycles, and hybrids drives our way into sustainability while enhancing all the fun. The Current - New Wheels for the Post-Petrol Age explores this shift towards eco-friendly riding by profiling the pioneers in the field. Engineering and custom design, classic brands, and new projects, two or three wheelers but also cars: this book is the roadmap to driving now and driving differently. The future of mobility is electric – it could be our most thrilling ride yet!

With INSTANT THUNDER the topic HARLEY-DAVIDSON has at last surpassed leasing rates and designer leather jackets. However, we still feel we have a reason to celebrate, bang the gong, wave the flag. Just dig this king-sized pocket-bible. Now isn't life simplier and better? Myths are nice but seeing is believing. Statistics are for accountants and people with microscopic assholes. This is going to be fun, like a piece of surfing safari sex wax, it will help you stick to your board and ride the next curl. Come and see the only other hot bike a man should have between his legs. Steel, wheels, fluid pumping, cylinder grinding, oil dripping, thigh grippable, titty teasing, turbo transporter.

"Thrash It - Do not Stash" It is a pure illustrated book by Patrick Katzman. No text, no ramble, just motorcycles and their builders and owners are portrayed in this book. On the events Jokers Show, Linkert Attack UK, The Trip Out and Fückerfest, 4 years of unique pictures of motorcycles and their builders and owners were taken. A tribute to the drivers, the builders and ultimately to the vintage, custom and original machines that are now being built in Europe and driven through cities and across the entire continent. This book documents the variety of motorcycles that have their aesthetic roots in America and the glorious time of the chopper, but are being built and driven in Europe. With this book, Patrick Katzman has succeeded in preserving this diversity and creativity, which currently prevails in Europe, and to ban it on just under 200 pages. Have fun “reading".

This massive exhibition book covers the collective history of Bonneville racing. Created to celebrate over 100 years of Utah salt lake racing, the book describes the root of land speed racing in 1898 in France and sweeps to America with an overview of the Florida Speed Trials and the first known racing on the lake in 1914. The history, stats, and photos continue onward to the 2013 season.
Interspersed in the history and stories are 600 photos of the great Bonneville champions, including Mickey Thompson, Donald Campbell, John Cobb, Ab Jenkins and many more speed celebrities. The stories will help you appreciate that the core of Bonneville is the greater land speed community of individuals who have raced on the lake all these years. You will close this book in awe at the wonderful historic collection of LSR streamliners, roadsters, coupes, production cars, and bikes.
The book is also a fundraiser for the Salt Lay-down Project with Save the Salt.

No, this is not just another service manual, as the book title might imply. 'ZEN and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' by US author Robert M. Pirsig is a work of philosophical non-fiction, first published in 1974, at the end of the hippie era, which soon became influential and gained cult status. It represents a mixture of novel, biography and philosphical reflections about the increasingly technical American (or western) way of life during the 1950s and 1960s. This odyssey into life's fundamental questions was perfectly compatible with the counterculture that had just formed, in particular on the form of education and aims in life of the conservative post-war social classes in the US.

“In a car you're always in a compartment, and because you're used to it you don't realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You're a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame.
On a cycle the frame is gone. You're completely in contact with it all. You're in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming.”

Something to smile. The adventures of Ratbike Atze, drawn by Jürgen “Toddy” Todtberg. It is plain to see that the author is a biker himself, because some of the situations which Ratbike Atze and his Panhead chopper encounter will certainly give you this special dejà vú feeling.