Fireside travel

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.”

Hunter S. Thompson's documented drug orgy through Las Vegas would no doubt leave Nancy Reagan blushing and D.A.R.E. (US anti-drugs organisation) founders rethinking their motto. Under the pseudonym of Raoul Duke, Thompson travels with his Samoan attorney, Dr. Gonzo, in a souped-up convertible dubbed the Great Red Shark. In its boot, they hide two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half-full of cocaine and a whole galaxy of multicoloured uppers, downers, screamers, laughers ... A quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser a pint of raw ether which they manage to consume during their short tour.
On assignment from a sports magazine to cover "the fabulous Mint 400", a free-for-all biker's race in the heart of the Nevada desert, the drug-a-delic duo stumbles through Vegas in hallucinatory hopes of finding the American dream (two truck-stop waitresses tell them it's nearby, but can't remember if it's on the right or the left). They of course never get the story, but they do commit the only sins in Vegas: "burning the locals, abusing the tourists, terrifying the help." For Thompson to remember and pen his experiences with such clarity and wit is nothing short of a miracle; an impressive feat no matter how one feels about the subject matter. A first- rate sensibility twinger, this book, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a pop-culture classic, an icon of an era past and a nugget of pure comedic genius.

America in the late Sixties: LSD experiences, San Franciso, Flower Power. And a bus trip like it never happened before and never will happen again. In 1968 Tom Wolfe wrote about the epic trip of Ken Kesey and his "Merry Pranksters" in this legendary classic, which has long become the New Testament of hipster mythology.

It's 1959. In a highrise hotel not far from the beaches of San Juan, a man is recovering from an animal of a hangover. Paul Kemp is an alcoholic journalist who's barely seen better days, arriving at the only job he can get: writing horoscopes for failing rag El News. His fellow hacks are mostly crazy drunks on the verge of quitting, so Kemp fits in perfectly. But then he meets the impossibly gorgeous Chenault and her flashy boyfriend Sanderson. Kemp soon finds himself in way over his head, party to shady business deals, caught up in car chases with enraged Puerto Ricans, and experimenting with a hitherto unknown hallucinogen, which will eventually transform Kemp into the kind of journalist known to the world as Gonzo.

Since American author Edward Abbey (1927–1989) wrote his novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, published in 1975, he is an underground hero. Easily Abbey's most famous fiction work, the novel concerns the use of sabotage to protest environmentally damaging activities in the American Southwest, and was so influential that the term "monkeywrench" has come to mean, besides sabotage and damage to machines, any sabotage, activism, law-making, or law-breaking to preserve wilderness, wild spaces and ecosystems.

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 this book, motorcycle enthusiast Mitch Bergeron explores the most iconic and important models that Harley-Davidson has ever built. In encyclopedic maner excellent information is given about the technical history, production specifications and data of the most legendary models, starting off with the first prototype single to the Silent Grey Fellow and the legendary Big Twins up to CVO Electra Glides and Softails. Knucklehead, Panhead, Sportster, Shovelhead up to Evolution, TwinCam and Milwaukee-Eight are illustrated with vivid photographs and images of historical advertising and marketing material. This book is the ultimate encyclopedia when it comes to the evolution of the world's most recognized motorcycles.