Driven to Ride

Chances are your motorcycle bucket list just keeps growing and growing. Sure, you’ll eventually cross a few off our list, but to be honest, the hardest part of any motorcycle trip, is just starting. …

Lots of folks fantasize about following their dreams. Most ideas, however, never get past the initial imagination phase. Some years ago, Tim de Jong was backpacking in Southeast Asia. He rented one o…

As adolescent introductions to motorcycling go, author and podcaster Ted Kettler’s first two-wheel experience probably isn’t unique. But, as he tells host Mark Long on this episode of the “Driven to …

“Jimbo” Tarpey describes himself as “the guy riding a motorcycle from the Arctic to the Antarctic. I talk about the history and the culture of the places I visit—the details, the nitty-gritty, the fu…

Peter Egan is one of the most beloved voices in automotive and motorcycle journalism. In a warm, wide-ranging conversation that takes place inside his Wisconsin workshop, Egan reconnects with “Driven…

For the past 20 years, fast friends Charley Boorman and Ewan McGregor have been wandering the globe on an eclectic mix of motorcycles. “Long Way Home,” the intrepid pair’s fourth and most recent tele…

Andrew Richardson has been the face of REALRIDER for more than a decade, but when he created the government-certified automatic crash-detection app, he didn’t even own a motorcycle. Richardson has si…

Dave Roper has been racing motorcycles for more than half a century. The New England native is probably best known for campaigning exotic vintage machinery under the Robert Iannucci-led Team Obsolete…

Jon DelVecchio came to motorcycling later in life than many riders—as an adult and after starting a family. Yet, he’s accomplished a lot on two wheels, from becoming a Motorcycle Safety Foundation co…

From a teenage pizza-slinging street racer to a professional National Hot Rod Association-winning Pro Stock Motorcycle drag racer, Steve Johnson understands the value of humble beginnings. He also kn…

Greek philosopher Plato is credited with the expression, “Our need will be the real creator,” which, loosely translated centuries later, became, “The true creator is necessity, who is the mother of o…

If you’re a motorcyclist living and riding in the U.S., Nick Haris works for you. Even more so if you’re one of the more than 200,000 members of the American Motorcyclist Association, whose tagline i…

Annick Magac and “Driven to Ride” host Mark Long grew up in different parts of the country, but they share common ground. They both live to ride and ride to live, as the saying goes, and they both ha…

Motorcycling and politics don’t mix, right? They do for Nick Haris. In college, the Washington state native was an economics major and worked at a motorcycle shop. Degree in hand, he applied for his …

Larry Fletcher grew up in Wisconsin in the late 1960s and early ’70s, like a lot of people his age, doing “silly stuff” on minibikes with his buddies. He took a break from motorcycling until he moved…

Thalassa Van Beek fell in love with motorcycling as a teenager working as a hostess and model in her native Netherlands. She was handing out brochures at a trade show when a blue Yamaha YZF-R6 caught…

Moms are the best advice-givers. Wyoming native Brady McLean once dated a woman from a multi-generational motorcycle family. “Her mom is the first one that I can ever remember saying, ‘Go fast, don’t…

Vanessa Ruck is a self-proclaimed “go-getter, a chase-your-dreams kind of girl.” Her path to motorcycling came in a roundabout way: on the heels of a devastating bicycle accident that required seven …

Daniel Ritz stumbled upon motorcycling a dozen years ago while working as a newspaper editor in Southern California. “There was a small shop up the street from where I was living,” he tells “Driven t…

Some might say Aussie Alana Baratto was destined to work in the motorcycle industry. Her father was a rider, both on- and off-road, and he shared that cherished pastime with his daughters. Alana was …