Motorcycle Travel

This book is about 21 days and 60 years. A motorcycle ride down the spine of Appalachia, with a little banjo and big myth for company, to play and sing at the graves of dead banjo heroes. About making a life about making work. This book is about outsiders. Interlopers. Class migrants. Death. Awakening. Creative process. Growth through risk-taking. It’s a book about ghosts. Music. Writing. Not writing. What’s this book not about? “Finding myself.” I know who I am.

Within six months Barbara Schoichet lost everything: her job, her girlfriend of six years, and her mother to pancreatic cancer. Her life stripped bare, and armed with nothing but a death wish and a ton of attitude, Barbara pursues an unlikely method of coping. At the age of 50, she earns her motorcycle license, buys a Harley on eBay from two guys named Dave, and drives it alone from New York to Los Angeles on a circuitous trek loosely guided by her H.O.G. tour book and a whole lot of road whimsy.

Take four friends, put them on two Ural motorcycles (complete with sidecars), send them off on a 2,500-mile odyssey retracing history’s most famous retreat, add what some might consider an excessive amount of Vodka, and you’ve got Sylvain Tesson’s Berezina, a riotous and erudite book that combines travel, history, comradery, and adventure.

Told with humor and wit, Scraping Pegs is a bold narrative; including “rules” to help you survive the art of riding and life. Press an experienced rider beyond their glory stories, and they’ll tell you about the miles of nothingness. While showing off their road rash, they may share special moments, cruising down the road to joy, accelerating out of a corner, riding across desert sand, or up a mountain trail.

Learn best practices on a motorcycle for maneuvering S curves to hairpins, rain, hail, and lightening. What to do when encountering animals ranging from skunks to cows. How to survive crazy drivers on cell phones. The author takes you around 92 curves typical of what can be found anywhere in the country and addresses dozens of threats to the motorcycle rider. Included are motorcycle myths.