Before It Was Called Overlanding: A 78-Year-Old Rider Looks Back

It’s easier for me to relate to Carl Stearns Clancy, who circled the globe on a motorcycle in 1913, than to the modern overlanders whose well-equipped bikes now pass through Buenos Aires, where Elisa and I help them park and store their machines.

You see, I’ve been riding for a while—since 1959 to be exact. I was 14 years old and living in Tokyo, Japan, the son of a U.S. Air Force officer. My first motorcycle? A used Honda Cub that I got in a trade with a Japanese stamp dealer—my complete set of U.S. Special Delivery stamps for that little blue-and-white beast. A fair deal, as far as I was concerned.

With that Cub, I became something of a regular in the gin bars of Shinjuku. The soldiers and airmen knew me as the "Captain's Kid." The kimono-clad hostesses adopted me like a mascot. I drank more gin fizzes than milk in those days—despite my mother’s best efforts. When the OSI or military police rolled in hunting for deserters, the hostesses would hustle me into their dressing room for safekeeping. I was 14 and thought I was invincible.

After Japan, I spent a couple of years at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, the same time Hunter Thompson was sports writer for the Command Courier, the base newspaper. He also moonlighted for the local Ft Walton Beach papers. I met him in the bar of the local hotel where I washed dishes and ran room service. I think my meeting with Hunter Thompson changed my life. I saved up and bought my next bike—a BSA Bantam Major, 125cc of two-stroke British thunder. Legal to ride in Florida at 14, and just enough bike to feel free, forget the American Dream.

I graduated high school in Ankara, Turkey, in two years, earned my degree from the University of South Florida, and in 1966, joined the Peace Corps. That’s how I ended up in Limón, Costa Rica, teaching at the local colegio after a long, slow train ride from San José.

Fast forward to the summer of 1968. With my Peace Corps readjustment allowance in hand, I bought a brand-new motorcycle—zero kilometers—and began my first international ride. I was 21. My destination: Los Angeles and a reunion with my Costa Rican girlfriend.

To put the timing in perspective, I started that journey less than a year after Che Guevara was killed in Bolivia,(1967) and more than five years before Ted Simon kicked off his four-year "Jupiter’s Travels" odyssey from London. (1973)

I crossed Central America and into Mexico—arriving in Mexico City just before the 1968 Olympics. That timing nearly got me killed. Just blocks from the infamous Tlatelolco Massacre, I was pulled off the street by men I’m certain were CIA assets and stashed in a “safe house” until things cooled down.

I finally rolled into Los Angeles in November of 1968. No GPS. No satellite phone. No social media, Google Maps, or Airbnbs. In four months, I met exactly two other international riders. The road was empty and wild and free in a way it will never be again.

And I’m still riding.

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