Motorcyclist USA — September-October 2017

16 | september | october 2017

STEVE ENGLISH

At the Isle of Man,

racers push them-

selves and their

machines to the

absolute limit. Here,

Englishman Martin

Jessopp rides on

the boundary of

control and chaos.

IN THIS ISSUE

FRONTIERS, BOUNDARIES, AND LIMITS

• in pulling together stories, photos, and other content for each issue of
  Motorcyclist, the staff is often guided by a theme. In this issue, that theme is summa-
  rized by the idea of “frontiers.” A frontier can be a physical boundary, or it can repre-
  sent the highest achievement in a given discipline.
  Advancing achievement is a mainstay of competition and serves as the motivation
  for the racers shown in the opening pages of this issue. Deeper in the book we dedicate
  10 pages to this year’s Isle of Man TT, an event that sees top riders lapping the 37.7-mile
  road course at an average speed of 130 mph. The TT is viewed by many as the most
  demanding, dangerous, and prestigious motorcycle race in the world. A frontier indeed.
  Geographic boundaries—the most traditional interpretation of a frontier—played
  into our two feature stories, first along California’s central coast where ocean and
  mountains bound in the Pacific Coast Highway, which this summer is closed to
  through traffic due to road damage. Exploring an alternative route aboard Honda’s
  CRF250L Rally and Kawasaki’s Versys-X 300, Zack Courts and I experienced a new
  landscape of fire roads and truck trails. Following that dual-sport comparison is
  the harrowing story of Carmen Gentile and Nish Nalbandian’s efforts to extricate
  a battered Ural sidecar from the war-ravaged city of Mosul. In Iraq, boundaries are
  everything; they determine whether you are safe or in danger, whether citizens live
  under a subjugating caliphate or a free democracy.
  All of us face limitations of some sort or another, but Paul Pelland’s has a name:
  multiple sclerosis. Paul is featured in this issue’s Me & My Bike column, and his story
  will make you question the constraints of diagnoses and question the need to main-
  tain modern Yamahas. In our last-page Megaphone column, we hear one person’s
  point of view on the subject of limiting our own recreational frontiers.
  In some way or another, every story and photo we’ve included in the magazine you
  now hold in your hands represents the idea of “frontiers.” After all, motorcycling is all
  about exploring, pushing limits, and crossing boundaries. —Ari Henning

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