On the road again…

North Carolina, today, and it’s 3 hours later than usual for me.  I was up at 4:00 a.m this morning, but that’s really 7:00 a.m in Left Coast time, so I guess I could say I slept in.   No, wait a minute, I got that backwards.  It would be 1:00 a.m. in California!  Whatever.  It’s colder than California here, but that’s okay.

So I’m up early reading one of my favorite moto mags (Motorcycle.com) and I noticed an interesting article on the most expensive production motorcycles in the world.   We’re talking about bikes from the low $30K range up to $200K.  Yikes.  Anyway, it was an interesting read, and you can see it here.

Moto Baja! is doing well, and I’m working on the Kindle version now.   I had my first review on Amazon from my good buddy Marty, and it was great…

I have a history with Joe Berk. I’ve known for a long time his love of Baja. He urged me to go there and I resisted due to my belief that everything south of the border was banditos, narco nutters, mordida, and bad bacteria. One day I said okay, to hell with it, I’m going. And am I ever glad that I did — thank you, Joe, for stunning scenery, great roads (excellent asphalt for my autobahn-burner), wonderful food, and best of all, the friendliest people I’ve ever met on this planet. You might think that I speak Spanish and you would be wrong. Somehow friendly ways are a language all its own. Yes, I went back for more. For seasoned motorcyclists, Joe has much to say that makes great good sense on the subject of small capacity motorcycles — pay attention. You are lucky, in this book you get to meet a man who is a force of nature, a rider, an adventurer, a complete human being.

Everything is colorful in Baja…even the cemeteries!

So, back to that Kindle thing.  It will be a week or so before the Kindle version of Moto Baja! goes live.   When I wrote Moto Baja!, my objective was to focus on the photography (Baja is a photographer’s paradise).  I wanted the book to be in color, but I also wanted to keep the page count reasonable to keep the cost to you down.   When you do a book in color, Amazon treats every page as a color page (even those with text only), and that drives the cost up.  To get the page count down, I went to a slightly reduced font size (don’t worry; it’s still very readable), two columns per page, and a landscape orientation.  That worked and the book looks great, but all that fancy formatting threw me a curve when I uploaded it to Kindle.  It was back to the drawing board for me, and I’m laying it all out in a Kindle-friendly format now.  For those of you who are waiting on the Kindle version, all I can say is hang in there; it will be soon.   And for those of you who want the print version, more are inbound to CSC and more will be available on Amazon. Moto Baja! is selling well, and we are printing more to keep up with the demand.

Debbie, a cocktail waitress at the Colorado Belle…a photo from the Destinations Deal Tour.

And the title of this blog?  It’s not just because I’m out here on the east coast for a day or so…it’s Willie Nelson!  Yep, he’s going to be live at the Colorado Belle in Laughlin, Nevada, and Susie and I will be there.  You’ll remember that our Destinations Deal group stayed in the Belle on the first night of our four-state ride, and the Belle’s River Bar had a killer band playing that evening. And one time about 20 years ago on one of the Laughlin River Runs I had the great pleasure of listening to Mickey Fleetwood (of Fleetwood Mac) at the Colorado Belle.  The place just attracts great music.  The opportunity to hear Willie Nelson in concert at the Colorado Belle is too good to let get away.  Next month I’ll be on the road again…specifically to hear Willie Nelson sing that very song!