How to find the best motorcycle roads

August 9, 9:57 PMSeattle Motorcycle ExaminerPhil Herring

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The only riding map you'll ever need

 Forget about asking your neighbor, 404 the web sites, burn the books.  There's one source for good rides that's so superior you'll never consider using anything else.

Destination Highways has been featured here before, but now they've killed the category by introducing maps to complement their guide books.

Each map of Washington, Northern California, or British Columbia displays the best 200-300 riding routes (depending on the region), ranked by overall quality.

They're waterproof and rip proof, traditional accordion-style, fold-up maps.  Half of the region is on one side, half on the other, so you get double the scale of most common road maps.  Far more when compared to an atlas.

If you're a cheap bastard you could buy just the map and call it good.  But if you did that you'd be missing out on the real data treasure contained in the books. 

Working together, the books give you a mile by mile description of the route and available services. Each route is analyzed by Twistiness, Pavement, Engineering, Remoteness, Scenery, and Character, called a T.I.R.E.S. score.  The maps provide a fantastic planning tool because you can see the big picture, something that web sites, books, and especially neighbors, can't do.

You can also tuck the map into your tank bag so you don't beat the crap out of your book on the road. 

I own all three regions and I never ride outside my 'hood without using them.  Once you've planned a trip with these tools, everything else is a bitter disappointment. 

Brian Bosworth and Michael Sanders rode 87,000 miles to research the first three, and we can only hope they live long enough to ride the 1.4 million miles it would require to cover the other 47 states.

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