In the summer of 2015, Steve, Scotty and I ride out of the San Francisco Bay Area on our 40-year-old motorcycles and ride into the Sierra and White Mountains along the California and Nevada borders. "Steve and Scotty are college rugby teamates in their thirties, reliable and good-heartedly heedless. I'm in my sixties, cautious and reserved, a loner at heart. However, Steve is a catalyst." We travel a thousand miles over five days, experiencing the moments as they unfold. This lighthearted narrative is a true account of that journey, we follow the middle road of friendship and compromise, enjoy the rewards and accept the consequences of sailing at the whimsy of the wind. Three Old Motorcycles: Reflections from a Thousand Mile Journey , by Chuck Granata, is a travelogue/diary, beautifully illustrated with photos and paintings, covering Mr. Granata's 5-day, 1000-mile motorcycle trip with 2 friends. I wish I could have been the 3 rd . It's unfair advantage that Granata has such incredible landscape to describe. Three friends on motorcycles on a 1000-mile, 5-day bike trip from Napa, California, up into the Sierra Nevada and back. It's a bit Kerouac, a bit Thoreau: It's On the Road meets Walden Pond . The strength of Granata's writing lies in his descriptions of the sensations of riding and the deeply evocative and achingly beautiful descriptions of the passing landscape. So where does the drama come from? Do the 3 old friends battle among themselves? Not really. Are there crashes? Not even close. Do they tangle with the local riff-raff in all the wild west saloons they stop in at? No. Then, I realized the drama was in descriptions like this: " The road out of the valley is longer than my memory recalls--the rain falls harder and the evening darkens. . . . We funnel into the narrow river gorge--the storm intensifies to a downpour--I can hardly see the road. The rain hammers and weighs me down. My mind drifts--I wonder how much farther and--POP! -- I'm out of the storm and for a moment--weightless. The roadway is dry--everything is dry. The air is warm and the strip of sky above the steep canyon walls is clear and deep blue--I see the road and the river flowing as I roll along in a dreamlike kind of bliss. We reach the town of El Portal and my clothes are dry." Granata repeatedly captures moments like this with great lyrical power. For Granata this journey is internal as much as it is external. In fact, his internal journey is the most interesting part. Richard Slota Playwright, novelist, poet, writer of non-fiction Author of: Stray Son, a novel Captive Market: Commercial Kidnapping Stories from Nigeria, non-fiction Babatunde in Hell, a play Mascularity: a play about Men, Gravity and Gender. Famous Michael, a play Mother Like An Army, a poem in the current issue of Caveat Lector The author has lived and worked in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1971 and has enjoyed traveling the western states by foot, car and motorcycle since then. Ana is a columnist, editor, novelist and poet. She teaches creative writing at Napa Valley College. Susan Szecsi is a freelance illustrator and designer living in Berkeley California. A classically trained artist, she attended two art prestigious art schools in Europe and holds an MA in English Culture and Literature.