Ted Simon on Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Adventure Rider Radio – Motorcycle Podcast · Jun 19, 2026
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Brand
Green Chilli Adventure Gear
Green Chilli Adventure Gear is a brand that makes luggage and gear for adventure motorcycling. They’re described as building tough, weather-resistant bags and mounting systems.
Term
dry bag
A dry bag is a waterproof bag that helps keep your gear dry. It’s common for riders because it protects luggage from rain and splashes.
Term
strapping system
A strapping system is the way you fasten bags to the bike using straps. Here, it’s how a waterproof bag gets secured as luggage.
Term
pannier
A pannier is a storage box that you mount on the sides of a motorcycle. It’s how many riders carry luggage and gear for longer trips.
Brand
Best Rest Products
Best Rest Products is a company that makes motorcycle gear for fixing tires and carrying tools. They’re mentioned here for tire repair items you’d use on a ride.
Term
tire plugs
Tire plugs are a quick repair for a puncture. They seal the hole so you can keep riding until you can properly fix or replace the tire.
Term
patch kits
A patch kit is a set of materials used to repair a punctured tire by sealing it from the inside. Compared with plugs, patches are often used when the puncture needs a more thorough seal, especially for repairs that aren’t just a quick roadside fix.
Term
tire iron
A tire iron is a strong tool used to pry a tire off and back on the wheel. Riders carry it so they can handle tire issues during a trip.
Term
Atlas throttle lock
A throttle lock is a gadget that keeps your bike’s throttle at the same setting. That way you don’t have to keep gripping and holding your wrist tight all day, but you can still twist it to speed up or slow down.
Term
factory cruise control
Cruise control is what lets your motorcycle keep the same speed without you constantly twisting the throttle. If your bike doesn’t have it from the factory, a throttle lock can help you do something similar.
Topic
Overland Expo Pacific Northwest
Overland Expo Pacific Northwest is a big weekend event for people who travel and camp with adventure bikes and 4x4 vehicles. You can see gear up close, take classes, and even camp on-site so you’re surrounded by the community.
Place
Deschutes County Expo Center
This is the expo venue where the event is held—where you go to see the booths, attend classes, and check out demos.
Term
tappet rods
These are parts inside the engine that help open and close the valves. If one falls into the oil pan area, it can get ruined and can also cause bigger engine problems.
Term
sump
The sump is the bottom oil reservoir of the engine. If something falls down there, it can be hard to retrieve and can cause damage.
Term
piston
A piston is the part that moves up and down inside the engine’s cylinder. It’s central to combustion, and problems around it often show up as smoke or rough running.
Concept
complete rebuild
A complete rebuild means taking the engine apart and fixing or replacing the key internal parts. It’s a big job, and you usually do it when something inside isn’t working right.
Term
ring groove
The ring groove is the slot in the piston where the piston ring lives. If it gets clogged with carbon, the ring can’t move properly and the engine can smoke or lose compression.
Term
cylinder sleeve
A cylinder sleeve is like a replaceable inner surface inside the cylinder. If you damage it, the piston and rings may not seal correctly and the engine can wear out faster.
Term
maintenance
Here, “maintenance” means taking care of things over time so they keep working. It’s not just fixing something when it breaks—it’s about staying on top of upkeep.
Brand
Rolls Royce
Rolls-Royce is a famous luxury car brand. The point of bringing it up here is to compare a “premium, careful engineering” approach with a different style of building cars.
Brand
Henry Ford
Henry Ford is a key figure in how cars became mass-produced. In this conversation, he’s used as a contrast to Rolls-Royce to show two very different ways of building vehicles.
LIVE
The last time I had Ted Simon on the show, we got talking one point about books, you
know, Ted Simon, Jupiter's Travels, one of the most famous, maybe the most famous and
influential motorcycle travel book ever written, certainly one of the books that helped define
adventure motorcycle travel for a lot of people, maybe the industry itself, the adventure motorcycle
industry itself.
But there's another famous book out there, Robert Persig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance.
Now that's one of the books that seems to sit on a lot of rider's shelves.
There's a lot of people that know that title, a lot of people recommend it.
And from what I found over the years, there's a lot of people, me included, that have started
reading it and never could finish it.
Ted Simon, we were talking about books that time, told me the same thing.
He'd tried to read it more than once and he could never make it all the way through.
At the time he said he would go back, well, he promised me he would go back and finish
it and that afterwards we could get together and talk about it.
Well, that's what he did.
He read the book.
And that's sort of where we begin.
One thing that I was really taken by is that Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
matters to Ted Simon in a way that I did not expect.
You're going to hear that.
This is one of the most famous books ever connected to motorcycling, but it's also a
book that many riders seem to struggle with.
So I was curious what Ted made of it after reading it, why it became so well known, why
so many people have trouble reading it, and maybe what, if anything, that riders should
be trying to take from it, if we should go read it.
Ted is 95 years old now and that sort of changes the weight hearing him talk about books and
motorcycles and travel and everything at this point because when he looks back, he's got
a long life of doing a lot of things, experience, mistakes,
answers, hopefully that he's figured out as he goes through life.
Now, he doesn't offer a grand theory.
He doesn't pretend to have all the answers, but what he does offer is something much
more grounded.
I'm Jim Martin.
This is Adventure Rider Radio.
Stay with us.
We get a good one for you.
Hi, this is Charlie Bourbon.
You're a preschool marker.
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And Gepardos.
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Simon Payne.
Jimmy Lewis.
Lyndon Busket.
Tiffany Coates.
Chris Birch.
Simon Thomas.
Lisa Jarvis.
Graham Jarvis.
Clint and Smout, and you're listening to Adventure Rider Radio.
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How old are you, Ted?
I'm 95.
95?
Yeah, I don't have to.
Thank God I don't have to say that very often.
Yeah, I'm Ted Simon.
And I've been many things in my life.
I've been a student of chemical engineering and then a journalist, a magazine editor,
a traveler, a motorcyclist, and a writer of a number of books, not all about motorcycle
and travel, some to do with California water politics and war in Bosnia and so on.
So I've done an awful lot of stuff and still trying to do a bit more even at my advanced
age.
Ted, welcome back to Adventure Rider Radio.
I'm glad to be here with you, Jim.
Most listeners will of course instantly recognize you through Jupiter's travels and the other
motorcycle journeys, the other books that you've written, but you're also a serious
reader and that's something that we're going to talk a little bit about today because
the last time we spoke you mentioned that you have a famous motorcycle book that is
still sitting on the shelf unfinished.
Can you set that up?
Well, I told you when the last time we spoke that I'd never read or never finished Zen
and the art of motorcycle maintenance and the book actually is important to me but not
so much for what's in it.
It was important to me because it got published at all.
It's a book that the author sent out I think 110 times to different publishers and they
all turned him down and then eventually somebody did publish it, expecting it to maybe sell
a few thousand and it ended up selling six and a half million copies.
And I, of course, I wanted to read it but the main reason I'm so pleased that it exists
is that as far as I know it's the only book that was of any consequence that had anything
to do with motorcycles, you know, motorcycle and literature were never very happy together.
I used to think that the publishers thought that nobody would take seriously a book that
I needed to do with motorcycles.
So the fact that it was published may be the reason that they took a chance on my book
because it came along very soon after Percik's book about motorcycle maintenance.
So maybe I owe him for that but when I tried to read it and I've tried several times to
read it, I could never get more than halfway or not even that because I kept having a real
problem with some of his ideas and I promised you the last time we spoke that I would actually
finish it.
So I have, it's a very long book and it's not really very much to do with motorcycles
but it is a lot to do with philosophy and attitudes and it has a lot to do with maintenance
and it just happens that at the same time as I'm doing this, another fellow called Stuart
Brand, another really old man, he's 92 but you would know him because he produced the
whole earth catalogue back in the 60s and that was a very important book for an awful
lot of people.
It was an extraordinary thing, it was just jam-packed with stuff about things and objects
and places that you normally don't get to read about and it became a sort of Bible for
what was then an alternative culture.
People who wanted to get back on the land and people who wanted to simplify their lives
and people who wanted to get away from corporate stuff and so on.
So that was back in the 60s and he's now at this advanced age, he started a whole new
series of books and the first one is called Maintenance of Everything.
So we're into maintenance and you as a builder of houses would understand what it is to be
involved in all the practical stuff of maintenance and having to understand how things work.
So here's a book that I think probably you should get as well, Maintenance of Everything
and that's something maybe you should try to look up unless you haven't got that yet.
No I don't have that yet, no I will have to look that up, okay.
The thing about the Zen book is that he's using a journey with his kid across America
as a vehicle first of all for finding out who he was because at a certain point in his
life apparently he went insane, he went nuts and up until the point where they took him
away and put him in the asylum he had been developing ideas about philosophy and these
are not ideas that come easy to people who normally ride around on motorcycles, which
might sound a bit patronizing but it's probably true and how on earth he managed to sell six
and a half million copies of it is extremely difficult for me to understand what I'm almost
certain of is that 6000000 of them probably never got beyond the first few chapters because
he's really quite relentless, he doesn't make it terribly easy you know and yet if you're
determined to get through it it does offer some rewards I mean you get to know about
Plato and Aristotle and some sort of fairly basic concepts about the difference between
rhetoric and classical philosophy and so I suppose if you were at all inclined to take up
philosophy it might be useful but as a story God knows if there were two versions of this
book one of which only had the travel bits in it and the other had all the philosophy bits in
it I think he could probably sell a lot more anyway I found it very interesting but I find it
quite extraordinary that he sold that many well good for him I mean I'm all for it I think it's
wonderful because there were six and a half million people who want to read any book and
still do I mean people still talk about it you still hear people talk about it and as a must read
and the many people that I've talked over the years we've been doing this for over 12 years now
I've done a lot of interviews and every time that book comes up almost invariably people say
they didn't finish it yet they recommend it that's right yeah so what is it is it just because
something that has a higher meaning is associated with something that us motorcyclists love so
much it's really hard hard for me to know why people would go on recommending it but do they
not say things like well it you know it's it's very good in parts like the cure its egg you know
I've heard that before because it's it's very it's very distinctly two stories and and it's not
easy to sort one out from the other unless you're really you've really got to want to read it through
to the end and I I only did it out of sense of duty okay you sort of said what it's about but can
you give us like the what I would call the Coles notes version you know that all right yeah yeah
he's he's using the journey as a way of he's got his kid on the back his kid is quite young
about eight years eight or nine years old a boy they're just going on a journey he's using the
journey he says as a kind of you know the word should talker yeah it was unfamiliar to me but
I kind of get it it's an Indian word I think it has to do with people gathering round and
talking to each other learning yeah like it's sort of a teaching thing I think it comes from
the place that was first done or appeared to be first done in North America which was in New
York so it's a teaching journey but it's only after a little while that you dip
you begin to realize that he's talking about himself in a almost in a previous iteration and he
calls himself Phaedrus and he's trying to at one of the same time tell his son how he came to the
point where he actually became insane and at the same time he's trying to teach his son something
about having the proper attitude to things which involves appreciating the goodness in them and
he's got this word quality and he thinks that in this previous existence of his himself that he was
revolutionizing philosophy that which is a hard hard thing to imagine doing but he's got stories
about being teaching and being taught by philosophy professors in Chicago and here and there and
getting into big arguments with them and believing that he knows better than they do and and he's so
convinced of all that that in the end they think he's mad now was he really mad or was he just put
away as the Russians used to do because he was causing too much trouble too much yes really don't
know but but his son of course doesn't has never been able to understand any of this and just remembers
being with his mother outside the asylum and and seeing his father behind a glass door and not
being able to get near him so he's trying to explain that the story is not really to his son
he's trying to explain to us as readers what was going on and then at the same time he's talking
about the kind of attitude you have to have when you're using a machine like a motorcycle and the
importance of maintaining it of doing oil changes he's forever doing oil changes on this in this
book and I don't I think I think that was something that people had to do an awful lot more of back
in the 50s and 60s I I had a lot of trouble with oil when I saw on my trip around the world but
trips were famous for giving trouble with oil I mean trouble with oil well they used to leak it
oh yes well that saves you changing it doesn't it you just keep topping it up well that's more
or less what happened I was never able to change my oil by the time I got anywhere where I could
possibly get to change my oil I changed pretty much the whole engine you know digress a bit thinking
about all this I realized that one of the most extraordinary things I ever did in my life was
to take my motorcycle apart and put it together again in Alexandria during the war when I think
about it now I think I'm more proud of that than almost anything because you know I I'd only been
on the bike for about 4,000 miles but I'd been through the desert and the bike had never never
really been prepared for this journey at all and they had a standard air filter which was really
nothing but a crinkled piece of paper in a perforated box and it was completely inadequate
and and so the sand got in to the engine and by the time I got to Alexandria smoke pouring out
well you you may remember that I'd never ridden a motorcycle until I did this journey so so
so I just knew that that was bad you know smoke pouring out and and I was going to have to do
something about it because I had the rest of Africa to go through well the whole of Africa to
go through and and there was nobody to talk to there was no help available at all there was a
war on I couldn't telephone I couldn't get any kind of help and I don't know why I believed I
always believe I can do things and you must be right that like that too so so I found a garage
it was really not a garage at all it was just a kind of a whole a big hole in the wall underneath
the railway line but they used it as a garage and there were two men there with oily ranks who
looked after cars and I got them to give me a space in this garage they charged me a few
piazzas and and of course being English I argued with them about that and felt thoroughly ashamed
about myself afterwards because it was so cheap to begin with they gave me five times as much of
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worked well or looked good it definitely does those things but I didn't realize how much
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that tension sort of works its way right up your arm and into your shoulder and I didn't know this
until I got the Atlas throttle lock and engaged it and suddenly and instantly it's gone that's a
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to the pistons I had no training at all I mean I had a workshop manual but it was I'd had it
reduced to a tiny size and and it wasn't really easy to read and after things that it talked
about I didn't know what they meant you know but you know I had to start from the top of
the rocker boxes and the the funny little muffin shaped tops that and worked down taking off the
rocker assembly and every time I made a move I kind of stood back and thought about it it was
like as I always say it was like bomb disposal work I because I knew that if if I lost any
anything I wouldn't be able to find anything like that you know yeah yeah right so you know
absolutely concentrated on making sure that I put the stuff in certain places and I had a
notebook and I made notes about what I'd done and it took me two days to do something that
normally you would maybe do in 45 minutes well I got to a certain point where I'd
got I'd got the the the rocker boxes off and then and then I got the cylinder head off and
then I had to get the barrel off and then I remembered that there was something that I had
to do when I took the barrel off that if I didn't do it it would be a total disaster or if I did
do it it would be a total disaster I I just couldn't remember what it was and I remember
think forever wondering as I as I did it what could it possibly have been and thank God just
before it was too late I managed to realize that there were these tappet rods that could fall
into the sump and if they fell into the sump they were gone forever you know and that was the
the high the high moment that was that was when the atom bomb was discovered that was that that
was the thing and when you got it back together again yeah and there was a huge cloud of smoke
when I started it up and I thought oh fuck that's that's no good that's good but then the
smoke disappears and it worked again I had one spare piston it's a but it was a twin so when
I got the pistons out I realized that these the piston rings were stuck and there was a lot of
buildup around them and one of them was worse than the other and I put a new piston on have you
done that yourself yeah I can still remember I wanted to say that I can still remember my first
complete rebuild everything bearings and everything and I started it up and being surprised and I
shouldn't have oh my god it works yes well there there wasn't and and the only thing I could do
with the other piston that which act I couldn't change was some words I had a razor blade and I
was able to cut away bits of rubbish inside the slots the pistons where the pistons sat
carving away I think I carved away a bit of metal well they do a ring a ring groove cleaner for
that but of course you didn't have that's what no no of course not I don't have anything so that
rebuild went 8000 miles across a terribly hard country you know so the hardest part of the whole
four years in that first section through Ethiopia and Sudan and so I I think it's
astonishing that I was able to do it I don't claim credit for it I just did what I had to do
was the anything I could do and I'm just amazed that it worked that that somewhere along the line
I did do something that would have stopped it from working I mean I had no idea whether just
chipping away at the slots was going to make this the the rings work or make the piston work
but you understood that did that by cleaning it out it would make the rings not stick and
you knew they shouldn't stick in yeah but who knows what else might follow from doing that you
know what might it do to the cylinder sleeve and of course I didn't even know that was called
a cylinder sleeve and then the other really amazing thing that I managed to do as in terms of
repair work was on the Dullabore plane in Australia two years later when halfway across in the
early evening I had my girlfriend Carol sitting on the back at that time and I you know the
Dullabore is famous for being in the middle of nowhere there isn't anything anywhere and
and I felt something weird going on behind me and I stopped thank God just in time to realize
that my rear wheel was falling to pieces and the and the the spokes on one side there were only
about three left oh the wheel itself that building building a wheel is supposed
to be quite a difficult thing to do I believe they tell me and why I had spare spokes I
have no idea why why I had them but I did have them and the mosquitoes were terrible and Carol
was trying to beat the mosquitoes away from me well I took the wheel off and and and rebuilt
the wheel and put it back on again and again I have no idea how I did this I I'm amazed as far
as far as I know it worked perfectly well so I hope this will be a great encouragement to people
listening to this that it's worth having a go at anything yeah I I believe that more people
should have that attitude let me just jump back Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance what do
you think Persig wanted us to get us riders or readers to get from what he wrote in that book
I think he wanted us to get pretty much the same thing that that Stuart Brand wants us
to get and that other people from that generation want us to get which is to put value on the
process involved in looking after things in maintaining things in keeping life going specifically
now I think the of course this whole idea of of throwaways the throwaway society was a very
powerful idea wasn't it during the 70s and 80s and so on and and produce a strong reaction
especially from people like me and Persig and Brandon and probably you and some people who
were really alarmed at the way in which because it was so everything was so cheap and easy to obtain
at the expense of the lives of people who lived a long way away that we were just
automatically so discarding stuff and just replacing everything and still a sense still
I'm afraid yes perhaps a little less so perhaps a little I don't know I feel bad for example the
other day I have coffee in the morning and I have a little machine that's frosts the coffee
the milk you know to put in the coffee and I had a machine that worked very well for two years
and then and suddenly it stopped working and there's nothing I could do about it there's
this I just feel badly about throwing away something that's got all sorts of bits in it
that probably could be repaired or something could be done with it and there isn't anywhere I
could go anyone I could look to I can't there doesn't seem to be any way even to open it
to repair there's no parts available for it and like no one there's no shop
that I mean I had friends that for many many years made a living off of they had a shop
where they did electronics repairs TV really VCRs all that sort of stuff and they were just
busy all the time and of course there are no TV shops anymore that I know that that's not repairs
yeah what else should we expect to learn from this book I think that's all that's what there is
to learn I don't I don't think there's anything it's you know parts of it are a good read and
I don't think there's a lot to learn that there are people for whom this is a wonderful book
but that these are very special people who happen to have a tremendous interest in philosophy a real
concern about bringing up children who love the idea of motorcycle travel and enjoy motorcycle
maintenance and I mean I don't know if there's six and a half million of those people but
those those would be the ones that would really enjoy this book so would this be on your must read
list no no go off and buy Jupiter's travels instead and of course that's not just out
on our motorcycle maintenance and I have to say that you know I'm not disappointed I haven't read
it now I mean I read parts of it I don't know how much of it I actually read I can't remember I do
remember parts as you're talking and I remember stuff but I never did complete it and you know
after talking to you today Ted I don't think I'm going to does that make me a bad person a bad
poor motorcyclist I don't know if you still have it yeah yeah I still have it we'll read the last
chapter just read the last chapter okay and maybe you'll be drawn in I don't know that's not too
much to ask no I'll do that but but let's keep an eye on Stuart Brand and see what he comes up
with his book is really very interesting so talk about this book it's Stuart Brand and the book is
called what it's called maintenance of everything and it's all about the joys and virtues of
maintenance and it tells wonderful stories and it uses it's of course an awful lot of it is about
wars guns and motorcycles but he also tells a marvelous story
about the people who sailed around the world as a content competition I've got it in front of me
and I'm just looking for the golden globe it was called and it was a race for single-handed
yachtsmen to be the fastest to go around the globe and he uses it because he's got wonderful detail
about what each of those individual yachtsmen did to make sure that their boats actually could survive
the journey and lots to learn from that and and he tells look he tells lovely stories about the
difference between Rolls Royce and Henry Ford so it's a very good book and it's hard
to put it in a nutshell that's a better book to buy is this a new book yes new sprang well what about
you Ted I mean here at 95 years old what have you learned in life what wisdom do you have what have
you learned that you could pass on to us right now I really think it's important to enjoy life and I
think maybe that matters that I do enjoy life I think a lot of people don't enjoy it as much as
they should so I would offer that you should find out find out how to enjoy your life as best you
can I think the only troubles I've really had have been because of relationships having been
either impetuous or misguided but I would I would say that I did learn lessons I think
it's important to learn lessons and to to remember what you did and why some of it wasn't great and
and figure out ways to avoid doing the same thing again it's very helpful
no great overarching rules they don't have that goodness I don't have any religion so I'm not
bound I'm not liable to think of myself as a sinner I'm just wondering that's probably a good thing is
it yes yes yeah I tell you you want to be a sinner are you a sinner mr. master I'm gonna have to say
probably yes I guess it depends on how you judge it but that's what I was thinking when you're saying
you don't have to feel yourself as a sinner is because if you were put in that measurement
you wouldn't do so well absolutely not but even when you say about relationships then
then really what my takeaway is from that if you that's what's really caused you trouble in life
then we should avoid relationships but that's crazy yes no that's absurd no you don't have to
no no you affect them I've had a lot of them and they've been good and the one I've got now is very
good what about the key to success you know people often look at people who have achieved great things
in their life and they want to know what they eat for breakfast and what else they do what are they
what do you do for exercise Ted do you exercise hardly at all for a long time in my life the only
exercise I ever did was getting dressed you know having to balance on one leg in order to get the
other leg through the trousers right every now and again I just at one time or another in my life
I sort of thought I should do more and I'd go for half-hearted runs and I'm no good at running
because I have a bit as I must I have a stunted chest it doesn't hold an awful lot of air I don't
have a lot of puff is that a real medical condition or is just something you know it's just an excuse
that you tell yourself why you can't exercise I'm a little different from other people I mean I'm
skinny and my mother's doctor told her that I would never amount to anything very much wow wow
that's quite a prediction well Ted I thank you very much it's great fun sit down and have a chat
with you I appreciate it and thank you for reading the book I feel like you've you know you really
put yourself through something for this and and really I guess what all it tells us is it's a book
we don't have to read well it was I felt I felt a duty so I did as I say I think that I think the
fact that he was able to publish a book with the word motorcycle in the title probably helped me a
lot probably made made my book more acceptable so thank you mr. Persing thank you so much Jim
for this opportunity and I hope I may still be around for another one sometime
well I'm counting on that Ted thanks so much
that was Ted Simon from his home in France you can read more about Ted Simon find out more
about Ted Simon through jupitalia.com as his website you can find this book everywhere
finds the books everywhere that find books are sold we've got the links in the show notes we've
got some photos there dropped by our website adventureriderradio.com let you you can just
search for Ted Simon you'll see all the different conversations we've had over the years and you'll
find this one as well with those links adventureriderradio.com
this episode was brought to you in part by green chili adventure gear at greenchiliadv.com
best rest products at cyclepump.com anytime you're dealing with these companies or anything
you hear on adventurerider radio let them know you heard them here and this show is built on
a model of advertising and listener support the combination of the two we'd really appreciate
if you go to adventureriderradio.com and click on support
well that about wraps up another episode of adventure rider radio and we sure hope you
enjoyed listening to it as much as we did making it special thanks to our producer Elizabeth Martin
and of course you thank you very much for being a part of the show by listening to it
there's a bunch of different ways you could help out the show if you appreciate what we do here
every week and we have done for over 12 years now never missed an episode we would really
appreciate a five star review from wherever you're finding your podcast that helps other people
find the show another thing you can do that would be huge is share it with your friends tell other
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my name is Jim Martin now it's time to get out there and ride your bike
I'm Ted Simon and here I am on Adventure Rider Radio again and extremely happy to be here with Jim Martin
you
About this episode
Hosts and guest Ted Simon dig into why certain motorcycle travel and philosophy books stick in riders’ minds—especially Jupiter’s Travels and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which many people start but struggle to finish. They also connect the “maintenance” mindset to real-world upkeep: oil changes, roadside repairs, and even full engine teardowns after sand and oil trouble. Along the way, the conversation touches publishing odds, book structure, and practical gear like throttle locks and footpegs.
Original notes
Why Robert Pirsig’s Famous Motorcycle Book Mattered to Him — And Why it Didn’t
Ted Simon is best known as the author of Jupiter’s Travels, one of the most influential motorcycle travel books ever written. Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is another book that has long held a strange place in motorcycling culture: widely known, often recommended, and perhaps just as often left unfinished. In this conversation, Ted talks about finally reading Pirsig’s famous book and why it matters to him in a way listeners might not expect. Is it really a motorcycle book? Why has it stayed in the minds of riders for so many years? And what does motorcycle maintenance mean when the machine beneath you is not just a symbol, but the thing that determines whether the journey continues? What begins with one famous motorcycle book soon opens into Ted’s own memories of travel, breakdowns, repair, and the very practical reality of keeping a journey alive when there is no easy answer and no one else to do the work.
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Adventure Rider Radio – Motorcycle Podcast
Adventure Rider Radio | Adventure Motorcycling
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