Into the Horizon – Book Review
Indeauthor, Lance Gines has been riding motorcycles, be that road or trail bikes, since he was 6 years old. He takes you scooting, or bouncing, across Western USA on a pretty eclectic mix of roads. He often rides with his father and happily writes that he’s well aware of how unusual it is for a man’s best mate to be his father. I really like how he describes this.
Riding a wide variety of bikes, Gines tells the tale of how he started to ride and with that story alone you realise that you are on an interesting journey. It’s not often that a reader of motorcycle books is treated to a motorcyclists lifelong thought process, passions, uncertainties and highs. There are several threads woven into the book which add variety and though each chapter is a different ride, very good connecting factors. Motorcycles, his father and riding friends, routes, and chunks of American history. He doesn’t take much time out to describe the landscapes but he mixes in some very quirky tales of the people met along the way and I liked those a lot.
Modern technology makes a book like this possible. It isn’t amazingly well edited in that, for example, some sections could have been interestingly expanded, and I’m sad about they haven’t. But it’s honest, determined and is dotted with both drama and beauty. I can see why his friends and family encouraged him to set his thoughts down on paper. I found one lacking obvious. For a person who doesn’t know the USA well, certainly not in as much detail as Gines describes his routes, I would have loved to seen maps included, even if they were hand drawn. I hope that he does so in subsequent editions.
In spite of that I think that a person looking to explore their own back USA yards more, or even planning a ride through the country as a visitor, would do well to read this book. One final thought. When the book arrived he had inscribed the following into it for me, and the thought hits the mark superbly. ‘May the road always feel like home.’
ISBN 978-1499170283
£7.64