Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Book Review: The Complete Guide to Motorcycling Colorado by Steve Farson

The cover of this book reads: "The Definitive Reference for ALL the Best roads, Rides and Trips".  Quite the goal that Steve Farson set for himself in trying to put all the wonderful riding available in Colorado into one book.  I would say though, that Steve is definitely the closest thing to that goal that I've ever read!


From motorbooks.com's website:  This comprehensive new guidebook to Colorado contains colorful in-depth descriptions of 172 different rides that can be combined in a variety of ways to create the best trips for all riding styles and interests. The individual rides have their own more detailed maps, along with route descriptions, photos, local points of interest, and historical information.  In addition, onboard videos of each ride are available at www.rmridervideo.com.  Regional maps show how the rides can be combined to form journeys from half a day to several days in length, on paved roads or into the back country, or both. Color photos for each ride introduce the incredible variety of terrain, and historical photos placed next to present day shots show how much (or how little) has changed in the intervening years.

In his years of riding Colorado and other parts of the country, Steve has pretty much covered every road and byway in Colorado reachable by motorcycle.  A lot of the rides and routes he describes so well in the book I've ridden myself and the detail, history and observations he adds to the actual route description rekindled in me a desire to revisit some of those byways again.

Also close to my own heart, he offers pictures of Colorado locales from "back then" to "now" to show the reader how things have changed or remained the same through the years.  I first saw this style of photographical history in John Fielder's Books, and I've done some postings myself but with motorcycles in the "now" picture.

As with most ride guide books, the rides are broken up into sections of the Great State of Colorado, giving the reader an fast reference to the area to be explored via motorcycle.  Not only are the routes numbered on the map, but Steve Farson has a color code system for ready finding of a specific route, very handy.

This book will become probably the top reference I use to plan daily and longer rides within my adoptive home state.  I strongly recommend this book to other Colorado riders and definitely for anyone planning to ride their motorcycle to this state to see its scenic wonders.

If you'd like to buy this book, and please tell them you read about it here, please follow this link.

3 comments:

Bluekat said...

I like local guidebooks like this. They seem to find the little secret roads that get overlooked by others. A keeper book for the reference shelf.

Oz said...

Sounds like a great book. I love riding in Colorado. I need to order the book and benefit from his details.

redlegsrides said...

Bluekat....this one is pretty good, thanks for the visit.

Motoroz...I dont think you'll regret it, tell them I sent ya! :)