On November 27, 1941, travelers on US Highway 99 south of Yreka, Caifornia were astonished to find a band of men blocking the road and waving hunting rifles. They handed out a Proclamation of Independence, which informed one and all that the State of Jefferson was in "patriotic rebellion against the States of California and Oregon" and would continue to "secede every Thursday until further notice..."

The guys in the garage at the Transportation Revolution finish giving me directions just as a bank of inky clouds unleash their payload. Having no desire to guide the Triumph Scrambler into a curtain of precipitation, I wait patiently and try to contemplate the magnitude of the first leg of this journey.

Because the National Road had channeled considerable prosperity to communities along its path east of the Ohio River, the states of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois implored Congress to extend the road through their territories, all the way to the Mississippi River. As the National Road stretched westward, however, trains became a more efficient form of transportation, making National Road travel obsolete, and funding dried up before the historic road ever reached the Big Muddy.

In the dim morning light, a glance down at my watch confirms it's 6:30am. We broke camp and left Dakhla (Morocco's southernmost town) an hour ago. I ease my grip on the handlebars and take in a deep breath. The wind drying my face does little to relieve the anxiety I feel as we ride south to the notorious Mauritanian border. Lisa is tucked in behind me, her single cylinder thumping a steady rhythm.

My trip begins next to an 11-foot-tall green frog. On a spool of thread. On a bridge. Seriously. In the Connecticut town of Willimantic that's how they commemorate a peculiar bit of colonial history. One night in 1754, a terrible racket woke the local citizenry, and fearing an Indian attack, the men gathered, muskets in hand. Once day broke, they discovered the source of the din - hundreds of dead and dying bullfrogs that had been croaking their last notes because their pond had dried up.

Dual sport riding is about sacrifice. It's about sacrificing comfort, taking on a little weight, giving up some road manners and, in the name of adventure, embracing the fear of the unknown. Within sacrifice lies balance, and in the case of dual sporting it's providing the ability to happily explore the back roads and still use the common thoroughfares to find them.

So goes the old country song, and in today's economy those words fit most of us more snugly than we care to admit. Nevertheless, we freedom-loving, travel-addicted, wind-in-the-face motorcyclists will find a way to explore, even when our budgets can't stretch far enough to allow for flying off to distant shores in the summer.

Not a scooter and not a regular motorcycle, the groundbreaking DN-01 ("Dream New" Concept 1) demands a whole new classification - which Honda calls Crossover.

For 2010, Harley-Davidson's CVO division is marking its eleventh year with two returning favorites and two new flavors. For discriminating buyers with distinguished credit limits, these limited-edition models represent the pinnacle of panache from Milwaukee's ultimate fashionistas.

Don't mistake the Moto Guzzi Griso 8v for a gentlemanly cruiser or a weekend toy for podiatrists and pretenders with more dough than go.

With a name like Sportster, Harley-Davidson's line of smaller, stripped down motorcycles should evoke visions of curve carving or straight-line bravado. While this may have been the case many decades ago, today's Sportys have largely been relegated to filling the "lower priced and less cumbersome" niche left vacant by their larger brethren.

"The World's Fastest Standard Motorcycle" - for over 10 years, this simple phrase was the cornerstone of Vincent HRD's advertising campaign.