How Neale and Dennis met, and launched a travel dream
Welcome to the first in a series of articles, photos and videos from the Speed TV series, Trippin On Two Wheels. This motorcycle travel show ran on Speed from around 2005 until the network’s demise in 2013.
The show features car celebrity Dennis Gage, of My Classic Car fame, yours truly as his trusty sidekick, and Dennis’ young son Sam. My son Patrick makes it into the last episode which was really special for me, but it was basically the three of us for the first six episodes. The first episode was shot in the west of Scotland on Triumph Sprint ST’s back in ’05, and when the filming was over, we all said goodbye and took off to our respective homes. We had no way of knowing if we would ever shoot another episode.
The show got picked up and we went on to film episodes in Sicily, Spain, Quebec, Italy/Switzerland, a vintage episode in America and finally Nova Scotia. For those who enjoyed the show, or if you are enjoying it now for the first time here at Road Dirt, there is a back story to how it all came about and how I ended up writing feature articles about some of the trips.
One of the facts of life our poor, esteemed leader and editor Brooks has learned to deal with over the past few years is the moment I say, “Let me tell you a story.” He has quickly learned to run to the loo (bathroom in English), grab food, water, flares and a safety blanket and repair to a quiet, comfortable place to settle in as it usually takes a long time. So, as I explain this whole “Trippin” madness it might be a good idea to follow his lead.
It all started in a seaside resort in Italy. Well, to be a bit more accurate it started at the Misano Circuit Sic 58 in the summer of 2002. June 14th to be precise. It was the first World Ducati Week and the festivities ran through to the weekend that the circuit hosted its round of the World Superbike series. At that time American Ben Bostrom was flying high and Troy Bayliss was the reigning world champion, both on Ducati 998s, while Colin Edwards was attempting to break the Ducati dominance on his Honda. Heady times. Well not as heady as ending up with a bedroom next to Ben Bostrom’s heartthrob girlfriend. But I digress.
To be perfectly honest, it actually really all started in Bologna, at the Ducati factory a day earlier. A large group of press from around the world were invited to the factory, given a tour and then handed the keys to a motorcycle. We were to ride to the seaside resort of Misano and check into a swanky hotel the day before the event started. While all of this seemed fairly straightforward, and a tour of Ducati’s factory and museums is as close as I’ll get to a religious experience, once outside on our bikes everything turned very quickly Italian.
With our luggage on a bus somewhere, I hopped on my Ducati Monster 750cc and fired up the engine. With some 30 of 40, might have been more, Ducatis all being revved at the same time, it was hard to tell if mine was still running. Before you could say, “Let’s go” though, the chap leading the ride dropped the clutch, wheelied onto the main road and was redlining through the gears in less than three seconds. It was instant mayhem as all these bikes tried to follow this raging nitwit through the crowded Bologna streets. Somehow by ringing the neck of the 750 I seemed to be keeping up, when blasting through a small, commercial area I saw a 998 on the sidewalk with steam pouring out of its fairing. Looking again, not really advisable riding at the speeds we were traveling, I saw a very perplexed rider pull off his helmet. I had to look again. It was famous Cycle World legend Peter Egan, so I threw out the anchors and circled back to see if he needed help. Thankfully, not one of the Ducati support team stopped so it was just the two of us alone on an Italian side street.
Good news was no cell phones. Well, not knowing what we were missing, I whipped out our handy list of emergency phone numbers they had printed for us, found a small café and with a lot of hand gestures and strange facial expressions got a phone call in to the factory. After what seemed like an eternity I got someone on the line who could speak English and then an even longer eternity for the good folk at Ducati to bring Peter another motorcycle.
Must be nice to be famous.
Now we had another small problem, apart from not speaking Italian, having a map or the name of the hotel we were heading for. Our motorcycle delivery chap spoke enough English to let us know the Autostrada was shut down due to a car exploding and with it being a holiday weekend it might be slow going as everyone was heading to the beach on the secondary roads now. Thankfully he knew the name of the hotel and bid us a fond adieu. The next hours were like some sort of nightmare that goes on and on without end. I finally get to meet and hang out with one of the most revered motorcycle scribes on the planet, and we are lane splitting lines of stopped cars for hour after hour after hour. It was one of the most insane rides I’ve taken and we finally got to our hotel way into the night completely exhausted, jet lagged and mentally fried from the ride.
Great to meet you, Peter!
Thankfully, I managed to sleep so late the next day I missed the opening ceremonies, but by the following day I was feeling ticketyboo (English for good) and made my way out to the track. With my full leathers I was able to take a few track sessions, meet and chat with racers and their teams and just indulge in a massive gathering of exotic Ducati motorcycles. During our down time we had a table in the press tent, and during lunch one day I sat next to this strange fellow with a large, handlebar mustache and a flat cap. We struck up a conversation, and hit it off immediately. Sometime into our chat he told me he was the host of a Classic Car show in the US and had been invited here because of a new motorcycle TV show he had just started.
Ladies and Gentlemen, meet Dennis Gage.
Neale with Dennis and his son Sam, some years after they met and became “fast friends”. Photo by Neale.
Over the next few days we hung out, indulged in the amazing Ducati hospitality and all the glitz and glamor that is World Ducati Week. Then it was time to ride back to Bologna which we did together. We still laugh and reminisce about lane splitting at triple digit speeds all the way back to our hotel and other antics that you can’t perform at home.
Soon it was time to leave, and somehow, we ended up on the same plane heading for the US. The show Dennis had just started was called, Corbin’s Ride On and I about fell out of my seat when he told me he would be in Marne, Iowa the following week filming at a Triumph dealership for an upcoming episode. I stuttered out that I would also be at that very Triumph dealership as I was riding across America with Triumph on the invite of then CEO Mike Vaughan.
As with most of my yarns, you can’t make this stuff up.
Our meetup in Marne, Iowa surrounded by fields of corn was a little less glamorous that our time in Italy. Although, who really needs lots of scantily dressed women, and highly customized European sport bikes when you have corn? The result of our time was an offer from Dennis to field produce episodes for Corbin’s Ride On, and off I went to work. Over the next five years we produced television all over the States, from chopper builders to BMW rallies, and a little bit of everything in between. Towards the end of the show’s time on air I started hosting some fun segments like racing a Triumph in the Thruxton Cup and more.
By this time, I had been pestering Dennis for more than nine months that we needed to film a travel show. During this time he trotted out his usual arguments until I gave him a new idea. “I’ll get some Triumph motorcycles in Scotland, we can go film an episode of the show, get some other material for the My Classic Car show and get footage for a travel show,” I told him. While this stroke of genius should have seen Dennis submit, he didn’t bite and it was back to the drawing board. Then I threw the Hail Mary pass, using your American football vernacular, and I borrowed a line from the late travel author Shelby Tucker- “Could you live with yourself if you didn’t go?”
A couple of months later I was picking up a Triumph Sprint ST in Glasgow with my nephew, with Dennis and Sam somewhere over the Atlantic in the big metal bird heading for Scotland. The rest is history.
Neale
*Next: Riding Scotland!
Top featured photo by Neale.
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