280 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Single Tracking Into the Great Outdoors 
A Silent Steed that Takes You Where No Other Vehicle Can Go, and Enlarges Your 
Travel Boundaries by Many Miles 
By Raymond S. Spears 
WO years of motorcycling have 
given me some new ideas about 
what the single trackers are 
doing to bring people into the 
Big Outdoors. It has given me 
a new viewpoint with regard to 
some of my old notions about 
going somewhere and seeing 
things. I bought a motorcycle primarily because 
it looked like easy going. Also, it looked like 
passing uninteresting places in a hurry. So it 
proved. 
The best I have ever done on foot was nearly, 
fifty miles in one day. The day began at dawn 
and ended near mid-night, and in the meanwhile 
I scoured a considerable section of Adirondack 
territory, seeking a friend who had very incon¬ 
siderately missed his way in the deep woods. 
Happily, I found him on the road at last by 
telephone. 
Floating down stream in a skiff, shantyboat 
and scow I have made as many as fifty miles, 
if there was no wind. Along the waters of the 
Great Lakes, with no current and casual 
breezes, I’ve made forty miles, pulling a skiff. 
The best I ever did with a bicycle was 93 
miles by cyclometer. That was while on a run 
from New York city via Fort Lee, northern 
New Jersey and southern New York to West- 
field, near the Pennsylvania. I remember think¬ 
ing how exhilarating it was to think of going 
so far by my own exertions, being able to 
start, stop, turn and run as I pleased. But my 
average rate was only nine or ten miles an 
hour—not bad for the hills and roads! 
It was the memory of the bicycle that gave 
me a thrill when I saw youths slipping by on 
motorcycles, so I bought me one. I wanted to 
get forth into the country and follow the roads. 
I think that but for one little memory I should 
have purchased a bicycle instead of the motor¬ 
cycle. When I was pulling around the east end 
of Lake Ontario one blistering hot July day the 
previous summer, one of the St. Lawrence 
skiffs of this modern day came ploughing by. It 
was about 20 feet long, perhaps 50 inch beam, 
and it was driven by a 25-horse power motor. 
The sportsman sat in the stern at his ease, and 
the $8.00 a day guide knelt in the bow, and 
steered. 
As they passed by the guide turned and saw 
me sweltering as I pulled the oars, looking like 
a relic of the previous century, no doubt. He 
opened wide his mouth and yelled, a jeering, 
pestering yelp. 
As I considered the automobiles and the 
motorcycles driving along the roads, I knew that 
if I bought a bicycle I should always have that 
feeling of belonging to the previous century— 
but one. 
So I bought me a motorcycle, two speed, twin 
cylinders and standard 27 gear. Having learned 
to ride it, I began to reach out into the country, 
and view neighboring towns and communities. 
When the slight nervousness at the wonderful¬ 
ness of the speed and unexpectedness of the 
power had worn away. I began to take note of 
the strange quality of the single tracker. 
In an hour I would go further that I could 
walk in ten hours. In a day I would make three 
or four rowboat journeys. 1 had thought I did 
pretty well in walking with a sixty pound pack 
the thousand miles from Utica, N. Y., to Hols- 
ton, Old Virginia, taking about three months 
to do that stunt-—lingering along the way, a bit. 
of course. On the motorcycle I rode a thou¬ 
sand miles in a month and hardly knew it! 
Good roads are a great temptation. There is 
something so delightfully soaring-like in the 
sensation of sailing along good roads on a 
motorcycle. I know that friends who own auto¬ 
mobiles after a time begin to feel that they have 
no more places to go, when they have traveled 
over all the good roads in a vicinity. That 
feeling came to me after a few thousand miles. 
My Goods Roads district reaches from west 
of Utica, N. Y„ to east of Amsterdam. There 
are some good roads that lead north, making a 
round trip of sixty or seventy miles. South¬ 
ward, there is a dry-weather circuit of a hun¬ 
dred miles, and by various extensions, the roads 
that become old and over-familiar amount to 
about four hundred miles. 
That is to say, running around on a motor- 
