The Lowdown Show - By ADVrider

Would you travel round-the-world with someone who showed up at your house in the early days of dating with their own pillow? I like my pillow as much as the next man, but bringing one to an overnighter with your new lover is as sexy as bringing you own slippers. But wait, Heather Lea’s story gets even odder. Twenty-seven days after meeting the pillow-man, she decides to ride around the world with...

Everybody—everybody—has an opinion on Harley-Davidson. The company, who’s stock, not so many years ago, was a safer bet than gold, has fallen upon challenging times. This from a company—according to analyst Michael Uhlarik—that in its heyday turned a profit of nearly 30 percent on each motorcycle sold, when the industry average is nearer the mid-single digits. In the fat years, Harley-Davidson was...

On Episode 108 of the Lowdown Radio Show, Michael Uhlarik pedals his fixed gear bicycle into town to talk about the most unhip motorcycle this side of the Bajaj Pulsar. It’s motorcycling’s equivalent to sensible shoes, and you and I know it as Suzuki's V-Strom. It’s not pretty, it won’t brighten the corner of your garage in wintertime and it’s clearly built to a price. And yet—as its adherents nev...

On Episode 107 of The Lowdown Radio Show we speak to Michael Hopkins, president of an industrial design firm with longstanding ties to Harley-Davidson in the brand’s formative years. Hopkins also worked at the Motor Company for nearly 16 years, and our conversation stretches from the design of the Coke bottle to Willie G. Davidson’s Hail Mary play that dragged Harley-Davidson out of the doldrums 5...

This week on the Lowdown Radio Show managing editor Zac Kurylyk chews the fat with Neil Graham about the ritual of the first spring ride. For Zac, it's often a miserable ride in gruesome weather, while Neil focused on his travails with gusty winds and frigid girlfriends. Rarely did the trips—or relationships—go well, though both confess that early season jaunts were not without merit, proving the ...

This week something a little different. US 129 just may be the most famous motorcycle road in the world. We know it as the Tail of the Dragon. Three-hundred-something curves in 11 miles. Today we talk to Darryl Cannon, the photographer behind Killboy.com, the company who takes all those roadside photos that you can buy once you get back home, to prove that you rode the road. Darryl’s the first to...

Most of us ride to get away from it all. Rare is it that a motorcycle is used to get straight into the middle of a mess. But that’s exactly what journalist, photographer and philanthropist Neale Bayly did. With a GS on loan from BMW in Munich, Neale rode straight to a Ukraine on the verge of war. And he’s been back multiple times in the years since. What does one find in a war zone? How do you nav...

This week Michael Uhlarik talks about Motorcycle Global’s hot-off-the-press 50-page white paper on the state of motorcycle electrification. It’s important to note that this isn’t an up-with-people whitewashing. It’s a data-driven report on the industry—to the industry—on the ups—and there are many—and the downs—and there are many—of the electric motorcycle business. It’s a market that’s everything...

On Episode 102 of the Lowdown Radio Show, presented by eBay Motors, Mel Gantly is our guest. Mel, as die-hard an enthusiast as was ever born, worked for decades (yes, decades) to land a full-time gig at a motorcycle publication after years of freelancing. He even moved from BC, on Canada’s west coast, to the UK to make it happen. And, wouldn’t you know, he pulled it off. He got the job of a lifeti...

This week on the Lowdown Radio Show presented by eBay Motors we speak to Greg Bender from ThisOldTractor.com. Bender, a modern man thriving in a digital world, needs an antidote to modernity, which he finds in his vintage Moto Guzzis and on his Suzuki DR350. Bender also shares his love of mechanical things to the world through his website, which has a plethora of information about all things Guzzi...

For Episode 100 of the Lowdown Radio Show, frequent guest Michael Uhlarik joins us to share his backstory on how a kid born in a remote northern mining town ends up working as a designer for, among others, Yamaha and Aprilia. Michael is a favorite of Lowdown listeners and here’s your chance to learn more about the man who’s as tuned-into the pulse of the motorcycle biz as anyone. And, to kick off...

Motorcycle shows have been a staple of the cold-weather months for generations. Most of the old-school, new-product, OEM-supported shows have gone the way of non-ABS equipped new motorcycles—they're nowhere to be found. In the US, the slick show circuit disappeared in favor of custom and lifestyle events, like Born Free or The One Show. Or become industry-only shindigs, like AIM expo. But in the U...

Our guest this week is Motorcycle Global’s Michael Uhlarik. For his industry clients, Michael has exhaustively researched the marketplace, and he shares some of his findings with us. Most startlingly, perhaps, are his findings about the invisible 10 percent of sales that don’t show up on any official Motorcycle Industry Council ledger. Michael also shares some thoughts about the ADV market—hint—we...

Chris Parker of Rottweiler performance joins The Lowdown Radio Show this week. From his involvement in building pikes-peak winning cars, to his gig fabricating exhaust systems for Singer—the company that builds bespoke Porsche 911s for those with far too much money to burn—to his intake systems for KTMs that put his company on the map, Parker is a man with no shortage of drive. Or is that ride? An...

Every traveler does it their own way. For Maria Schumacher, that means taking her time. Maria shares her story of how bumping into Sam Manicom (a former guest on this show) changed the course of her life, how recent travels in the US stack up against traveling in her favorite country, Venezuela, and how picking the best adventure bike is a very personal decision. She also shares ten common mistake...

From cheap shots to well-judged commentary, ADVRider’s commentary section is interesting. To say the least. In the first of what will become a month feature, podcast host Neil Graham reviews a selection of stories from the past month along with the best comments. From travel stories to bike stories to things so odd that all you can do is scratch your head. Only on ADVRider.  Learn more about your...

This week our guest on The Lowdown Radio Show is Emily Roberts, who is just as wonderfully mad as her flaming red hair would lead you to believe. Emily’s story is compelling for a few reasons. Firstly, her family business is the last standing motorcycle print magazine in Canada, and Emily is a full-time motorcycle journalist for it. Secondly, she’s a hardcore off-road rider. How hardcore? Her reco...

This week on the Lowdown Radio Show Motorcycle Global’s Michael Uhlarik joins us to talk about the global motorcycle trade. Much of which is far more unexpected than you might think. For instance, Michael hunted down the most searched motorcycles online in India, Italy, and the US. Two of those countries most often searched for aspirational bikes while one country chose a sensible, economical, mid...

Do you know where your parts come from? It’s a serious question. One posed recently in a most unusual public confession by Nikola Maletic from Perun Moto, a manufacturer of high-end bits for your ADV motorcycle. Tired of having his parts copied by another manufacturer—even to the degree that they reused his catalogue photos and descriptions—he didn’t get mad, go online, and lose his mind. How old-...

This week our guest is John Bentham, who just this year published Bike Week, a collection of photographs taken over more than a decade at Daytona’s notorious spring gathering. Bentham first went to Daytona in the mid-‘90s and would return another dozen times when his career as a New York City editorial and advertising photographer allowed. It just so happened that John’s attendance at Daytona bega...

This week, Lowdown Show host Neil Graham and ADVrider editor Zac Kurylyk wrap up 2025 with a conversation that ranges across all segments of motorcycling. From Zac's recovery following his bad crash last fall, to Neil's successful return to the racetrack, to the future of Harley-Davidson and KTM, the difference between Dakar and the Africa Eco Race in the upcoming rally raid season—they take a loo...

Aaron Pufal is far more than just a man with a grey beard. He’s the grey-bearded mastermind behind the ADV Cannonball coast-to-coast GPS rally. It’s not like the old cannonball runs, those ones in which you’d rip through Ohio at 130 miles per hour at 3 am after having ingested a fistful of little white pills. No, this a rally you can do on your oversized adventure bike while following the law of t...

Ex-Confederate motorcycle designer JT Nesbitt—whose current project is re-imagining the American motorcycle with his audacious Magnolia 4—stepped into the fray recently and wrote an open letter to New York Times bestselling author Scott Galloway. Galloway’s book, titled “On being a man,” discusses the so-called “masculinity crisis” affecting young males—the very same young males that not so many g...

Michael Uhlarik from Motorcycle Global joins Neil Graham to talk about—wait for it—motorcycle seats and mirrors from a designer’s perspective. And then Neil makes the case for an ADV motorcycle inspired by Kawasaki’s 400 cc four-cylinder ZX-4R screamer—a high-spec, small displacement bike with all the tech of a big bike but without the bulk of something like a 1290 Adventure. Like a 600 cc V-twin...

The late great Steve Thornton edited ADVRider.com's Photo Of The Week feature for years. I’m happy to report we’ve found a worthy successor to carry on Steve’s work. And I don’t say that casually. Katie Hunter is just about as singular a personality as was Steve. She rides an BMW airhead, she’d rather shiver at a campsite than have a warm shower, and she’s worked at a funeral home as an embalmer....