RUSH drum legend Neil Peart has penned a new News, Weather And Sports diary on his official website where he talks about motorcycle adventures in the UK. An excerpt follows:

"Before our first few motorcycle rides on the Clockwork Angels tour of Britain, in May, 2013, I would ask Brutus about the next day, maybe how far the ride was. As usual, outside the US, he had done all the route planning, and booked the destinations. It would all be a surprise to me, and that was fine—we had traveled together like that for about seventeen years, so there were no doubts. I would simply follow the route he had programmed on my GPS—Brutus the navigator, me the helmsman.

But just as I liked to have some notion of the next day’s weather, to know how to dress (of critical importance on a motorcycle), it was good to have some idea of the shape of the ride, to know how to prepare myself mentally, and guide our pace.

However, in answer to my query, Brutus would just nod his head thoughtfully, and say, “It will be . . . a full day.”

Soon that became a joke between us, understanding that the day’s journey had nothing to do with distance. On many rides, in the mountains of Wales, Scotland, or the Yorkshire Dales, say, we could easily spend seven hours puttering around little singletrack lanes, yet with the necessarily slow pace, and frequent photo stops, we typically covered less than 200 miles in that “full day.”

That was all very well, naturally, and at the end of those long rides, several in the rain (always making a long day longer), we would settle into some luxurious country hotel, and clink our glasses with a laugh, saying, “To another full day.” Still, after ten of those full days, and five shows (at least equally “full”), I decided I would like to have an empty day.

Brutus and I were discussing what to do after the overnight ferry from Newcastle to Amsterdam. We had a rare, second day off before the show, so—where should we ride? Holland has some pretty countryside, Belgium some good riding in the Ardennes Mountains and along its rivers, and twice before Bruges had been an enjoyable destination. However, my answer was, 'You know what? Let’s go . . . nowhere'.

After the ferry’s morning arrival, we checked into a stylish little hotel in Amsterdam, overlooking a postcard-perfect canal, and just stayed there. The previous week, a British publication called Motorcycle News had requested something from me about riding between the UK shows—anything from an interview to a ride-along to a short story. Maybe 700 words, they suggested, with a photo or two. So I pecked away at that for a few hours—the only time I had ever written about a journey in the middle of it, so my impressions and memories of the highlights were sharp and alive. The story quickly grew into 1800 words and eight photographs, and I was pleased when the paper said they loved it, and would run it that way.

“Drummer With a Singletrack Mind” will appear in this department shortly after its print début. The title plays on the name Brits give to one-lane roads: “singletracks”—as in a previous story about riding in the U.K., “Singletrack Minds in the Sceptered Isle.” Brutus and I love exploring the countryside and villages on those lonely little lanes. “Shunpiking,” we call it—and although that word goes back centuries, it seems to need reviving. While working on the story, I asked an experienced British motorcyclist if riders and readers would know what shunpiking was, and I was surprised when he said they wouldn’t. At the risk of being repetitive, but at the same time happy to be a “booster” for this worthy mode of travel, I will once more share the definition from an early story collected in Far and Away, “Shunpikin’ it Old Skool.”

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