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Friday, March 29
The Indiana Daily Student

arts

World trip on two wheels

Student’s travels will air on Speed Channel Sunday

Neale Bayly

Imagine “Easy Rider” on a budget. And the riders don’t die in the end.\nAfter graduation, many students go on vacations and see one place in the world. For IU freshman Sam Gage, that vacation started in 2005 when his dad, Dennis Gage, invited him to go riding in Scotland on a Triumph Sprint ST motorcycle.\n“These four days in the summer of 2005, it was clear skies, 80 degrees,” Sam Gage said. “I got a sunburn in Northern Scotland. I mean, how does that happen?”\nWhat started as an invitation from photographer friend Neale Bayly to ride around Scotland on motorcycles became a two-year adventure, and in the end, a series of one-hour specials on the Speed Channel called “Trippin’ On Two Wheels.” The third episode will air at 11 a.m. Sunday on the Speed Channel.\n“My dad got a film crew together,” Sam Gage said. “We went over and we shot this show. Once he had all this material, he decided this would be a good opportunity to start this motorcycle show he wanted all this time.”\nAfter Dennis Gage made 30-minute special the Speed Channel liked, he then made it into an hour-long segment. But it didn’t make it on TV.\n“Maybe with two shows, Speed would take it,” Sam Gage said. “They didn’t, so maybe they will take three.”\nThe unplanned show eventually became a two-year trip with a six-man crew – the three riders, a cameraman, an audio technician and the producer – and the show was finally picked up after their third try.\nTraveling through amazing locales, the show follows the three riders as they make completely unplanned trips around Scotland, Sicily, Spain and Quebec.\n“Really, it’s not ‘We must do Europe,’” Sam Gage said. “It’s really just ‘Where will someone give us three motorcycles and let us go?’”\nThe show documents the scenery as well as the difficult riding conditions of each location, such as in Sicily and Spain, which have near-vertical hills that are impossible to ride when they’re wet.\n“You have no traction whatsoever,” Sam Gage said. “When I left Arcos de la Frontera, I got off my motorcycle and I literally kissed the ground because I thought I was going to die that day.”\nHe was lucky enough to celebrate his 17th birthday at 4 a.m. in Sicily after a 17-and-a-half hour ferry ride to the island. \n“(My father) took me to McDonald’s,” Sam Gage said. “And over there, McDonald’s is actually a four-star restaurant.”\nFor each episode, the crew would talk with people, eat at local restaurants, stay in local hotels and try not to be tourists.\n“We rode British bikes in Britain, Italian bikes in Sicily and Spanish bikes in Spain,” Sam Gage said. “So the people will kind of gravitate to it.”\nThere are many places Dennis Gage is interested in riding in the future, including South Africa, New Zealand, Costa Rica and Japan.\n“My dad wants to ride the German Alps on a BMW,” Sam Gage said.\n“Trippin’ On Two Wheels” episode three will re-air at 2:30 p.m. Wednesday on the Speed Channel.

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