Head Check: What it Feels Like to Ride Motorcycles

Penned by one of the most prominent motorcycle journalists of the 21st century, Head Check invites readers to take in the color and detail of a rider’s life vividly realized, richly observed, and transcendently described. During his tenure at Motorcyclist magazine, Jack Lewis has touched readers around the world not only through his incandescent prose riffs and self-effacing humor, but also through a consistent and deeply felt humanity. This collection of magazine features and columns alongside personally published web pieces and new material may be populated by motorcycles, but it centers around the varied experiences of riders (and their tolerant keepers) in a world where risk is a bet you make with yourself for purposes that must always transcend mere recreation. Head Check is – beneath the sarcastic wit, wide-eyed fear, profound humility, and occasional descents into scatology – a collection of love stories. Recommended for riders, readers, passengers, and humans.

Born in Portland, Oregon in 1964, Jack Lewis is a middle-aged curmudgeon of catholic writing proclivity. Jack holds a BA English cum laude from Washington State University and an MFA in screenwriting from the University of Southern California. He wears thick glasses, drinks Ardbeg, owns two motorcycles and a chainsaw, and prefers slip-on shoes.

In 2006, Jack contributed two chapters to Operation Homecoming: Iraq, Afghanistan and the Home Front (ed. Andrew Carroll, Random House 2006), and participated in two documentary films based on that book including Richard Robbins's Oscar-nominated, Emmy-winning Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience. Those writings stemmed from his service leading a tactical psychological operations team in NW Iraq during 2004-2005.

Editorial writing earlier in Jack's career resulted in the D.B. Houston Journalism Prize, SPJ Editorial Writing honors, Best of the Palouse citation, and WSU Philosophy Club Gadfly of the Year.

Between spasms of frenzied writing activity, Jack has worked as a busboy, geriatric nursing aide, soldier, production assistant, telecommunications circuit designer, soda jerk, computer technician, hotel manager, farm hand, editor, floor clerk for the coolest hardware store in Seattle, and motorcycle service writer. 

To get a bit of Jack between rounds of books and magazine contributions, you can sample his blog at jaxworx.com.