The Lowdown Show - By ADVrider

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 began at the event’s peak and, in part, his chronicling charts Daytona’s decline as a very peculiar cultural phenomenon. How else could you explain an event that brought tens of thousands of people and millions of dollars to a town, and yet never garnered a notice on the city’s official website. Additionally, ADVRider managing editor Zac Kurylyk pops in for a quick review of the jacket that saved his ass.

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 look at every segment of the world of motorcycling in a conversation just like something you'd hear between friends at an off-season riders' meet-up, as they think about the year behind and the year ahead.

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 the land. But you don’t even need a bike that’s more than you needed in the first place, because this is a cannonball you can do on your KLR, turning the event into a bowling ball. Just add an extra bungee-cord to your milk crate and off you go. And you can even opt out of the off-road sections and do it on your Electra Glide.

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 generations ago were drawn to motorcycling. Nesbitt, who’s this week’s guest, took exception to Galloway’s language and suggested a cure that would give disaffected young men their mojo back. And, wouldn’t you know, it involves a motorcycle.

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 not built to a pauper’s budget. Wait until you hear Michael’s shockingly (predictable) response, you’ll be (un) surprised.