Sunday Aug 9th, 2026: Renata Rides Again - Preparing a 1928 Moto Guzzi & Sidecar to Cross America

There are probably easier ways to cross the United States. A modern motorcycle would be faster. A pickup truck would be more comfortable. An airplane would certainly be more reliable.

Naturally, we have chosen a 1928 Moto Guzzi Sport 14 with a sidecar. Renata is going back on the road!

We have officially entered the TransAmerican Endurance Run, and in September next year we expect to point this nearly 100-year-old Italian motorcycle west and attempt to make our way from Maine to Oregon.

And this time, Julie is coming along in the sidecar. And she’s going to ride some days while I eat popsicles in the sidecar!

We Learned a Few Things in 2023

Peg Leg Speed Shop fans may remember our 2023 Motorcycle Cannonball adventure. That experience gave us something considerably more valuable than a collection of stories and broken motorcycle parts: it taught us what actually matters when trying to keep an ancient motorcycle moving day after day.

The biggest lesson?

Everything matters.

Weight matters.

Heat matters.

Fuel delivery matters.

Gearing matters.

How you pack matters.

How quickly you can diagnose a problem on the side of the road matters.

And perhaps most importantly, testing something around the county is not remotely the same thing as asking it to run for hundreds of miles, day after day, in summer heat. So our preparation for this run is going to look different.

Lighter Motorcycle. More Testing.

One of our primary goals with Renata is simply to make her lighter and more efficient.

A 1928 motorcycle does not have horsepower to waste, and adding a sidecar makes that equation considerably more interesting. Every unnecessary pound is something the engine has to accelerate up a hill and the brakes have to control coming back down.

We've already started looking carefully at the complete outfit—not just the motorcycle itself, but the motorcycle, sidecar, fuel, tools, luggage, rider and passenger as one system.

That means doing things as basic as putting each of the three wheels on a bathroom scale.

Front wheel. Rear wheel. Sidecar wheel.

Then doing it again with different loads. And again with Julie in the sidecar.

We're not only interested in the total weight. We're studying where the weight is carried because that affects steering, braking, stability and how the sidecar behaves in both left- and right-hand turns.

This is going to be a motorcycle we know extremely well before we ever leave Maine.

Julie Gets the Best Seat in the House

Julie plans to ride the event with me in the sidecar. Whether she considers that the best seat in the house after several thousand miles remains to be seen.

Running a vintage motorcycle solo is one thing. Adding another person changes virtually everything: total weight, weight distribution, aerodynamic drag, suspension behavior, braking distance and the workload placed on an engine designed when Calvin Coolidge was president.

It also makes the adventure considerably more fun.

One of the great pleasures of these old machines is that they turn transportation into a shared experience. You don't simply disappear inside a vehicle and arrive somewhere later.

You smell the fields.

You feel the temperature change when the road drops into a valley.

You hear every mechanical noise.

You notice every hill.

And in a sidecar outfit, you and your passenger experience all of it together.

Heat Is the Enemy

One area where we'll be doing considerably more testing than we did before is heat management and sustained performance.

An old motorcycle can feel perfectly happy during a short test ride and become a completely different machine after an hour of running under load. Add a sidecar, summer temperatures and long grades and you quickly discover whether your carburetion, ignition, lubrication and gearing decisions were actually good ones.

So Renata isn't going directly from the workshop to the starting line. We plan to put miles on her. Then more miles. Then deliberately run her in conditions that expose weaknesses.

Hot days. Long pulls. Repeated starts. Different loads. Different speeds.

If something is going to fail, we'd much rather have it fail twenty miles from Peg Leg Speed Shop than halfway across Wyoming.

A Smaller Road Crew

Our support operation is getting lighter too. In 2023 we learned that a large road operation can become an expedition of its own. This time we're planning something simpler.

One van. No trailer.

We're still working through exactly who will drive and how we'll divide the trip, but one possibility is having one pair of drivers take the van from Wisconsin to the start in Maine and follow us back through Wisconsin. A second pair could then take over for the western half of the trip to Oregon.

That gives us support without turning the support crew itself into a logistical monster.

We also want this adventure to remain inclusive. Not everyone who wants to be part of Peg Leg Speed Shop needs to spend several weeks driving a chase van across the country.

There will be plenty of ways for friends, family and fans to participate as the project develops.

Why Do This?

That's a reasonable question. The motorcycle is almost a century old.

It is slow.

It leaks.

It requires constant attention.

It has very little horsepower and now we're attaching another wheel and another human being to it.

But that's also precisely why we're doing it.

Machines like Renata were built during an era when motorcycles were still remarkably simple mechanical devices. Fuel, air, spark, oil and a collection of gears and bearings somehow work together to carry a person across a continent.

Keeping one alive nearly 100 years later requires equal parts mechanical knowledge, patience, improvisation and stubbornness.

At Peg Leg Speed Shop, that's pretty much our idea of a good time.

Follow the Build

Over the coming months we'll share much more of Renata's preparation here.

We'll get into the motorcycle itself, the sidecar setup, weight distribution, gearing, cooling, electrical improvements, tools and spare parts—and, inevitably, the things we thought would work but didn't.

There will be road testing.

There will almost certainly be roadside repairs.

There may be some bad language.

And eventually, if we've done our homework, there will be a 1928 Moto Guzzi and sidecar sitting somewhere on the Oregon coast after crossing the United States under its own power.

That's the plan, anyway.

Renata rides again.

Stay tuned.