Join Danny Thompson on the Highway 62 Podcast as he chats with George Gutenberg, the mastermind behind Moto Tour Adventures and Desert Motorcycle Rentals. Nestled between 29 Palms and Joshua Tree, George shares his journey from architectural photographer to motorcycle enthusiast, offering guided tours on electric mopeds through the stunning landscapes of Joshua Tree. Discover the thrill of two-wheel adventures, the unique experience of riding in nature, and how George's passion for motorcycles became a thriving business. Whether you're a local or a tourist, this episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to explore the open road. Tune in for an inspiring conversation about the freedom and mindfulness that comes with riding.
https://motoadventuretours.com/contact-us
Danny Thompson (00:01.422)
All right, George Gutenberg, thanks so much for joining me here on the Highway 62 Podcast. How are you today?
George Gutenberg (00:07.89)
I'm doing great. Thanks for having me.
Danny Thompson (00:09.87)
Oh, my pleasure. And you are the owner. We're kind of talking about two businesses here along Highway 62. You're kind of right between 29 and Joshua Tree. You have Moto Tour Adventures and Desert Motorcycle Rentals. And, you know, I apologize to any of the listeners if we end up geeking out too much on this stuff because this is totally right up my alley motorcycles and bicycles. So.
George Gutenberg (00:27.352)
All right.
Danny Thompson (00:37.574)
We'll have to try to like limit ourselves from getting you know to down the rabbit hole of that stuff. But you know we'll talk about both of your businesses and all that good stuff. But you know first why you just tell us a little bit about yourself and you know how you came to be.
George Gutenberg (00:37.782)
Yeah.
George Gutenberg (00:54.168)
Well, that's a long story given how old I've gotten. But having said that, yeah, I've been a motorcycle rider my entire life, essentially, and always been a big part of me. It's the only way I know how to turn my head off is get onto a wheels and focus on what I'm doing. But yeah, so we started out as being a motorcycle rental company about, I guess, six years ago now, down in the valley in Palm Desert.
and we got him to start doing some guided tours as well and then I came across these electric mopeds.
about a year and a half ago or something like that, that are two-wheel drive. So they have a motor on each wheel. So they're really suitable for going off-highway, off-pavements. So we decided, know what, maybe we'll incorporate some of that into doing rentals or guided tours. So that's how we kind of came about and decided to get up on Highway 62. So we're a little closer to the park entrance and all that stuff. So that is what we're doing now. We're doing guided tours up in Joshua Tree in the park using the electric mopeds.
Danny Thompson (02:01.101)
Cool.
George Gutenberg (02:01.529)
big part of our business. Now that was really the focus when we came up to Joshua Tree itself.
Danny Thompson (02:05.131)
Yeah, are you from the area? What's your background prior to this?
George Gutenberg (02:10.823)
Well, I'm actually an architectural photographer by trade. So I retired from that a few years ago and decided, well, retirement is not for me. Never swung a golf club in my life, so I'm not about to start doing it now, right? So I wanted to do something that I kind of enjoyed, which obviously is them motorcycles. I had too many of them anyways, so I decided to get into the rental business and all that stuff.
Danny Thompson (02:14.166)
Okay.
Danny Thompson (02:33.043)
There's you can't have too many motorcycles. That's just not you always want another one.
George Gutenberg (02:35.649)
Well, I know that's kind of been my, yeah, that's what I've always kind of hid behind also. I don't know that it's really working that well,
Danny Thompson (02:45.121)
What's the, what is the first motorcycle you ever had?
George Gutenberg (02:50.999)
1971 Harley-Davidson. Yeah.
Danny Thompson (02:53.615)
wow, okay.
Did you start, were you riding dirt bikes as a kid or anything like that?
George Gutenberg (03:00.651)
I rode that dirt mopeds when I was a kid.
Danny Thompson (03:03.597)
And it was at again out. Are you from kind of the Southern California? OK. Gotcha. All right. Where in Sweden? Gotcha. OK, gotcha. I've played I play in a band. I've played a festival in Gothenburg. I'm not sure. I'm sure I'm saying it wrong, but yeah, loved it. Love Sweden.
George Gutenberg (03:09.463)
No, from Sweden originally. Yeah. But I've been here a very long time, so... Stockholm area. Yeah, yeah.
George Gutenberg (03:28.363)
huh. Yep. Yep. Mm-hmm. boy, is there ever. I'm very happy to be in sunshine and palm trees. The whole overcast and the six months of not seeing the sun doesn't work for me very well.
Danny Thompson (03:33.069)
Okay, awesome. Quite a difference in weather between Sweden and the high desert.
Danny Thompson (03:41.842)
Right.
Yeah, that's always my struggle as well when I, you know, I tend to end up somehow get lucky and I visit, you know, when I was in Gothenburg, like it was a beautiful summer day, you know, and you always think about it that way. And then I go, okay, I know, you know, I've been to the UK and I've been to Europe when it's in the winter time and the sun's going down at three in the afternoon and I can't do it. You know? Yeah. So,
George Gutenberg (03:58.092)
Uh-huh.
George Gutenberg (04:03.507)
yeah.
George Gutenberg (04:07.276)
Yep.
I hear you. I feel the same way.
Danny Thompson (04:14.605)
Tell us a little bit about the guided motorcycle tours that you were doing prior to the electric bikes.
George Gutenberg (04:19.105)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, we don't necessarily do long distance type of stuff, although, you know, if we do a custom tour for somebody that kind of dictates how long they want to be out, etc. But we have given ones that we do like, you know, going up to, you know, go and do the whole Joshua tree loop, for example, was really popular when we're operating out of Palm Desert. Same thing going up Highway 74, obviously up to Idlewild, etc. Everybody loved that. Who doesn't like Highway 74, right?
Danny Thompson (04:32.684)
Yeah.
Danny Thompson (04:47.923)
Okay, yeah, that's beautiful ride. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
George Gutenberg (04:52.215)
And also we did a lot of Anza Marego that way out also through the Salton Sea, cetera, going around the whole big loop there. So, and there were people that wanted to go to Temecula. There's all kinds of places that people want to kind of go see, depending on where they're from. You know, a lot of people that we had have never been out on the West Coast. So they wanted to do all kinds of different things. So, but yeah, that's how it kind of started out getting in the guided tour thing. The guide that
Danny Thompson (05:08.897)
Yeah.
Danny Thompson (05:18.753)
Are those, do you stay, are they mostly on road tours or do you do like off road into the Mojave Desert type stuff or?
George Gutenberg (05:22.357)
Yeah, yes. Well, we do some of that. However, seems our experience has been a lot of people that are off-road riders that are not from California have no idea what sand is and how deep it is and how difficult it is to ride in.
Danny Thompson (05:36.641)
Yeah. Yeah. I was, that's exactly what I was thinking.
George Gutenberg (05:44.471)
Yeah, so we've had quite a few people that said, oh yeah, yeah, I can write in anything. And it turns out that's not necessarily the case. So they struggle a little bit. But yeah, we do some dual sports towards all of those things.
Danny Thompson (05:51.094)
Yeah. Gotcha. When I, when I moved out to this area, I, you know, I grew up in Chicago and I was living in Orange County for about 20 years. and then moved out here about four or five years ago. And when I first got out here, I just had my, my Triumph Tiger. And, know, that was my primary bike, but I quickly realized like, okay, I can't, I, I cannot ride, you know, I know there are guys that can ride the adventure bikes in the sand.
George Gutenberg (06:12.139)
Yeah.
Danny Thompson (06:19.241)
I can't do it very well, so I bought myself a little KLX 300. And I've thought about that.
George Gutenberg (06:23.383)
Uh huh. A lot easier.
Danny Thompson (06:26.581)
yeah, you know, put some really aggressive tires on there and I just, you know, just forced myself to just get out there and just kind of watched a bunch of videos and just started learning and, you know, getting better and better and better to now where I'm actually pretty darn comfortable in the sand. which, you know, certainly makes your ride so much more enjoyable, but you know, I'd thought about that with, you know, I had even thought about, you know,
guiding some tours in the Mojave and stuff like that. Because I see so many adventure riding bikes, you know, coming down 62 when I'm at Starbucks or getting gas. And I think, man, you know, those guys are all kitted up. But I know that most of them are not going off the street on those bikes, you know. But then I always come back to this. What you just said, which is even if you provided them a smaller, you know, bike to do the ride on, most of most people, they're just going to struggle so much in that sand that it's.
George Gutenberg (06:54.135)
Mm-hmm.
George Gutenberg (06:59.958)
yes. yeah.
Danny Thompson (07:21.751)
probably not going to be very enjoyable for them and you know, potentially too many crashes and you know, and things like that. So, then, yeah, tell us a little bit more than, you know, when I was there the other day, I stopped by the shop there on 62 and was really, I had actually seen, and I don't know exactly how to pronounce those bikes. it Ubco? And where are they made?
George Gutenberg (07:38.903)
Mm-hmm.
George Gutenberg (07:45.875)
Mm-hmm, yes, up-go, yeah.
They are actually out of New Zealand, Utility Bike Company is what the OPCO stands for.
Danny Thompson (07:51.882)
New Zealand. Utility bike company. okay. There you go. And I'd seen those some YouTube videos and stuff before. They just look so cool. They're like these heavy duty looking off-road e-bikes. And so kind of what gave you the idea to start doing the tours and the rentals with those?
George Gutenberg (08:03.008)
Yeah, they are,
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
George Gutenberg (08:14.357)
Well, first of all, there's a couple of things that come into play here. know, riding a motorcycle, you gotta have a motorcycle license in the state of California. That means that we would be catering to a pretty small part of the population. These ones obviously open up a whole different world as far as who can ride. As long as they have a driver's license and they're 21 years old, they can go. So that's part of it. I want to be able to work with a larger market.
Danny Thompson (08:34.465)
Yeah.
George Gutenberg (08:43.599)
For people to have, mean, Joshua Tree is a really, really special place. And most people that come in there, just are absolutely gobsmacked and just look around and go, holy moly, never seen anything like it.
Danny Thompson (08:55.074)
Yeah.
George Gutenberg (08:55.979)
But doing it behind the windshield is very different from being out in nature, smelling it, feeling it, hearing it. So something electric appealed to me, although I like motor noises typically. But for the purpose of this, it made a lot of sense to just something where you really kind of are in nature as best as you can and still be on two wheels and see things that you don't normally see. So it just made sense to me that we would have something that anybody could try.
Danny Thompson (09:02.337)
Yes.
Danny Thompson (09:07.884)
Hahaha
Yes.
Danny Thompson (09:22.189)
Gotcha.
George Gutenberg (09:22.647)
and be able to have kind of the same experience. And it's interesting all the people that have gone out with us already that not only did they come back with a giant smile on their face, a lot of them will say, wow, I didn't know I could ride a motorcycle. Well, it's not really a motorcycle, it's a moped. But having said that.
Danny Thompson (09:36.413)
Hehehehe. Hehehehe.
George Gutenberg (09:40.192)
It's refreshing to see, especially with women. We have so many women customers that go out and do this. And it's just really great. And they're having a great time. So yeah, it was just something that kind of spun off by itself and wanted to kind of expand, if you will, the guided tour thing. And have it in a...
not out all day long because you when you take somebody out first time on two wheels they get kind of tired after a couple three hours because there are tans and all of that stuff so it was kind of a start for this but we're planning on expanding it and having multiple different tours in the park etc and have more bikes coming as well so that's kind of the goal with it but yeah it's it's uh at this point a little bit of a in its infant stage for lack of a better word but we're doing it i mean we we do tours seven days a week so
Danny Thompson (10:07.875)
Sure, sure.
Danny Thompson (10:26.754)
Sure, gotcha, absolutely. That's great.
George Gutenberg (10:31.523)
Thank
Danny Thompson (10:31.68)
Okay. And so, are there multiple ways? like, can somebody just come and just rent one of those up, upcoes and go out by themselves? Okay. It's guided.
George Gutenberg (10:39.062)
No.
At this point, we do not. And there's a couple of reasons for that. A. They are electric after all. And for whatever reason, people don't seem to remember that they need to be charged. It's not like you're on a motorcycle. You can just pull into the closest gas station. It's a six hour recharge. Well, four to six hours, depending on how depleted the batteries are. Having said that, we just don't have enough of them, frankly, also for them to be out buying around and still be able to support our customers that want to go on a tour. So that's one of the reasons why we're only
Danny Thompson (10:44.407)
Yeah.
Danny Thompson (11:04.014)
Gotcha.
George Gutenberg (11:11.001)
At this point, at least, only doing guided tours with them. Yeah.
Danny Thompson (11:15.138)
Very cool, very cool. You you mentioned a couple things that, you know, again, I said it wouldn't go too deep on the motorcycle mentality and stuff like that, but I think a lot of people can relate to this kind of thing. You mentioned, you know,
George Gutenberg (11:23.959)
It's alright.
Danny Thompson (11:30.095)
the difference in traveling on a bike, open air versus these other things. that's something I've I talk about with, you know, the singer of my band really got into motorcycles and he's been doing a bunch of trips. And that's kind of one of the ways that we've always describe it to our friends is we say, you know, well, you could travel by plane. You don't really see anything. You travel in the car. Yeah, you can look out the windows. You can see stuff. But when you're on a bike, you know, any two wheels, motorcycle, e-bike.
bicycle, you know, your intake of an experience of all these things is so much different and is, you know, it's at, you know, if driving in a car through the park is a five, being on two wheels in the open air is a 10. The smells and just the feel and I actually, you know, my my girlfriend is a nurse and you know, people that work in the medical field tend to not be huge fans of motorcycles and
George Gutenberg (11:59.308)
Yeah.
George Gutenberg (12:16.186)
yeah.
George Gutenberg (12:27.799)
Mm-hmm.
Danny Thompson (12:29.236)
she was out here visiting me and I took her for a ride on my tiger and it was like her first real ride on a motorcycle, you know, and I just kept it easy and nice and slow and but we went through the park and when she got she was just like when we came back that was it she was like, my god and then like a month later she bought a KX one KLX 110. You know, got a bike now.
George Gutenberg (12:39.477)
Right, right.
George Gutenberg (12:45.365)
Yeah.
George Gutenberg (12:52.535)
But I think that's how a lot of people fall into it because you're so much more aware of your surroundings when you're on a motorcycle. Because you're focused anyway, because you want to make sure that you stay safe and everything else. But that also means you have all of this input constantly. Smells, feels, wind. mean, everything is there and it's just such a... It's so more immersive, the experience than it is just sitting in a car and everybody else is sitting in a car around you blocking your view. It's just... Yeah. yeah, motorcycling is... It's a very unique experience.
Danny Thompson (12:57.88)
Yeah.
Danny Thompson (13:02.251)
Sure.
Danny Thompson (13:11.286)
Yes, that's a great word for it.
Danny Thompson (13:17.238)
Yeah
Danny Thompson (13:22.356)
And yeah.
George Gutenberg (13:22.579)
being on electric or gas or whatever they are but anything on two wheels is a wonderful thing.
Danny Thompson (13:27.774)
And you know, but the other element to that story that I think again, and you touched on this so well, you know, she hadn't ridden before. So the little KLX 110, got her. It does have gears. It's no clutch, which, you know, for somebody who hasn't done it. But even that, you know, a gas powered motorcycle, she's got a shift. You know, basically she's ridden it around the cul-de-sac a couple of times is never, you know, got I haven't been able to get her to shift into second gear yet.
And so what I started really thinking is like the electric bike, the e motor, you know, the dirt bike, something like that where, and you touched on that saying that women are coming back after riding one of these bikes and just falling in love with it. And I really think that's the best thing I would get for my girlfriend, which is making me think we need to come in and do a ride with you guys so she can experience that. Because, know,
George Gutenberg (14:13.937)
yeah.
George Gutenberg (14:21.963)
Yeah, you should come and try it out and see how she has it.
Danny Thompson (14:25.313)
the e-motorcycles, e-bikes, you know, there really is less to it when it comes to the skill needed, you know, to operate the vehicle. You turn the throttle and you move forward and you've got brakes, basically like a bicycle, but you know, the shifting and just, you know, the clutch and just all those kinds of things is taken out of the equation and it allows the person to ride right away without really having to go through months of like,
George Gutenberg (14:34.306)
sure, yes.
George Gutenberg (14:38.508)
Yeah.
Danny Thompson (14:52.621)
you know, classes or take skill learning and stuff like that. So I think that is such a great, you know, element to this. Really, really cool. You know, the other thing that you mentioned, you know, is you said you started writing as a way to kind of calm your your mind and your brain. And I think that's another really, you know, often kind of under.
George Gutenberg (14:52.885)
Yes, completely agree. Yeah.
George Gutenberg (15:13.239)
Okay?
Danny Thompson (15:19.343)
or you know, not talked about as much issue with with riding, know, is you are you do have to concentrate all the time. You have to constantly be aware of who's around you and what the other cars are doing and, you know, all those things. But the.
George Gutenberg (15:28.546)
yes. Yes.
Danny Thompson (15:36.461)
the mental break that you get from putting a helmet on. And I get the same thing when I go on my bicycle, you know, because there's that physical element of suffering on the bike that just does so much. You know, when you are stressed out or you got just so many things on your mind, when you put that helmet on and just get out there, it really just does so much. Yeah. For your brain. It's a really great thing.
George Gutenberg (15:45.057)
Yes.
Yeah.
George Gutenberg (15:55.404)
You're in the moment. You're truly in the moment where you have to focus on what you're doing and that just shuts everything else down. All the things are going in our head all the time. I'm going to fix that. It's just out the window for a moment. And that's what I'm saying. I find it really relaxing. I really do.
Danny Thompson (16:03.897)
Yeah.
Danny Thompson (16:12.415)
Awesome. Wonderful. Yeah, this sounds like such a cool thing. I really encourage, you know, people listening to this at, you know, locals as well as, you know, tourists. I'm sure there's a ton of local people that, you know, just have never experienced anything like this and would really enjoy it. George, if somebody wants to get a hold of you, to book a tour or ask questions, what's the best way to do that?
George Gutenberg (16:35.927)
Well, we have all the information online of course. for guided tours, it's MotoAdventureTours.com is the website. If they're interested in renting a motorcycle, that be DesertMotorRentals.com. And phone numbers, we have those too. 760469000. Or if they need an 800 number, we have one of those. 373MOTO.
Danny Thompson (16:54.575)
All right.
Danny Thompson (17:05.167)
373 MOTO cool All right. I will make sure to put all that stuff in the show notes George thanks so much for your time I'll be I'll be coming down to do a ride for sure bring my girlfriend down there and then Usually in the winter my brother comes out. He you know, he's back in the Chicago area So his you know his five or six motorcycles He always has her, you know garage at that point So he always wants to take one of my bikes and go for a ride. So I'm thinking this year. We rent a couple
George Gutenberg (17:07.072)
Yeah!
George Gutenberg (17:13.675)
That was my pleasure. Thanks.
George Gutenberg (17:30.027)
Good night.
Danny Thompson (17:34.861)
You know, or a couple of bikes from you and try out some bikes that, that I haven't, I, did look in your garage the other day when I was over there and you've got a great selection of a wide selection of cool stuff.
George Gutenberg (17:35.159)
Yeah, you bet. Yeah, I mean, we got different.
George Gutenberg (17:44.971)
Well, we got everything. Yeah, I mean, we got, you know, light bikes, heavy bikes, everything in between. So, know, Harleys and BMWs and Moto Guzis and, you know, Royal Enfields, we got a variety of stuff. that pretty much suits anybody, I think. So whatever riding style, how much weight they want to carry.
Danny Thompson (17:56.375)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Really. Yeah. Yeah. Really, really cool. George, thank you so much for being on the show.
George Gutenberg (18:05.772)
Thanks. My pleasure. Thank you, Danny, for inviting me.
Danny Thompson (18:11.576)
Alright.
