What is the 555?

Whoa, a deep philosophical question for this crew and one that doesn't necessarily have an answer. I like what one of the 555 copycats, Cryin' Eyes, said when asked by a Knoxville writer "Why are you guys seeing the Knox555 as inspiration instead of the bad examples they so obviously are?"

To which Cryin'Eyes replied: "We have spent years doing stupid stuff as fast as possible but the Knoxville guys turned that whole concept upside down by showing us that stupid stuff can be done much, much slower and be equally fun."

Speaking for myself, the 'doing stupid things slowly' was a by-product of something more altruistic and rational. More accurately this whole thing came about as a big equalizer. It's no fun riding distance when one rider is at a woeful disadvantage in the cc or the reliability department. In our case, we simply defaulted to the lowest denominator which was Chocolate Thunder's Honda CL450 which was bought for $100 and an offer for a punch in the neck from the seller for even considering riding it across country.

It was an interesting concept. In the day and age of $25,000 adventure bikes, deep pockets and everyone striving to be Ewan McGregor in the Long Way Around, could seven guys (one who had no previous motorcycle experience) spend three weeks traveling large for around $2,000 including the bike, gear, fuel, food, beer and umm.....more beer. Obviously, they can...and did....and will do again. So by default we were regulated to taking the Slow Way Around, which to state the obvious, gives you time to take more of everything in.
I've traveled in different levels of comfort and luxury but nothing comes close to the experience of traveling cheap and slow. - Erock