About the Author of Pashnit
Tim Mayhew has devoted more than 30 years to photographing, writing about, and riding California’s motorcycle roads. What began in 1999 as a personal project — a hand-built website sharing the roads he was discovering, then photographing with a second-hand film camera and a Kawasaki ZX-11D — has grown into the most comprehensive online resource for California motorcycle travel. Pashnit.com (pronounced “passionate”) now documents hundreds of roads with detailed descriptions, maps, and thousands of photographs, serving as an encyclopedic guidebook for riders around the world.
Mayhew’s writing is instantly recognizable. It carries a distinctive personal voice: dry humor, occasional cinematic references, self-aware asides, and the kind of lived-in knowledge that only comes from decades of actually riding the pavement. He prefers the overlooked connectors and “goat trails” to the headline passes, for example, reminding readers that "The purpose of riding Highway 395 is to get off Highway 395." His road reviews favor sensory detail, practical warnings, and the quiet satisfaction of a well-chosen curve over rankings or superlatives.
His work has been featured in Cycle World (the 2003 profile that helped launch the tour company), CityBike, Motorcycle Tour & Travel, RoadTrip Magazine, Friction Zone, and others. He has been interviewed on radio and television and has spoken on motorcycle travel for organizations including BMW. Proving that hypersport bikes belong on goat trails, he has ridden more than 400,000 miles across North America while documenting California’s backroads — a staggering 250,000 of them logged across four different Hayabusas.
In 2004, following the published Cycle World article, Mayhew launched Pashnit Motorcycle Tours. He has since designed and led nearly 300 organized tours across California, Oregon, and Nevada — more than 1.4 million combined rider-miles — with a repeat participation rate that routinely exceeds 90 percent. The organized tours emphasize small groups, carefully chosen backroads, and the camaraderie that develops when riders spend a weekend exploring together.
In 2017, while leading a Pashnit Motorcycle Tour through Southern California, Mayhew suffered a hemorrhagic stroke — a brain bleed — while riding. Early warning signs included drifting onto a freeway shoulder and an unusually severe headache that he initially dismissed. The following day, after another drifting incident led to a minor collision on the climb to Palomar Observatory, his tour participants recognized the danger, staged what amounted to a mutiny refusing to ride, and insisted he seek medical help despite his repeated insistence that he felt fine. A CT scan confirmed he was experiencing a ruptured blood vessel and was bleeding inside his brain. He was admitted to a neurological ICU at a specialized stroke center. Hemorrhagic strokes are less common than ischemic strokes but carry significantly higher mortality; nearly half of those who experience one die within days, and full recovery is uncommon. Mayhew spent days under close monitoring as the bleeding stabilized. He later documented the entire experience in the long-form first-person account “My Beautiful Broken Brain” on Pashnit.com. Against the statistical odds, he recovered sufficiently to return both to riding and to leading tours.
Pashnit.com remains free of advertising and is supported by riders who value the resource. Mayhew continues to add new road pages, post daily road suggestions on his Instagram and Facebook feed, and lead tours. The 2027 season includes seventeen tours, and will be his 24th year of leading guided motorcycle tours and nearly 30 years of writing about California Motorcycle Roads.
For those who have followed the writing for years, or his 1000+ featured roads on his Facebook/Instagram feed, the voice is familiar: opinionated, emotionally observant, occasionally irreverent, deeply informed by the saddle, and always focused on the next good road.
