Remembering Ed

February 24, 2026Uncategorized




Ed Culberson was the first to claim having ridden a motorcycle the entire length of the Pan American Highway. The harrowing crossing of the jungle gap between Panama and Colombia is what makes his story particularly compelling. 

     It was a forced freeway slog from my birth state of Virginia back to my home in Bulverde, on the edge of the Texas Hill Country. I wasn’t complaining. A day earlier I had the keys to my new INEOS Grenadier handed to me by the guys at Triad Grenadier in Greensboro, NC. That intoxicating smell of a new car and the exploration of the car’s gadgetry and screen display pampered the senses. I don’t know that I’ve ever lusted for anything with steel and wheels as much as I have the Grenadier. It may have been an interstate highway, but I was experiencing nirvana.

In the mood, I commanded my phone to plug me into Scott Brady’s Overland Journal Podcast. As much as I knew I was going to love this vehicle, it is where it is going to take me that had my imagination in overdrive. Brady’s global overlanding pedigree and his informative guests, never fail to inspire and remind me what an extraordinary community he represents and that I can claim to be a part of, in my own way.

I had binged through several hours of the podcast. I was up for one more. When Brady announced his guest, it triggered memories taking me back four decades when I recalled first learning of a patch of jungle between Panama and Colombia known as the Darien Gap.

Patricia Mercier Upton, for the next hour, recounted her involvement in the Darien Gap expeditions aboard the Jeep Discovery in the mid 1980’s piloted by her late husband, Lauren Upton and a cast of others. Upton by all accounts was an overlanding icon (See links below for additional details) He was a Darienista, a title held by only a few. Though not mentioned, it was a former member of my Pancho Villa Moto-Tours (later known as MotoDiscovery) staff team, a collaborator, a mentor, my friend, Ed Culberson, that was conspicuously absent from the conversation. I couldn’t help but be curious.

I can remember the first time I saw Ed. It was fleeting. About 80 miles per hour fleeting, or as fast as an 1981 R80/GS BMW in need of a valve adjustment could fly up Highway 57 in Mexico ridden by someone who could smell the Rio Grande. It’s called border fever. He was in a hurry. I was taking a break on the side of a desert altiplano road standing next to my R100RS BMW when he passed by. I don’t know that I even got a wave or a nod. It was disappointing. Who was that guy?

The next day, in Laredo, Texas it was a late morning Denny’s breakfast (don’t be too hard on me…it was convenient) when I walked past the BMW GS in the parking lot with the vanity plate reading AMIGO. It wasn’t pretty. In fact it had been seriously abused, and while I was longing for a chat, the guy was paying his bill at the counter and telegraphed ,”I need to get down the road and I don’t want or need small talk”. It was a space I decided not to invade, but I made it a point to find out who he was. I sensed he had a story. I would eventually come to know it well. That was May 22, 1986. 

It was maybe a year later, I was attending a BMW motorcycle function in Morelia, Mexico. There it was, in the parking lot, AMGIO, the R80/GS with just enough lipstick to doll it up a bit, but still looking rough. I was standing by it when the mystery man approached me and said, “Are you Skip?” Pancho Villa?”  I replied that I was, “… and you must be Ed Culberson”. If I had an earlier impression of him being aloof and unapproachable, it evaporated over tacos and drinks that evening. Seeking me out, I would become a part of his next quest. And it would change my life.

That day in May when Ed and AMIGO flew by me on that road in Mexico, he was on the homeward final leg of a journey from fulfilling his Obsession to be the first to ride a motorcycle the complete length of the Pan American Highway from Prudo Bay to Ushuaia including the treacherous Darien Gap. In that first face to face meeting, he proposed that I offer a tour from the Rio Grande to the Panama Canal and back. He was prepared to help me make it happen. I was sceptical as tours of this duration were unheard of. We calculated it would be over 40 days. When the word got out, it was obvious my doubts were unfounded. We would that next season run two back to back rides to the Panama Canal with several more over the following years.

Ed was a  retired career military man. A Korean war veteran whose times in the claustrophobic stifling fumes and gunpowder confines of a Pershing Tank rendered his olfactory senses useless. That explains that morning in Denny’s as I passed him, his leathers had a beyond “ripe” smell about them. It didn’t bother Ed!  

His service in Panama in the intelligence arm of the military was a  happy continuation of a childhood fascination with the Panama Canal and the Pan American Highway. Motorcycling would provide the perfect vehicle to permit him to explore the country and seed his quest to cross the Darien which he would eventually accomplish after having missed the dry season window with the Upton Expedition, returning the following year to complete the mission. 

Ed Culberson and his wife, Nel, had plans to move  to San Antonio, TX to settle into an Army retirement facility and to be near me and my motorcycle touring operation. His book, Obsessions Die Hard, was helping to fuel a growing adventure touring movement.   Our visits always included unfolding maps and plotting future tours and expeditions. South America. Cuba. Even the Darien. My Mexico touring company was launching into a worldwide operation, and Ed unselfishly contributed his knowledge and notoriety to helping me achieve success.

“Are you familiar with Lou Gherigs disease…ALS?”  My heart skipped a beat that morning when he called to share with me his diagnosis. His complaints about arm weakness, dropping his motorcycle, and unusual mobility issues, now have an explanation. I stayed silent while he gave me the detailed clinical aspects of the disease, and in closing he said “…and there is no cure… and it is fatal”.

In the course of the months following his diagnosis, he would indeed move to Texas, but he was not riding AMIGO, it would be in a wheel chair. We had so many emotional visits. There were laughs, struggles to communicate, even tearful fits of anger. But until the end, struggling to speak, he continued to offer his thoughts and advice on the travels and adventures that the ravages of ALS would deny him to participate in. He was passing it forward. 

When my wife, Nancy, reached me in Costa Rica that evening in 1995 to tell me that Ed had finally succumbed, Central America, the PanAmerican Highway I would ride that week, and that had been traveled so many times by my friend, took on a special meaning. Now 30 years onward,  as I drove down the highway in my new Grenadier, listening to Patty Upton’s fascinating tales of the Darien, this Overland Journal Podcast revived the memory of Ed Culberson and I couldn’t help but reflect on the impact he had on my life.  

That afternoon in 1986 on the side of a  Mexican road, AMIGO was flying up Highway 57 on the way to the border. Its pilot didn’t even wave.  I can imagine him waving like hell right now! I’ll forgive him.

  • Skip Mascorro

    Author-  Skip Mascorro is founder of MotoDiscovery Motorcycle Tours, originally known as Pancho Villa Moto-Tours. Today he is at the helm of KaravanADV, an operation that specializes in global overlanding and 4WD Expeditions and Tours.

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