SOUTH HAVEN, Mich. (AP) — George Roberts didn't get bit with the travel bug until he was 62. But when it bit, it bit deep.

Now the South Haven man, 67, is hooked on the open road.

He recently spent six months traveling through Mexico, Central America and South America on his 1999 BMW motorcycle. In other recent trips he toured Australia and Mexico by motorcycle and Alaska by truck.

The most recent trip was a 23,000-mile journey through 13 countries between October 2006 and April of this year, across endless vistas of mountains, deserts, rain forests and salt flats. And bad roads. Many bad roads.

The trip hurled some of the most daunting challenges yet at him. His motorcycle suffered breakdowns. He survived a close encounter with a bus on a high mountain pass and 100 miles of mud called a road in Peru.

He rode through thunderstorms and put up with corrupt border officers, and in a final insult was beaten unconscious by thugs in Argentina who were enraged to find out he had no money on him.

But Roberts, a retired boilermaker who has taken on the nickname ''Smilin' George,'' isn't the kind of man who lets little things like that keep him down.

The day after he was beaten black and blue by brass-knuckle wielding robbers in Mendoza, Argentina, for example, he was back on his motorcycle. Despite his black eye, several stitches in his face and several cracked ribs, he managed to make the 700-mile ride to Buenos Aires in one day.

''I was in so much pain I couldn't sleep anyway,'' Roberts said. ''And I wasn't going to let those sons of bitches get me down.'' The high points of Roberts' adventures south of the border far outweighed the bad times, he said. The good times included taking in breathtaking scenery and meeting fellow international motorcyclists.