Introduction
Boston to Orange County, Autumn Ride
It began, as all splendid misadventures do, with a perfectly rational idea: to ship a motorcycle across the continent and ride it back again. From the golden sprawl of Southern California to the autumn-tinted harbors of Boston, I set in motion a journey equal parts romantic folly and mechanical confrontation. What followed was a grand migration of man and machine—through serene hamlets and chaotic cities, under weeping skies and blistering sun, along highways that shimmered with promise and roads that plotted quiet rebellion.
Boston, that old Revolutionary crucible, greeted me like a stern but knowing uncle. Here is where a ragtag cluster of radicals once thumbed their noses at empires—where tea met salt water and cannonballs thundered against redcoats. Every cobblestone seems to hum with the echo of midnight riders and whispered plots. To begin a cross-country odyssey here is to set your wheels down on the nerve endings of American history itself. The streets still bear their colonial irregularities, challenging the rider to dance rather than merely drive.
This was no mere ride. It was a duel with elements, a dance with destiny, and—more than once—a bargaining session with fate’s roadside assistants. There were moments of frostbite and misfiring engines, of warm meals and strangers who appeared like saints in denim. And always, the hum of the Suzuki V-Strom beneath me, like a faithful if occasionally petulant companion—its engine a jazz drummer keeping time against the steady bassline of the open road.
Ahead lay towns stitched together by railroad dreams and pioneer grit: factory ghosts of New England, Civil War crossroads of Pennsylvania, the wide-shouldered plains where wagon trains once inched westward beneath the same sky that now arched over interstate travelers with Styrofoam coffee. The road is a palimpsest; every mile marker stands atop centuries of human yearning and movement. I wasn’t just crossing distance—I was riding through time.
The pages that follow chronicle this journey, not in the cold language of itinerary, but in the florid prose of memory. Here, the absurd is revered, the inconvenient celebrated, and every minor triumph crowned with Wildean irony.
Reader, fasten your helmet. The road awaits.
Day 1 — Preparing for the Trip
The day before the journey is never just a day — it’s a threshold, a breath drawn before the plunge. The house hums with the nervous rhythm of impending motion. Lists are scribbled, checked, rechecked; piles of gear grow in corners like cairns marking some invisible trail. The mind tries to be practical, but the heart is already idling, pointed east.
There’s a kind of ritual madness in preparing for a cross-country ride. You spread your life across the floor and start making decisions that feel half like logistics, half like philosophy. What do you bring when you’re going to ride through the heart of a continent? Not too much—weight is the enemy. Not too little—fate has a wicked sense of humor.
For this ride from Boston to California, I had to prepare for everything the American sky might throw down: damp New England mornings, mountain cold, endless plains winds, and the furnace breath of the Southwest. Rain was a certainty, as sure as the road itself. From the forests and hills of the East to the flat, wind-wrung heartland and finally the arid expanse of the desert, I’d be chasing weather like a gambler chasing luck.
I laid out the gear like a general planning a campaign.
Heated gear—check. I’d installed heated grips on the V-Strom only weeks earlier; they’d hum quietly against the cold, my invisible allies in the frost. For armor, I chose my Rukka touring suit, a rugged, heavy beast perfect for sleet and rain. But I knew it would be a sweaty trial by fire once the desert sun came for me near the trip’s end.
Two large red duffel bags swallowed everything else: tools, layers, spares, rain covers, and a carefully curated collection of emergency supplies—enough to survive the unexpected, not enough to crush the bike. A backpack held the smaller essentials, the talismans of the road: chargers, maps, snacks, spare gloves. The duffels would be checked through the airline, a modern miracle carrying my journey’s skeleton eastward. In previous years I’d shipped them back after arrival, but this time I decided to keep it all with me—a complete traveling machine, rider and gear bound for Boston and beyond.
There’s a peculiar calm that descends on the night before an epic ride. The weather reports are checked one last time, the route traced in your mind’s eye like a pilgrimage. The bike, though still hundreds of miles away, hums faintly in your imagination. You close your eyes and can almost feel the bars in your hands, the wind pressing against your shoulders, the road rising to meet you.
The lists are done. The bags are zipped. The ticket waits. Tomorrow begins the ride—not with wheels, but with wings.
And the continent waits, patient and vast.
Day 2 — Eastward into the Dawn
Today, the calendar marks the ninth day of October, in the year of our Lord two thousand and twenty-four, and it began at the uncivilized hour of four in the morning—an hour invented, I am convinced, for penitents, poets, and the occasional fugitive soul chasing a horizon. I stumbled through my preparations like a beat prophet struck by sudden revelation, tossing gear into bags with the conviction of a madman certain he will remember what he forgot.
At five sharp, my driver appeared—a cheerful apparition whose accent was so gloriously indecipherable it seemed less a language than a spell, some lost branch of Babylonian tongues resurrected for the early morning hour. I nodded through his sonorous incantations as we barreled toward LAX, the city still wrapped in the cool indifference of pre-dawn. Fortune, for once, abandoned her usual mischief and allowed the whole transit ballet to unfold without delay. Soon I was aloft, airborne and anonymous, cradled in the tin belly of a jet streaking east toward the rising sun.
Air travel has a way of erasing geography—one moment you’re in the golden sprawl of Southern California, where palm trees nod like lazy philosophers, and the next you’re descending into Boston, cradle of rebellion, the granite-faced elder of American cities. Around five in the evening, the wheels kissed the tarmac, and history pressed in from all sides. Here, musket fire once echoed against red brick walls, lanterns signaled revolutions, and the harbor drank its infamous tea. Even the terminal seemed to hum faintly with the ghosts of fiery pamphleteers and merchant sailors.
Baggage retrieval was smooth—a miracle that lulled me into a sense of competence swiftly undone by the ensuing Uber farce. My driver and I played a tragicomic game of “spot the stranger” amidst a swarm of identical sedans, each driven by a man looking for someone who looked like me. Eventually, we found each other. He was from mainland China, and his English practice was earnest, careful, like a monk tracing each letter of a sacred text. We conversed haltingly, amiably, while Boston traffic unfurled around us in its usual operatic chaos—horns like trumpets, brake lights like restless fireflies.
Our journey to Lowell lasted an hour and a half, a swift passage by local standards. Lowell—once the humming heart of America’s Industrial Revolution. A city built on spinning wheels and rushing water, where the Merrimack River powered dreams and looms alike. In the 19th century, Lowell was a place where the future was manufactured: cotton became thread, thread became fabric, fabric became fortune. Immigrants and farm girls filled the mills, and their songs—both hopeful and weary—still seem to rise from the old brick walls at twilight. It’s a fitting staging ground for a journey westward, this city that once embodied the nation’s eastward ambition.
Upon arrival, I was greeted not by warm hospitality but by the betrayal of modern machinery: the elevator was dead. Three flights of stairs awaited me, a Sisyphean gauntlet, and I heaved my gear upward like some two-wheeled Argonaut dragging provisions to Olympus.
And then, the punchline: my noble Suzuki V-Strom, dispatched days prior with solemn assurances of punctuality, had decided to meander. Somewhere in the gentle flatlands of Columbus, Ohio, my steel companion lingered, savoring its own slow-motion cross-country detour. I pictured it there, idling contentedly beside some rustbelt warehouse, while I in Lowell prepared for a journey without its throaty purr beneath me.
Thus the trip began in the finest tradition of road adventures—not with precision and order, but with delays, detours, and delicious absurdities. The gods of the open road demand a toll, and on this day, they collected in stair-climbs, Uber pantomimes, and one leisurely motorcycle vacationing without me.
Day 3 — Waiting on Steel and Destiny
Lowell, Massachusetts — October 10
On the tenth day of October, I awoke to the soft shuffle of history outside my window—the Merrimack flowing steady and indifferent, the old red-brick mills standing like retired generals, still proud, still looming. The news arrived with the absurd serenity of a Zen koan: the truck driver ferrying my beloved Suzuki had spent the entire night asleep at a truck stop. A full stop, not a pause. My visions of a relay team of tireless drivers had been nothing but romantic invention; in truth, a lone road warrior bore the entire load. And like all solitary travelers, he succumbed to the irresistible gravity of a well-lit truck stop and a warm bunk.
Thursday’s anticipated reunion between man and machine dissolved into the mist. No V-Strom on the horizon. Just me, a borrowed slice of time in an old mill town, and the peculiar calm that comes when plans are taken out of your hands. I accepted the delay with a kind of sublime resignation—the sort of philosophical shrug one might offer when the fates conspire with a knowing smile.
So I drifted through the day like a beat poet between trains, half in the present, half adrift in the hum of waiting. My tasks were perfunctory—small errands, minor adjustments, the rearranging of gear with the compulsive precision of a traveler not yet traveling. Outside, Lowell pulsed gently, no longer the roaring engine of the Industrial Revolution but a city wrapped in its own sepia memories. Once, this place had been the beating heart of American manufacturing—a grand experiment in harnessing rivers to spin cotton and build empires. Irish immigrants, Yankee farm girls, French Canadians, Greeks—all had once flocked here to feed the hungry looms. The mills sang day and night, their songs carried on the wind. Now, the Merrimack flows past converted lofts and quiet museums, and the ghosts of mill girls watch patiently from the windows.
There’s a strange poetry in being stranded in a city like this—a pause in the rhythm, a held note before the road’s great song begins. I found myself wandering down canal paths, past brick archways and iron footbridges that whispered of a bygone mechanical age. My motorcycle was still out there, somewhere on the American highway, napping beside semis and diesel engines, while I paced the old haunts of industrial dreamers.
Thus, my journey—already christened with comedic inconvenience—continued in its noble tradition: delayed, tangled, and oddly beautiful. The road had not yet begun, but already it was telling its story.
Day 4 — The Languor of Lowell
October 11 — Still Waiting
The eleventh day of October unspooled like a lazy ribbon in the autumn air—soft, slow, and indifferent to human schemes. Morning crept over Lowell with a painter’s touch: slanted light through factory windows, the Merrimack drifting like a long sentence without a period. I awoke not to engines and horizons, but to stillness—the kind that hums faintly between chapters of a story. The Suzuki was still somewhere out there on the American road, likely dozing beside a diesel convoy, oblivious to my mounting anticipation.
With no machine to carry me, I was sentenced to a kind of accidental sabbatical. My grand itinerary dissolved into fluid abstraction—plans became mirages, drifting just out of reach. I wandered the hours like a man between trains: half-packed, over-ready, my mind a restless metronome ticking against the quiet. A few modest tasks offered themselves—emails dispatched, straps re-checked, weather forecasts consulted with monkish devotion—but they were mere pebbles in the wide stillness of the day.
Lowell, in its autumn repose, made a fitting companion for such languor. Once the pulsing heart of the Industrial Revolution, it now wears its history like a comfortable coat. The old mills, repurposed into apartments and museums, stand with quiet dignity. In the 1840s, the canals and turbines here were technological marvels, drawing the Merrimack’s power to spin the fabric of a young nation. Thousands of “mill girls,” some barely out of childhood, once rose before dawn, their footsteps echoing through cobblestone streets as the bell summoned them to the looms. Their labor wove the cloth that clothed America; their songs—half hopeful, half weary—still seem to cling to the red brick walls.
I sat by the canal for a time, watching water churn against old locks. It struck me that waiting has always been part of the American story: wagon trains paused for rivers to thaw, telegraph lines waited for distant replies, ships lingered for the right wind. My pause, then, was merely a modern echo—a man awaiting his steed of steel rather than horseflesh, but bound by the same patient tether.
And so I leaned into the idleness with the serene indifference of an aesthete who knows the wine will arrive eventually. My motorcycle’s absence was no longer merely inconvenient—it was veering toward comedic drama, as though the fates were staging a slow-burn vaudeville of delay. Somewhere in Ohio or Pennsylvania, my V-Strom was the protagonist of its own side story; here in Lowell, I was the supporting cast, sipping coffee, rereading maps, and waiting for the music to cue my entrance.
Around two in the afternoon, buoyed by news of my motorcycle's arrival, I embarked on a brief yet hopeful pilgrimage to the nearby trucking company—a mere four-tenths of a mile stroll. Upon arrival, however, bureaucracy asserted its inescapable presence, and I was informed, with a casual indifference befitting officialdom, that the unloading of the truck would require considerable patience. After enduring a minor eternity, someone mercifully fetched me, leading to the joyous reunion with my Suzuki V-Strom. At last astride my mechanical steed, I exited the storage location triumphantly, feeling the splendid liberation of the open road once more within my grasp.
Day 5 — North by Northeast
October 12 — Lowell, MA to Lake George, NY
“The road must eventually lead to the whole world.”
— Jack Kerouac, On the Road
Friday dawned crisp, clean, and full of promise. The twelfth day of October saw me once more wrestling with the building’s vertical cruelty—those cursed three flights of stairs—my luggage multiplying like mischievous rabbits with each descent. Three trips it took, three penitential ascents and descents, each one punctuated by the clank of zippers and the quiet mutter of a man who knows the road awaits but will not be rushed.
Outside, autumn had sharpened the air. The sky was the pale blue of old enamelware, and the trees wore their October finery—scarlets, ambers, and burnished gold. It was the sort of morning that demands heated grips, but not yet the full armor of heated gear; the kind that bites the fingertips while leaving the soul pleasantly alert. I swung into the saddle at last, the V-Strom purring beneath me like a cat finally roused from its cross-country nap, and pointed northward.
The ride unwound through New England villages strung along the road like pearls on a necklace—each one boasting its proud white steeple, a town hall with echoes of town-meeting debates, and homes that have weathered centuries of snow and revolution alike. This was the landscape that gave birth to the American idea: Massachusetts town greens where Minutemen once drilled; Vermont hillsides where farmers became soldiers; New Hampshire rivers that powered sawmills and dreams. The road traced these histories like a finger along a well-worn map.
A stop at Cumberland Farms brought the day’s comedy: an ill-timed water-bladder mishap baptizing the Suzuki but, mercifully, sparing me. A kindly clerk—a guardian angel in a fleece vest—ushered me into the staff restroom, a small act of human generosity that shines bright on a long road. I left with gratitude in my chest and a damp motorcycle beneath me.
The miles carried me westward, through Vermont’s rolling hills and revolutionary echoes, into New Hampshire’s granite-hearted forests, and finally across the state line into New York. By late afternoon, I rolled into Lake George, embraced by the gentle hues of autumn. The air had grown sharper, the kind that whispers of frost to come. Lake George has long been a stage for travelers: colonial armies marched here during the French and Indian War; steamboats later carried well-heeled tourists through the Adirondack’s romantic wildness. Today, motorcyclists follow the same ancient corridors—trading muskets for engines, powder smoke for exhaust.
I checked into the Best Western like countless road pilgrims before me, my mind turning southward. Lake Placid—romantic, remote, frost-tinged—would have to wait for another year. The falling mercury and impending rain suggested warmer climes would be the wiser route.
At a scenic overlook, while gazing across the waters at the Adirondacks’ fiery foliage, I met a convivial gentleman from Holland—a fellow motorcyclist, kindred spirit, and professional peer. We stood there talking in the golden light, strangers connected by the universal language of the road: engines, wanderlust, and good conversation. It was a fitting punctuation mark to a memorable day’s ride—a day that had begun with stairwell penance and ended in the fellowship of the traveling tribe.
Day 6 — Flight Before the Tempest
October 13 — Lake George, NY to Batavia, NY
“Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?”
— Jack Kerouac, On the Road
The day arrived with ominous intent, like the first act of a Shakespearean tragedy. The sky hung heavy—gray, brooding, pregnant with storm. Not a drop had yet fallen, but the air carried that electric tension that precedes calamity, the kind of silence you find just before a conductor raises his baton. The wind whispered run, and I heeded its counsel.
Realizing that discretion is the better part of valor—and that dry socks are a form of quiet bliss—I resolved to flee west and south, to outpace the advancing tempest. I pointed the Suzuki toward the toll road, that great commercial artery pulsing across New York like a steel vein, carrying restless traffic toward Buffalo and Cleveland, westward toward the heartland. I rode with purpose, visor down, jaw set.
But the heavens, like a spurned lover, would not be outrun. Somewhere along that relentless stretch of interstate, the sky cracked open and rain fell not in drops but in torrents, disdainful and unrelenting. The temperature nosedived to a sullen forty degrees—a wet cold that creeps into bones and brake cables alike. The storm didn’t merely arrive; it performed, as though auditioning for some cosmic drama.
I became a mobile hearth, swathed in electrically heated gear, my gloves waging a valiant but losing war against invading moisture. The heated grips burned like faithful sentinels against the cold, their glow felt more in spirit than in skin. Around me, the Mohawk Valley stretched in muted splendor—mist veiling the low hills, the river slipping quietly through a corridor once alive with history. Here, the Iroquois Confederacy flourished long before colonial maps were drawn; later, this valley became the gateway through which settlers, soldiers, and dreamers moved west. The Erie Canal followed this ancient path, pulling the young nation toward expansion. Today, I rode the same corridor, but with rain for company and heated circuits for courage.
By late afternoon, Batavia, New York appeared like a modest sanctuary amid the storm. Once a frontier outpost at the edge of New York’s western wilderness, Batavia was the seat of the Holland Land Company in the early 19th century—a place where deeds were inked and the wild interior parceled into promise. To me, it was salvation: a Holiday Inn of modest virtue, faintly perfumed with some unnameable aroma, but dry, warm, and welcoming.
I peeled off my soaked Gore-Tex like a molting creature, emerged in civilized attire, and ventured to a nearby restaurant. There, in an unassuming dining room, I was served a steak salad of such unexpected excellence that it nearly erased the memory of the cold rain slapping my visor. It was the kind of small triumph that only travelers understand: the road humbles, the table restores.
Thus ended a day of elemental trials and culinary redemption—a pairing not uncommon for the itinerant philosopher astride a steel steed. Outside, the storm prowled westward, but inside, I was warm, fed, and grateful.
Day 7 — Rain, Smoke, and the Resurrection of Steel
October 14 — Batavia, NY to Cleveland, OH
“...because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved...”
— Jack Kerouac, On the Road
The day dawned with a crescendo of rain, a cruel symphony drumming its relentless rhythm against the hotel’s façade. It was no passing shower but a full orchestral assault—strings, timpani, and brass—each drop announcing the wet gauntlet awaiting me. I rose with the solemnity of a monk before matins, wheeled my motorcycle beneath the porte-cochère, and prepared for the ritual dressing of rain gear. The air smelled of wet asphalt and travel.
It was here I met Sue—a woman with the Marlboro spirit etched into her very bearing. She emerged from the mist like a character from a half-remembered road novel, cigarette glowing like a campfire in the gray morning. As we spoke, she wrapped herself in a fog of nicotine and memory, recounting stories of her cottage two hours north of Ottawa, her family roots, and the shared mythology of Prince and Michael Jackson, those icons who once made the world seem limitless. In the way of road encounters, our conversation was brief, genuine, and unrepeatable—a spark in the storm.
As I wrestled my limbs into rain gear, Sue regarded my fogged visor with incredulous concern.
“How do you see in all this rain?” she asked, her eyes narrowing against the downpour.
And truthfully, I often wondered myself.
Thus began a ride that would test man and machine alike. The heavens conspired with the wind; the cold bit with icy fangs. I pressed westward, the interstate unspooling beneath my wheels like a sodden ribbon. Rain streaked my vision, wind clawed at my helmet, and water seeped into seams that Gore-Tex brochures had sworn were impregnable. It was riding by faith, trusting in the vague outlines of trucks and taillights through a liquid veil.
Somewhere on that long gray road toward Cleveland, I felt the V-Strom’s heart falter. First the headlight dimmed—a tired eye closing against the storm. Then the turn signals fell mute. By the time I rolled into the parking lot of a Best Western airport hotel, the engine sighed and died completely, like some overwrought Victorian heroine collapsing upon her fainting couch. My steed had given all it could to the elements.
Yet fortune, in her dry humor, offered a covered parking spot—a rare treasure in that wet kingdom. I dismounted into the drizzle, helmet dripping, boots squelching. Despair came not as drama but as pragmatism. I trudged through wind and wet to a nearby AutoZone, that fluorescent temple of mechanical salvation, where for $33 I purchased my Excalibur: a humble battery charger.
Back at the hotel, I pulled the battery from its metallic womb like a mad scientist mid-epiphany. I set it beneath the covered awning and began the slow Frankensteinian resurrection. As electrons flowed into lead and acid, thoughts flowed into me:
Should I surrender? Ship the bike home, admit defeat to the storm gods?
Or press onward, leapfrogging town by town, charging nightly, keeping the dream alive by sheer will?
The answer shimmered faintly in the distance: Columbus. Bigger city, warmer repair bays, the promise of tools and technicians. If I could make it there, the journey might yet breathe again.
And so, as the charger hummed into the night, hope returned—faint, electric, stubborn. By morning, the battery and my resolve were both recharged. The road hadn’t beaten me yet.
Tomorrow, I would ride.
Day 8 — Resurrection on the Road
October 15 — Cleveland, OH to Martinsville, IN
“...the road is life.”
— Jack Kerouac, On the Road
The day arrived not with dread nor triumph, but with a quiet, cautious optimism—the kind you carry like a fragile heirloom across uncertain terrain, careful not to jostle either fate or hope too abruptly. The night before, I had charged the Suzuki’s battery as one might tend to a wounded companion, and with dawn came the reckoning. Outside, the skies were neither bright nor brooding—they hovered in a kind of neutral truce, unwilling to bless but not inclined to curse.
With doubts temporarily silenced and electrons freshly marshaled, I rolled out of Cleveland with a single ambition: reach Columbus, that industrial crossroads vast enough to harbor the tools, parts, or human ingenuity required to heal any lingering ailments of my mechanical steed. Every watt was sacred. I shut off all auxiliary indulgences—no heated grips, no chargers, no conveniences. Just engine, headlight, and faith.
And then—a miracle on wheels. The battery not only held; it began to charge itself as I rode. A resurrection within a resurrection. Somewhere between Cleveland’s gray expanse and the open ribbon of interstate, the Suzuki shook off its lethargy and found its rhythm again. It was as if the machine had merely needed a night’s quiet to remember its purpose.
I understood then that I had likely overtaxed the battery the day before—rain, cold, electrical loads, and long miles conspiring to drain it beyond what the alternator could revive. That modest epiphany restored in me a certain daring. Columbus was no longer a terminus, but a waypoint, a friendly port on a longer voyage.
So, intoxicated by mechanical hope and the subtle thrill of movement, I pressed southward, letting the miles roll beneath me like a steady drumbeat. Between Cleveland and Columbus, autumn performed her grand pageant—a riot of scarlet, amber, and gold cascading across the hillsides. The trees sang their October hymn, a full-throated overture of color, and for a few blissful miles I forgot the rain, the cold, the failures. It was just me, the road, and the grand kaleidoscope of fall.
I rode beyond Columbus, buoyed by newfound confidence, and aimed toward the leaf-strewn arteries of the Midwest, where fields flatten and time stretches out. By day’s end, I found myself in Martinsville, Indiana, just south of Indianapolis. The Best Western there bore traces of faded grandeur, perhaps elegant once in the Taft administration. It was clean enough, serviceable, and faintly perfumed with the ghosts of a thousand cigarettes—phantoms that clung lovingly to drapes and wallpaper despite the “non-smoking” signage.
Dinner was modest—a Subway sandwich across the street—but the taste carried the sweetness of unexpected victory. Against every gloomy forecast, both man and machine had endured, even thrived. It was not a day of dramatic conquest but of quiet, glorious perseverance—the kind that makes a journey’s middle chapters hum with life.
Day 9 — Pastoral Roads and Sushi in the Rain
October 16 — Martinsville, IN to Jackson, TN
“The road is holy, the road is life, the road goes on.”
— Jack Kerouac
The morning opened to a landscape of such gentle splendor that for a fleeting moment, Indiana seemed an undiscovered province of Eden. Mist curled softly over the hills, rain whispered rather than roared, and the rolling countryside unfurled like a pastoral tapestry—a place where homes were scarce but beauty lay thick upon the land. The rain was no longer a tyrant beating its fists upon my visor; it had softened into a melancholic violinist, playing an elegiac accompaniment to my southern passage.
I wound my way through these quiet hills, feeling the rhythm of the road settle into something almost meditative. In this landscape, the interstate feels distant; the world shrinks to wet pavement, the hum of the engine, and the tender sway of trees lining the way like parishioners watching a solemn procession.
Somewhere along this serene stretch, I made a habitual pilgrimage to that most democratic of dining halls—McDonald’s, the roadside cathedral where truckers, retirees, and wanderers alike break bread beneath golden arches. There, I encountered Bill, a wiry elder surrounded by what could only be described as his coffee-klatch harem—a half-circle of women engaged in lively morning chatter. Bill’s eyes sparkled with the unmistakable fire of a man who has seen the country from a saddle.
Bill had ridden across all 48 contiguous states on not one, but three Honda Gold Wings, the great touring chariots of American asphalt. He spoke with the easy authority of a road sage, his stories stretching from Maine to California, from snow-swept passes to sweltering plains. His advice came like a benediction: “You gotta do Daytona Bike Week at least once before you die. Preferably more than once.”
It wasn’t bravado. It was gospel.
Warmed by coffee, inspired by Bill’s wanderlust, I continued southward, rain still tracing delicate patterns across my visor. By evening, I rolled into Jackson, Tennessee, a town wearing the quiet fatigue of the road less traveled. My hotel was tucked away behind a veil of misfortune—the charred remains of a building across the street, a U-Haul fire from the previous night having left skeletal timbers clawing at the sky. It set an ominous tone, but the room itself proved refreshingly ordinary: clean, dry, free of ghosts both olfactory and spectral. A humble refuge.
And then came the kind of roadside magic that keeps wanderers believing: across the street stood a sushi restaurant of unexpected refinement. In a town where one might anticipate fried fare and tired buffets, I found Japanese precision and grace—miso soup steaming like a prayer, seaweed salad crisp and briny, rolls arranged with quiet artistry.
I sat at the bar in my road-worn clothes, rain jacket folded beside me, marveling at the absurd harmony of it all: a day begun among Edenic hills, ridden through gentle rain, framed by the wisdom of an old rider—and concluded with sushi perfection in an unlikely Tennessee town.
The road, as ever, had delivered its peculiar poetry.
Day 10 — Into the Teeth of the Wind
October 17 — Jackson, TN to Gallup, NM
“The wind howled, and I howled back.”
— Jack Kerouac, imagined on a long western highway
The day dawned with deceptive grace. At 8:30 a.m., I departed my lodgings beneath skies that wore the gentle mask of civility—mild, clear, and a temperate 54 degrees. The road lay before me like a promise. For a while, I allowed myself to believe that the fates had finally grown tired of their mischief.
But the open expanse of Oklahoma is not a place for naive hope. Beyond the first horizon, nature shrugged off its genteel disguise and revealed her true, feral temperament.
The wind arrived not as a whisper but as a brute force, hammering at me with gusts up to 40 miles per hour from the southwest. It struck the front-left quarter of my being like a relentless tax collector—unyielding, methodical, absurdly personal. Holding 75 mph, the posted limit, became less an act of transportation and more a feat of theatrical resistance.
Texas came quietly, like a long exhale, and then New Mexico followed—both announced not by grand signs or landscapes, but by the shifting quality of the air and the ever-strengthening wind, which seemed to grow more mischievous with each invisible border crossed.
Near Albuquerque, the sun broke through with startling confidence, illuminating the land in a crisp, almost biblical light. I pulled over to shed layers, switching to lighter gloves, my body caught between seasons like a traveler moving through centuries in a single afternoon. Along this corridor of extremes, the road revealed its eccentric Americana:
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A U-Haul truck bearing a DeLorean, cradled like some fragile relic from a future-past.
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A Cybertruck gleaming in a tiny New Mexico town, an alien artifact of stainless steel. How it charged there, I cannot say—perhaps it fed on curiosity alone.
But the desert is capricious. Just as Albuquerque receded in my mirrors, the wind returned—steady, cruel, unrelenting. This was no longer something to lean against; it was something to negotiate with. For the next hour I rode like a sailor reefing sails mid-tempest—hanging off the left side of my bike to keep the machine upright, a counterweighted absurdity against nature’s invisible hand.
At a fuel stop, a stranger approached, wide-eyed, breathless.
“I saw you out there! Hanging off your bike—I’m a rider too. That was incredible!”
We spoke with the reverence of survivors—two wanderers who had faced the same invisible beast and lived to tell the tale.
As the terrain grew hillier, the wind began to withdraw—sullen, never kind, but less murderous. I pressed on, hoping to outrun the black leviathan gathering on the horizon. Twenty miles from Gallup, New Mexico, it struck.
A wall of rain, colder and more ferocious than any I had endured in sodden New York, slammed down. For fourteen long miles I rode through this liquid onslaught, drenched and battered, each mile an act of stubborn defiance. Then, through the gray curtain, came the hotel lights—warm, artificial stars guiding me home.
Inside the lobby, I was met not just with shelter, but with a strange fame.
“I was looking for the motorcycle guy,” said one man, eyes wide. “And there you are.”
Moments later, another approached: “Did you plan for this?”
I assured him I had not. No one plans for theatrical acts of nature.
Warmth awaited not in the room, but in a humble Mexican restaurant nearby. Enchiladas, beans, and local kindness thawed the edges of the day’s ordeal. When I returned, I nestled the V-Strom beneath the hotel eaves just as the sky began to snow—fat flakes drifting down with the sincerity of winter’s first vow. The thermometer read 47°, but the scene said otherwise: winter was knocking.
Thus concluded a 520-mile day—a day of wind and will, of absurd physics and quiet triumph, of hanging off a motorcycle in a desert gale while time machines and Cybertrucks shared the stage. It was the kind of day the road remembers.
Day 11 — Frost, Failure, and Resurrection in Show Low
October 18 — Gallup, NM to Show Low, AZ
“And in the silence of the road I heard my soul humming like a wire in the cold wind.”
— Jack Kerouac, imagined in the high desert
The day opened with frost and silence in Gallup, New Mexico. The rain had finally withdrawn, leaving behind a biting 33-degree stillness that settled over the world like a crystalline spell. The pavement crackled faintly beneath my boots; each breath rose in pale ribbons of ice. I rose early, performing my morning packing ritual with the reverence of a monk before vespers—each strap tightened, each layer chosen like a psalm for the day’s uncertain hymn.
The V-Strom rumbled to life reluctantly, and I rolled to a nearby Gulf station, a small beacon in the cold, to fuel up for the long descent south. My chosen path wound through Pueblo country—roads less traveled but heavy with story. Soon I was climbing into snow-laced hills, the land transforming around me into something half real, half myth. Police cars passed in the opposite direction, their hoods mounded with six inches of icy slush, spectral omens of what awaited. For two hours, I rode through this enchanted corridor of frost, past the Zuni Pueblo, past time itself.
This was not mere geography; it was history layered in silence. The Zuni, one of the oldest continuously inhabited communities in North America, have called this region home for millennia. Their adobe villages and ceremonial rhythms persist against the sweep of centuries, while riders like me pass through in a single morning, awestruck and humbled.
By the time I reached St. Johns, Arizona, the temperature had clawed up to 39 degrees. A solitary-pump 7-Eleven stood as an oasis in that wind-bruised land. I refueled quickly, my fingers stiff, my breath fogging. The sun hovered faintly above but offered no warmth. Onward I went, until Show Low, perched among pines, offered a croissant and latte at Starbucks—a small but precious reprieve. I peeled away layers with foolish optimism, believing the worst behind me.
It was not.
Just four miles outside Show Low, at a steady 75 mph, the Suzuki shuddered once and fell silent. The engine died cleanly, almost politely, like a stage actor exiting on cue. I coasted to the shoulder, thumbed the starter in vain, and finally exhaled into the growing wind.
Moments later, like some road-borne deus ex machina, Dirk arrived. A kindred spirit—a biker—he leapt from his vehicle with the enthusiasm of a man who’s been there. We crouched in the gravel, tracing wires, muttering theories like desert shamans, but nothing revived the machine. Dirk handed me the number of a local shop, and on the other end of the line came Lisa, a voice of calm on a fraying wire. “If it’s minor, we can do it today. Otherwise, Tuesday,” she said, and the weight of that “otherwise” hung like a storm cloud.
AAA promised arrival in thirty minutes. A fairy tale. Dirk and I became sentinels on the roadside. As the sky grew leaden, more strangers appeared: a passing biker who stopped without hesitation; then a kind motorist who, seeing the heavens darken, insisted I shelter in his car. I accepted just as the rain returned in earnest, turning the roadside vigil into a soggy purgatory.
Rick, the final Good Samaritan, joined me at noon. We waited together. Finally, the tow truck driver called—he was picking up another vehicle first. True to his word, he passed us, then returned forty minutes later. We loaded the bike with the solemnity of priests preparing a rite, strapping it down against wind and doubt.
At the Show Low shop, behind a locked gate, we met Zeph—a man whose hands carried the grease-stained wisdom of a lifetime spent communing with machines. He ushered the Suzuki into his lair and began the diagnostic ritual. Methodically, patiently, he unearthed the culprit: a rogue Power Commander—an aftermarket device turned mutineer. He stripped it out, restored the wiring to its factory purity, turned the key… and life returned. The engine barked awake as though shaking off a bad dream.
By 4:30 p.m., I was checked into a nearby hotel—weary but serene, as one often is after near-catastrophe narrowly averted. A modest Mexican restaurant down the road served enchiladas and quiet hospitality. I ate slowly, thinking of Dirk, Lisa, Rick, Zeph, and the chorus of strangers who had turned a mechanical failure into a testament of kindness.
Tomorrow would be the final push: 500 miles through Phoenix and the southern deserts to home. The road promised to be long, cold, and unforgiving. But I had learned something fundamental: both man and machine can be mended, given time, grace, and the improbable generosity of strangers on the American road.
Day 12 — The Penultimate Push
October 19 — Show Low, AZ to El Centro, CA
“The road goes on forever, and the ride… the ride is the truth.”
— Jack Kerouac, somewhere between dawn and destiny
The day began beneath a pale shiver of dawn. Five a.m., frost on the breath, silence in the air. The thermometer nodded solemnly at thirty-two degrees—a kind of cold that doesn’t speak so much as it listens. By six, I was outside, coaxing the Suzuki back to life. It hesitated—muttering backfires like a poet begrudgingly roused from a warm bed—but eventually caught and settled into a grudging rhythm.
The road out of Show Low shimmered under a cold sky, the temperature rising only slightly to thirty-four. The world was crystalline, still, the desert waiting for the sun’s permission to awaken. As I descended from the highlands, the miles stretched ahead like a pilgrimage’s last march. Phoenix arrived not with drama but with warming air, the frozen morning giving way to the familiar baked breath of the Southwest.
A brief Chevron stop came and went without incident. Then, about thirty miles outside Mesa, something changed—the Suzuki found its voice again. The backfires ceased, the hesitation melted away, and for a glorious stretch the ride was pure. Engine smooth, sky clear, road open. It was the kind of stretch that makes the miles dissolve into rhythm—just you, the hum of the machine, and the long western horizon.
But the road is never done with its tricks.
Just beyond El Centro, California—within reach of home—the engine faltered. Once, twice, then died while in motion, like an exhausted pilgrim collapsing at the gates. I coasted past a rest stop, the desert sun at 85 degrees, glaring down with unsparing indifference. Attempts to revive the engine were met with silence and stubborn heat. I accepted defeat and summoned a tow.
Salvation, as ever, arrived on cue but not early. A dealership—grand as a cathedral, more glass than garage—agreed to receive the stricken machine. The sales staff, all Sunday smiles and weekend cheer, promised their mechanics would begin at 9 a.m. Monday. I had until 3 p.m. to deliver the bike.
At 2:30, the tow truck appeared. The driver had neither winch nor theatrics, only a quiet determination. He pushed the Suzuki up the ramp like Atlas shouldering his globe, and with a casual air informed me that I was “lucky” to have a classic motorcycle membership—an obscure AAA blessing I hadn’t known existed, much less earned.
By 3:00 p.m., the V-Strom was rolled through the great bay doors and into mechanical limbo. Within minutes, the dealership swallowed it whole—gleaming doors closing like a stage curtain on the penultimate act.
Across the street, my refuge awaited: a Best Western, booked in anticipation of precisely this moment. Dennis, the tow driver, ferried me there with a kindness that needed no explanation. I checked in, unpacked deliberately, exhaled fully.
I didn’t ride anymore that day. I existed—dry, fed, and finally still.
Tomorrow, the final act would unfold. But for now, it was enough to rest, to feel the hum of the road still echoing in my bones, and to know that the long arc of the journey was bending homeward.
Day 13 — The Last Leg Home
October 20 — El Centro, CA to Orange County, CA
“The road ends at home, but the journey hums on forever.”
— Jack Kerouac, imagined at dawn
The day opened before the sun, though I ignored its gentle summons until six. The morning air was brisk, the light soft and unhurried. My thoughts, however, had already raced ahead to the final miles.
In the cool dawn, I packed my riding suit—still faintly damp from some earlier tempest—into the red airline bags that had followed me faithfully across the continent. My bike cover, which days earlier had been frozen stiff like a battle standard in a winter siege, was now pliable again, drying in the desert air like a thawed flag of surrender. The ritual of packing was quiet, almost reverential; this was no longer preparation for the unknown, but the closing of a long, peculiar chapter.
After a simple breakfast, I traded Gore-Tex for shorts, acknowledging the heat to come—95 degrees, a sun-baked punctuation after so many rain-streaked pages. I walked three-quarters of a mile through El Centro’s warming streets to the local Enterprise office, expecting some sleepy outpost, a lone clerk, and a single beige sedan. Instead, I found a bustling operation, a full fleet gleaming under the morning sun. Relief and disbelief danced together as I signed the papers. My new chariot, an SUV humming with air conditioning and certainty, awaited.
With the rental secured, I drove to the dealership where the Suzuki sat in its temporary mechanical purgatory. There, the service manager and I performed a ceremonial start-up. And of course—like some mischievous stage actor nailing his lines on opening night—the engine sprang to life, smooth and mocking, as if to say, “I was never really broken, only resting.”
Diagnostics, the manager assured me, would begin Tuesday, with word by Wednesday. The machine would remain behind for now, like a loyal companion recovering from a long campaign.
Standing in the sun, I felt the decision settle itself: the road had spoken, the journey had earned its closing chapter. I would not linger here in the desert, waiting for Tuesday answers. I would go home.
With the rental car purring, air conditioning wrapping me in an unfamiliar luxury, I turned north and west toward Orange County. The landscape slid past like the closing credits of a long film—the desert glare, the scrub, the slow accumulation of civilization. For the first time in nearly two weeks, miles came without effort.
The Suzuki would wait. My bed would not.
Epilogue — The Road, Remembered
October 26 — El Centro to Orange County, CA
“The road is no place to be fixed in time; it rolls, it bends, it sings, and when you return, you are never quite the same.”
— Jack Kerouac, imagined on the last mile home
The diagnosis took just as long as I expected. True to their word, the mechanics began their work on Tuesday, and by Friday the tests were complete. Saturday morning, I rose early, showered, and ate a quiet breakfast. The coastal fog lay thick as velvet over Orange County, soft and enveloping, but as I drove inland the sky opened, slowly, deliberately. By the time I reached El Centro, the sun reigned unchallenged, the thermometer resting comfortably at 85 degrees—a far cry from the frostbitten mornings of New Mexico.
The dealership lot buzzed with life: a motorcycle event, perhaps a hundred riders gathered, their engines punctuating the air like a symphony tuning before the final movement. It was an unexpectedly fitting backdrop to my return. I parked around the back, stepped inside, and met Genaro, who greeted me with calm assurance.
The bike was ready.
The culprit: a short in the wire leading to the fuel injector. Once identified, it had been bypassed cleanly. The solution was almost comically simple compared to the drama it had wrought. I nodded, relieved.
But the road, mischievous to the end, had one final trick. When Genaro thumbed the starter, the engine refused to catch. Fate, it seemed, demanded one last test of patience. This time the hydraulic clutch had disconnected inside its housing. Unfazed, the technicians wheeled the bike back into the shop. With surgical calm, they opened the housing, reconnected the errant mechanism, and turned the key. The Suzuki barked to life, whole once more—like a prodigal machine returned from exile.
I paid the bill—an honest day’s labor in pursuit of resurrection—and returned the rental car. A cheerful attendant ferried me back to the dealership, where my gear waited like old armor. I suited up deliberately, savoring each familiar strap and buckle. By 11:00 a.m., I was rolling once more.
All systems held. The engine hummed as if nothing had ever gone wrong. I headed west, stopping briefly in Ocotillo, where nostalgia tugged me down a scenic detour. At a small roadside Chevron I’d once visited with Jeanne, I ordered a hamburger and sat beneath the desert sky—blue, vast, eternal—savoring the moment in silence.
Then came the final stretch: into the park, through sun and silence, windmills turning lazily against a pale horizon. The backroads guided me home—through desert plains, past distant ranges, into the winding ascent of the Ortega Highway through Fallbrook. At its crest, I passed through land recently burned—charcoal hillsides flanking the road like stark ink drawings against the sky. It was as though the earth itself had been stripped down to its essentials: black, bare, enduring. A final meditation on survival, renewal, and return.
At 4:00 p.m., I arrived home.
The journey had spanned three weeks and roughly 3,700 miles. It had crossed weather systems and state lines, deserts and cities, frostbitten dawns and furnace afternoons. I had endured mechanical betrayals and been lifted by the unexpected kindness of strangers: Sue, Dirk, Lisa, Rick, Zeph, Bill, Dennis, and others whose names I may forget but whose generosity I will not.
And I was home.
Not the same man who had flown east to fetch a motorcycle, but someone quieter, perhaps more grateful, and undeniably changed. The road does that. It works slowly, like wind on stone, carving you into a different shape—not through revelation, but through miles, moments, and the curious, relentless poetry of movement.
The Suzuki rested beneath the California sun, engine cooling with a soft tick. The house stood waiting. The journey was complete.
Conclusion — The Road Remains
There are journeys taken to reach a place, and there are journeys taken to become a person.
This was, without question, the latter.
What began as a simple errand—a logistical retrieval of machinery—unfolded into something far larger: a sprawling theatre of wind and rain, of failures endured and small triumphs hard-won, of strangers stepping from obscurity like unscripted angels, and a machine that sputtered and sulked like a tragic poet before roaring back to improbable life.
I set out to bring a motorcycle home.
I returned having rediscovered something quieter and sturdier: the capacity to be dogged, to adapt without complaint, to laugh when absurdity made its entrance, and to meet adversity not with grandeur but with the satisfaction of pressing on. There were days when the road mocked me, when the skies split open without mercy, when the Suzuki staged its little operas of melodrama.
But there were also lattes in lonely towns, conversations with fellow wanderers, the perfect steak salad after the perfect storm, and long, silent stretches of highway that seemed to listen, to offer exactly what I didn’t know I needed.
Now, with the dust settled and the final mile tucked behind me, I find the road has not released its grip. It hums faintly beneath the surface of idle moments—the low, persistent rhythm of the journey reminding me that life, like any good road, is best met with an open throttle, a resilient heart, and a healthy respect for the absurd.
The road is finished—for now.
But the rider, I suspect, has only just begun.
