Motorcycle Touring in the USA

The King of Every Kingdom
Around the world on a very small motorcycle

With J. Peter “The Bear” Thoeming

I received some sage advice at this point in my journey, “Just because you reach the Pacific coast doesn’t mean you’ve seen America, boy!”

My new-found friend Larry thought that story was very funny when I told him in the bar that night. Larry was an extremely laid-back ex Marine, whose wife owned one of the three bars in town. He explained to me why he was happy with his life. “You know the story about the perfect wife being a deaf and dumb nymphomaniac who owns a bar? Well, look, my wife may not be deaf and dumb, but she owns this place, and as far as the rest is concerned…”

‘The Western’ motel offered an old school saloon experience

On down the coast, and past the gloomy but impressive hulk of Humburg Mountain, a block of stone between the road and the sea. I was in the redwood forests by now, which presented a problem in photography. Even with the widest lens I carried, I had to put the camera up quite a distance from the tree if I wanted to get both the top and bottom in, as well as myself standing at the base. So I’d put the camera on the tripod, set the self-timer and run like hell to get to the tree before the shutter went off. I succeeded most of the time.

Traditional American food, not so different than what you get in Australia…

Maybe it was the majesty of the trees, but I started to do some rather serious thinking about what this trip had taught me, and how I had changed in the last two and a half years. I could come up with very little, except that I missed Annie badly. It’s probably not so much that there’s little to learn on this kind of trip… it’s more that I’m incorrigible. After all, I’d coped pretty well with all the different cultures… hadn’t I?

I had looked forward to discussing all this with Ted Simon, who had written a marvellous book called Jupiter’s Travels about his own circumnavigation of the globe. Ted now lived in San Francisco, and mutual acquaintances had given me his address and telephone number. But when I rang, it was to discover that he had just become a father – and swapping ideas about bike travel was the farthest thing from his mind. I could hardly blame him!

When I got out of the phone box, the bike refused to start again. The poor little 250 XL had been mistreated for so long that it was finally rebelling. Even pushing wouldn’t do it. As it happened, the phone box was outside the Municipal Offices for the small town I was in, so I went in there looking for pushers. The Sheriff, Deputy Sheriff and the Fire Chief all lent a hand, and the bike – out of respect, I guess – fired straight away.

I had to request some aid to get the Honda started on occasion

Through the coastal fog, I rode the last few miles into San Francisco. The fog was eerie, somehow – I had the constant feeling that there was an enormous eye, just above the fog, looking for me. California was beginning to affect me, I guess. They do say that the place has more religious nuts than any other place on Earth. Maybe it’s catching. Once in the city, having crossed a Golden Gate Bridge whose upper beams were invisible in the same fog, I started looking for a bike shop to service the XL.

The Honda dealer’s service manager was dubious. She indicated her crew of mechanics and said: ‘These prima donnas only like to put new bits on new bikes,’ something that the XL definitely wasn’t. But she sent me down to Cycle Source, a small service shop run by the inimitable Jack Delmas.

The Golden Gate Bridge is an inspiring site

Jack is an ex-cop, and one of the friendliest, most helpful blokes I’ve ever met. His staff aren’t far behind, either – Chris, on the spares counter, and Eddie, in the workshop, both helped me out. The shop was like a little home away from home. Eddie also got the bike running – and starting – beautifully. All at very reasonable rates. I celebrated by doing (more or less involuntary) wheelies up the steep streets of San Francisco, racing the cable cars.

SF is one of those rare cities that just feels good. Fishermen’s Wharf is a tourist trap, but North Beach is full of great bars, with good music and imported beer. Although why they bother importing Bass is beyond me… Then it was time to turn east again, over the Bay Bridge and through Oakland and all the little valley towns to Yosemite National Park.

If Yellowstone is beautiful, Yosemite is exquisite. The soaring cliffs, yellow meadows and dark pine forests set each other off so well that the place hardly looks real. All development has been done carefully, and presents a low profile. The park is like a natural garden, from the delicacy of Bridal Veil Falls to the brute mass of Half Dome.

A slightly different message to the one we’d see back home…

Despite the lateness of the season, the campgrounds in the valley were full, so I camped in one of the free sites up in the hills. Smoky Jack campground was very pleasant in the half-dark, with campfires and stars both twinkling away. Despite the cold night, I slept well – no doubt partly due to the good offices of Mr James Beam.

Mono Lake was a little disappointing; its strange rock formations didn’t really live up to the publicity. But I was thoroughly enchanted with an extremely attractive ‘flagperson’ with one of the road repair gangs I met on the way south. Women are now a common sight in road gangs in America, but they seem mostly to do the less strenuous work. That’s changing too, though. I saw a number of female tractor drivers.

At Lone Pine I turned onto the roller-coaster that passes for a road down to Death Valley. From 5000 ft it goes nearly to sea level, then back to 5000, down to two, back to nearly five, and then down to Furnace Creek, 178 ft below sea level. True to form, it was hot – over 37 degrees C – and it didn’t cool down much at night.

There were some German travelers camped next to me, and although I got some sleep on top of a picnic table in my underpants, they tossed and turned all night. Australian conditioning finally comes in handy!

Elevation changes and heat took their tole, but being used to Australian conditions helped

I had a strong headwind the next day, and was nearly blown off Zabriskie Point lookout. But when I turned left at the ghost town of Death Valley Junction the wind was at my back and helped me along. The whole area is very impressive for its total desolation – over square mile after square mile not a blade of grass grows. It must have been a tough life working in the mines here.

Las Vegas spreads its rather unattractive tentacles far out into the desert. Housing developments go up on the flat, windy plain and some attempt is made to civilize it all by pouring great quantities of water into the ground to grow a bit of anemic lawn. I much prefer the desert itself. The town, however, is fun with its amazing architecture, combination loan offices/motels/wedding chapels/divorce offices, acres of neon and extremely single-minded people.

Some interesting signage…

Something seemed odd to me about all the casinos, and it took a while before I’d worked out what it was. Unlike the equivalents in Europe, Las Vegas casinos were not styled like palaces or upper-class residences. Here, they were styled in Ultimate Suburban – their exteriors like a hamburger joint gone mad, their interiors like a suburban tract house owned by a suburban millionaire. Lots of flash, but no taste. Tremendous fun, all of it.

In the bizarre, broken-down little town of Chloride, I asked the elderly, toothless petrol-pump attendant where the campsite was. He pointed to the top of a distinctly bare hill off in the distance, and I decided to push on to Kingman instead.

The famour Route 66

I followed one of the few remaining stretches of Route 66 in the morning, and rode through Coconino County, the home of Krazy Kat in the famous thirties comic strip of the same name. Meanwhile, dozens of grasshoppers hit my legs as I rode along – it was almost like riding through gravel as they rattled against my shins. There seemed to be quite a plague of them.

Still in beautiful sunshine, I rode up to the Grand Canyon.

Well, all good (and other) things have to come to an end. That’s what this story does next week. About time, eh?

Source: MCNews.com.au

Around the world with The Bear – Part 32

The King of Every Kingdom
Around the world on a very small motorcycle

With J. Peter “The Bear” Thoeming

I stay at the YMCA… da da da da dah YMCA…
And I get a lesson in race relations.

The Blue Ridge Parkway was next, a bit of road every bit as pretty as its name. Parkways have no advertising on them, don’t allow trucks, follow the contours of the land and are administered by the National Parks Service. This one follows the Blue Ridge Mountains for some 500 miles, all of it lovely, with the Appalachians rolling off to both sides like waves in an enormous, ancient slow ocean.

The Appalachians provided some amazing scenery

The Morgans, from Danby, Pennsylvania, pulled up while I was trying to take a photo of the forests, and asked about my Australian number plate. They also volunteered a beer and insisted that I take down their address and come and stay next time I was around Danby. I accepted gladly. Americans are certainly a friendly lot, rather like the Irish, and much more friendly than the British or Australians.

Although I didn’t manage to see any of the bears that supposedly inhabit the park, I felt quite ridiculously happy all day, sang little songs and waved at all the Honda Gold Wings, Harleys and Kawasaki Z1300s that went past. They all waved back, although some of them were clearly puzzled by my bike.

I stayed with friends of friends in Boone that night, which had the distinction of being my first dry town in the USA. We had to drive eight miles to get across the county line and find a bar where we could spend the rest of the evening drinking jugs of Black & Tan.

The countryside in Georgia was dull and mostly flat. So much for the moonlight through the pines.

Georgia proved flat and for a motorcyclist that at times meant boring

Atlanta promised to be a bit more interesting when I discovered that the Youth Hostel had been demolished – and there certainly weren’t any campsites around. I stayed in the YMCA downtown. When I went for an after dinner walk, I was the only white person on the street although I was so naïve that I didn’t notice that.

I spotted a bar with swinging doors and cheerful music and talk spilling out, and pushed my way in. All conversation and even the piano stopped as a sea of faces – all black – turned to regard me, probably with more puzzlement than hostility but with plenty of hostility anyway.

I remember thinking, “If I run they’ll catch me”. Fortunately, the bar itself ran along the wall next to the door and a bartender was nearby. I plucked up all of my courage and squeaked, “Can I get a beer?” It was all I could think of. He looked at me curiously and said “Where you from?”- “Australia,” I said, and the talk and the piano resumed.

A couple of blokes, ex-Marines, had been on R&R in Sydney during the Vietnam War and took me under their wing. They bought me drinks, introduced me to their friends and walked me back to the Y when I told them I had to ride the next day. “You ain’t goin’ by yourself,” one of the laughed.

Everyone in Georgia speaks with that seductive southern drawl. It makes an enquiry as to one’s preferred beverage in a diner sound like an invitation to view the bedroom… Yes, I liked Georgia even though my next breakfast was taken in a chain restaurant called a Huddle House and was awful. I promised myself I’d stick to the little private diners after that. They’re almost always excellent value.

People proved friendly in the typical American way, with plenty of interest in my bike

The fine for littering the roads in Georgia is a rather desultory $25, after a high in Connecticut and Florida of $500. It’s still pretty clean, for all that, and the people are very friendly. A Mustang full of young ladies followed me for two or three miles while they figured out my number-plate and all the stickers on the back of the bike, then they went past tooting the horn, waving and throwing peace signs.

Another thunderstorm caught me down in Alabama and followed me almost to the campsite out on one of the sand islands, called Keys, off the coast. There were ‘Don’t Feed the Alligators’ signs up all over the site. Can you imagine an alligator coming up and stealing your picnic basket?

The men down here were all carefully haircut, and the women even more carefully made up. But I still found no hassles, in the bars or elsewhere – as long as I managed to keep the conversation off colour. Whites in the South are a long way from accepting blacks as equals, and are very careful to make a point of that in conversation with strangers. As a visitor, I found myself in a difficult position, and I’m afraid I compromised by keeping my mouth shut.

I pondered all this one morning over that great American institution, the bottomless cup of coffee, in Hazel’s Diner in Gulf Shores. No conclusion emerged, I’m sorry to say, beyond the obvious fact that I ought to stay out of something I knew far too little about. That, much as I regret it, was my contribution to civil rights in the South.

Seeing ‘Don’t feed the alligator’ signs was interesting while camping

Mobile was resplendent with magnolia and old Southern mansions, and the long ride along the coast to New Orleans rather reminded me of Australia. The road could have been running along Port Philip Bay, or through Brighton-le-Sands in Sydney, going by the architecture and the flora.

New Orleans was rather different, of course. I teamed up with Matt, a Canadian who pulled in at the YMCA at almost the same time as I did. He was on a Honda CB900 Special, a bike rather better suited to US touring than poor old Hardly. Matt and I went out to do the town together. The Gumbo Shop came first – a restaurant specialising in the traditional Creole cooking – and was surprisingly cheap.

Then we hit the hustle and bustle. First a walk up Bourbon Street, with its tourist glitter, and then a visit to Preservation Hall, one of the few places where genuine New Orleans Jazz is still played – well, genuine for the tourists. There’s no booze available, so our next stop was Pat O’Brien’s Bar, next door, where we each put away a Hurricane, a monstrous $5 cocktail which seems to consist mostly of rum.

At Sloppy Jim’s, over a few glasses of draught Dixie Beer, we tried to collate our ideas of New Orleans. It’s a strange town. The place is full of tourists, yet it doesn’t feel like a tourist town. Everybody has a good time, except perhaps for the crowds in the assembly-line bars on Bourbon Street. Off the main drag, the people in the bars and restaurants are there to enjoy themselves – and they’re not about to be cheated of it; as a couple we met in O’Brien’s said: ‘We’re from Jackson, Mississippi, but when we want to have a good time, we come down hyar!’

Finding a place to grab a drink at times proved an exercise, but I received a warm welcome when people knew I was Australian

I did my laundry the next day in a laundromat supervised by one of the descendants of Marie Laveau, the famous witch. At least I presume that she was a descendant – she looked and acted like it, and she was certainly in the right business. It was hot again when I braved the spaghetti of roads leading out of town and eventually over Lake Pontchartrain on the 24-mile-long causeway.

The North

The way North was all corpses of armadillos slaughtered by cars, and poorly surfaced but pretty little roads. Then I reached the Natchez Trace, another route like the Blue Ridge Parkway, and followed that north to Nashville in serenity.I did stop off to pay my respects at Elvis Presley’s birthplace in Tupelo. The suburb is now called Elvis Presley Heights. I visited Opryland in Nashville, a kind of Country & Western Disneyland, and had a good time. The one thing that annoyed me was that I had to pay as much as a car driver to park. This is fairly common in the US – there are no parking or toll concessions for bikes.

No concessions for motorcycles was an annoyance but there was some impressive sights

A few days later I reached Ann Arbor, Michigan, and another friend of a friend. Victoria and her parents welcomed me with open arms and supplied a sort of replacement home for a few days. I really needed it by this time, too. It does get lonely out on the road, even if you speak the local language. One sight in Ann Arbor that I will always remember is the sign at the Farmers’ Market that says ‘No pets, bicycles or solicitors’.

The bike got a much-needed and fast service. Then it took me north again, up through the Norman Rockwell country that makes up central Michigan, to Sleeping Bear Dunes on Lake Michigan. In the campsite that night I had a steady stream of visitors, fascinated by the sight of the little bike. I scored a dinner invitation, a gift of a kilo of smoked fish (fishing is big up here) and an evening sitting around drinking other people’s beer. Very nice.

Not so friendly was the gun shop I saw the next day, offering free targets – large pictures of the Ayatollah Khomeini. This was during the time when the Iranians were holding American hostages. I reached the Upper Peninsula of Michigan with a terrible hangover.

I had been attempting to cure a cold with bourbon, successfully, but was paying for it. John from Boulder rode into the campsite that night on a BMW R60/5, which he’d come over to the east to buy. Bikes are much cheaper in the Eastern States than in California or in John’s home state of Colorado.

He had a story about being mugged, too. Apparently a 5 ft tall mugger had approached John, who measured 6ft 4in, near Times Square and threatened him. ‘He ran away pretty quick’, said John, ‘When I pointed out the error of his ways. But you gotta give him credit…’

Some interesting road signage discovered…

I received the inevitable American invitation to come and stay before we parted in the morning, and took off a little before John. He passed me not long afterwards – the BMW had longer legs than the little Honda.

Upper Wisconsin was strange, with eerie abandoned-looking farms, rusting cars and run-down petrol stations along the highway. Things got better as I went farther west, and by the time I reached Janesville (the sign outside town just said ‘Janesville – a friendly place’) I felt as though I was in the prosperous Midwest you read about. Towns like New Ulm, Balaton and Florence remind you of the many nations that supplied the settlers here. Mind you, it’s also pretty boring country. Flat as far as the eye can see…

That didn’t change the next day, but it was pleasant just the same. First, in the diner in Lake Preston, there was a complete set of Australian banknotes in a frame over the bar. I asked the bloke next to me where they came from, and he thought about his answer for a while before saying: ‘Feller useta live here now lives there.’ They’re a concise lot in the Midwest.

Stopped with the Honda before a chain tension

At my next petrol stop I was invited in for coffee and brownies and then, when I stopped to tighten the chain, the side stand broke and the bike fell on my head. Fun all day! I slept in the campground in the Badlands that night, among the grotesque landforms that give the place its name. Spooky, with spires of soft rock reaching for the full moon, not a blade of grass or a bush on them.

The Harley shop in Rapid City was very helpful, and even managed to locate someone who would weld my side stand back on for a few dollars.

Whew. That was a long episode. Let’s see if I can be a bit more concise out West – next time.

Source: MCNews.com.au

The King of Every Kingdom
Around the world on a very small motorcycle

With J. Peter “The Bear” Thoeming

Leaving New York I’d have to glue my tank up again – more than once – but I scored a Marine Corps sticker from a newfound friend and I met the pilot of Air Force One.

With the bike locked to a light pole, I went out for another night on the town. Once again, there were no dire consequences in the morning because the American beer is simply too mild to cause hangovers and I only had a few bourbons.

That morning saw me stuck on the freeway within minutes of leaving the hostel. There had been a downpour, and half the road was under water – the half going my way, of course. Finally, on the way out to upper New York State, the buildings gave way to greenery. All of New England turned out to be surprisingly lush, which was still new to me at this stage. New York State looked rather as I’d imagined Louisiana.

New England turned out to be surprisingly lush

I made my way north to Old Forge in the next few days. In Kingston, in the obligatory aluminium diner (run here by a Vietnamese family), I encountered ‘Doc’, the head of the town emergency services. This includes ambulance, fire brigade and rescue. He was an ex-Marine Colonel, and insisted on giving me an enormous Marines badge sticker, a small American flag and a free breakfast. The hostel in Old Forge was equipped with a large group of bicycling Canadian nymphets, who entertained me splendidly during my stay. They even fed me.

My petrol tank, once broken in Malaysia and often repaired, had been cracked again during the flight. I had to glue it up once again after I had noticed petrol running down over the hot engine. I turned east then, to head for Vermont and later the coast. By now I was learning to navigate by route numbers and had no trouble finding my way about.

I picked up a bit of sunburn buzzing around the little lakes and extensive forests of New England, and didn’t mind one bit. It was beautiful and serene country, bathed in sunlight – with just the occasional thunderstorm and downpour to keep it interesting.

Concord didn’t impress me so much. The home of one of my very few heroes (actually, even then I was beginning to have second thoughts about him), Henry David Thoreau, it was far from the small town surrounded by forest that he described last century.

Now, it was a particularly nasty urban sprawl, reminding me of nothing quite so much as the Latrobe Valley in southern Victoria, one of my least favourite places. But then Concord hadn’t been Concord even in Thoreau’s day, and he had cheated on that stay in the woods anyway…

Ongoing work was required on the Honda

That night, after tightening the chain on the bike for the third time, I finally discovered a reasonably drinkable beer. It was called Molson’s, came from Canada and at least had some flavour. Still no strength, though.

This was turning out to be a relaxed, lazy sort of swing through pretty countryside, rather different from the America I’d been led to expect. Even Boston, my first big city outside New York, seemed a laid-back place to me. I drifted through on the main roads, stopped for a cup of coffee at the Transportation Museum, and then carried on towards Cape Cod.

A group of three Canadian bikers passed me and then stopped to have a look at the XL. In honour of America, I had dubbed it ‘Hardly Davidson’, and these blokes thought that was very funny. Mind you, they were on a Z750, a GS850 and a Z1000. They could afford to laugh.

It was misty all the way out to Cape Cod, so I couldn’t admire much scenery, but there was enough to admire by the side of the road, anyway. Everybody was having a garage sale – some of the stuff people were unloading really tempted me. There were a couple of Buddy Holly albums, for example, in near-perfect condition, for only $2 each. Two bucks!

Once at the Orleans, Massachusetts, hostel, I took the tank off the bike, scraped off the liquid gasket with which I’d tried to stop the leak, and re-glued it with acrylic glue, which seemed to do the trick.

Suited up in appropriate garb for America

Crossing the high bridge at Newport, Rhode Island, brought to mind the grace of the yachts during the Americas Cup, and the film ‘Jazz on a Summer’s Day’, made here during one of the real Newport Jazz Festivals. It’s weird; we see so much of America on TV and in the movies that it’s quite possible to feel nostalgic entering a town you’ve never been to.

On my way up to the hills of Connecticut I stopped off for some of the dreadful, gummy American bread. When I came out of the supermarket, the bike was leaking petrol once again. This time it came from the carburettor breather pipe. I whipped the float bowl off, bent the float down and reassembled the carburettor. No more leak. Some time later, I looked down to find that the tank had split again, and petrol was dribbling onto the engine once more.

I stopped at a hardware store and bought a two-phase adhesive called Liquid Steel that contained, according to the box, ‘real steel’. I wasn’t going to have any more backchat from this bike! I glued up the tank and the tap, which was weeping very slightly, and gave the bike as complete an overhaul as I, with my severely limited mechanical ability, could; I didn’t discover any further problems.

Fixing the tank took many attempts

It was back to NY then to check for mail and amble around a little more. In the footsteps of Walt Whitman, I took the Staten Island ferry and was impressed by the Manhattan skyline from the water. Then I rang Road Rider magazine in California for the dates of the Aspencade Motorcycle Convention, a ‘do’ I had hoped to get to for years, and planned my trip across the USA. Very vaguely, I might add. I just knew I wanted to be in Ruidoso, New Mexico, on 1 October. That gave me some eight weeks.

Up and away then. Out through the Holland Tunnel the next morning, the bike was running rather rough. I had visions of breaking down in the tunnel – there’s nowhere to park – and being fined vast sums of money. But the bike kept running, and as soon as I was out of the tunnel and switched off the headlight, the engine smoothed out. Aha!

Middle-aged XL Disease, I thought. One of the symptoms is lack of electricity being generated, and the bike can’t even run its pitiful headlight. Mechanical menopause approaching here. Then on down the ribbon of car yards, cheap motels and gas stations that is Highway One until I got hopelessly lost in roadworks in Baltimore looking for fuel.

A thoroughly depressing city, it sticks out in my mind for the obvious poverty and overwhelming friendliness of its mostly black population. I mean, think about it – here’s a white boy on a motorsickle, stopping to ask directions from the bros deep in the ‘hood, and they say “What you doin’ here? You best git your gas and you git gone, my man!”

Washington wasn’t as impressive as you’d expect… at the time…

Washington provided the Smithsonian Institution, where I admired Buzz Aldrin’s toothbrush and touched a piece of the moon; the Star Wars subway, very efficient and pretty; and drinks at Matt Kane’s bar. This last proved to be the most interesting, as I had a few drinks with the pilot of Air Force One, the presidential jet, and listened to his Washington gossip.

It’s true, he gave me a book of Air Force One matches! I’ve still got them here somewhere. Other than that Washington was not pleasant. For a national capital it’s remarkably run down. Brothels and sex shops flourish within a couple of blocks of the White House, and there’s an atmosphere of menace.

The South

It was much better when I got out of town. I rode up the Potomac, and then followed the line of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. This is now a national park and is maintained for walkers, canoeists and bicyclists. It seemed as though there were thousands of butterflies, all keen to commit suicide on my windscreen or legs.

That night was my first camp. I’d finally run out of Youth Hostels. So of course I had a thunderstorm and nearly an inch of rain in three hours. Huddled in my little tent (I’d bought it for $10 from some Swiss blokes in the Gol-e-Sahra campsite in Tehran), I consoled myself with the thought that the enormous caravans and mobile homes parked all around would be far more likely to draw the lightning than my little XL.

I finally fell asleep while the thunder was still muttering to itself over the Shenandoah Hills. Over breakfast, I got an explanation of the mysterious term ‘scrapple’ that had started to appear on menus. “Wal,” said the chef, “yo biles up various parts of th’ insahde o’ th’ hawg, let it cool and then slahce an’ frah it…” Um. I stuck to bacon and eggs, over easy.

Checking out some of the sights in America…

Next week I tackle the Blue Ridge Parkway and get a taste of the amazing American hospitality.

Source: MCNews.com.au