The Last Leg Sticks Out...

I made it. I can hardly believe it, but I made it. In one piece, even.

New Mexico is a hot, arid state - not one in which you'd want to break down. The northern part of the state is distinct from the southern part in both topography and attitude; the former is sparsely populated, moister and pleasingly rough, while the latter is more densely populated, drier and rather flat. All parts of the state, however, are beautiful and the people are prone to asking you if you want your burrito topped with red, green or 'christmas' chilies (I generally choose green).



After a night or two of hanging out with my friend Keith and getting far too drunk, he and I hiked out into Chaco Canyon, an anthropologically interesting chunk of New Mexico that the Pueblo Indians have held sacred for millennia. These same indians built massive, multi-story buildings there thousands of years ago for purposes of worship and pilgrimage. Most of the foundations of these buildings still stand and are intact enough to scramble over and get a sense how grand they used to be. One can still find the odd potsherd here and there, even, as evidence of the previous centuries of religious activity. One can also find caravan after caravan of elderly, pasty white folks there to take in all the splendor of their native land's history and heritage at the expense of a few footfalls of disrespect to the former inhabitant's idea of inviolable sacrament.



I was there to add to the footprints and see what had been described to me as the Pueblo Indian's Mecca. Mecca of a sort it may be, but a Mecca less used by the devoted and more ambled over by the retired. Keith and I took his dog, Cricket, up to the top of the mesa above the regularly visited pueblos and visited the farthest and least accessible sight - Pueblo Alto. The trip was indeed the destination, as Pueblo Alto is nothing more than a pile of rocks. I did, however, find a potsherd, which made me giddy all over. It was a taxing hike, but well worth the effort. The views of the canyon from the top of the mesa were splendid.

I left Albuquerque early in the morning and headed out through the high desert again, stopping in Cuba, New Mexico to grab a breakfast burrito and a coffee. Two cops in the cafe eyed me suspiciously for the entirety of my meal, mostly as a result of a fat black fly that kept buzzing around my head while I ate. I kept swatting at the fly when it got too close and I'm sure the cops were sitting too far away from me to see the little guy, which made me look like I was swearing periodically and batting at thin air. Happily, they were too busy to bother with a drifter nut like me and left me alone. Still, I left the cafe after they did, careful to make sure they'd driven well away before I started up.



I rode for a few hours before getting into Arizona and some of the weirdest country I've ever been to. Large red rocks that looked like petrified tidal waves bulged out from either side of the road in some areas. In others, nothing but flat chaparral plain rolled away to the horizon, broken only by massive spiky rocks that looked like castles made by some malign Colossi. It was hot, I'll say that for Arizona, and dry. Eventually I got to the famous Four Corners Monument, which is the very definition of a tourist trap. There is literally nothing at all there other than the monument itself. State flags form a ring around a squat chunk of granite with a plaque on it telling you that you are in the only place in the lower 48 where you can see four states all at once. That's it. The trouble with this arrangement is that the parts of the four states you can see all look exactly the same. I challenge the park ranger himself to identify one state from the other after being blindfolded, forced to drink four beers and spun around a few times. He'd be stymied. Anyway, it costs three bucks to get in. Skip it.

Carrying on through the desert for hundreds upon hundreds of miles I found one thing to be true of the American west - If the pioneers weren't driven crazy driving their wagons through the monotony of Oklahoma, then the weakest of the hardy souls who did make it through might easily have succumbed to the almost unimaginably inhospitable and difficult to traverse southwest. If the landscape wasn't busy whipping between flat plain and steep arroyos, it was churning itself up into cyclopean spasms of geography too bizarre to imagine, let alone drag a wagon across. And if your wagon was strong enough to hold together over that stuff, you were almost certain to die of thirst or exposure. If you were tough enough to endure the topography, the climate and the company of your fellow travelers, you were about as likely as not to be attacked and killed by indians. Crossing this part of the country gave me a new appreciation for the amazing people who crossed it before I did, and made the western portion of the US what it is. Tough sons-of-bitches, those.

I stopped over at Lake Powell Dam, a stately dam that holds back an inviting blue lake that sprawls it's way improbably through the vast arid expanse that is Arizona. I pulled off my helmet and got out my camera and had a brief and unsatisfying chat with the only other motorcycle riders I saw there; the only unfriendly Australians I've ever met. They were both fat and old and sweaty and may not have been in the best of moods after riding under the sun all day. Still, they still struck me as clipped in conversation and tart in disposition and seemed to be having a terrible time on their ride. I shortly excused myself from the conversation, took a few pictures and left, riding out toward Zion National Monument.

After the dam the countryside just kept getting weirder and weirder, larger and larger. I skipped across the terrain, waving to the odd motorcycle rider going the other way, and occasionally bumping into the same fellas now and again. Two of them were from Mississippi, near where I'd lived when I was 17. They were a couple of buddies riding out to the Colorado River to take a two-week white-water camping trip with a bunch of their friends. I chatted with them for about an hour under a gas station awning while I let the Cricket (my bike) cool down, then bid them farewell as I shot off to Utah and they rode off toward the Grand Canyon.



Zion National Park is a beautiful place. The country gets big just south of it, and as you enter from the east the mountains on either side of you shoot up through the sky in a gorgeous tapestry of geological strata. The roads are well manicured and wind through the park in such a way that you get a pretty good look at the amazing peaks all around you. Then suddenly the road dips into a tunnel that takes you right through the middle of a mountain. Upon exiting the bowels of this mountain you are spewed back out onto a winding series of switchbacks that wend their way down the mountain and are the perfect place to take a snapshot or two of the even more amazing sights that now surround you. Many of your fellow travelers get the same idea, so you spend some part of the trip trying not to run over the breathless pack of Germans in the middle of the road, but I guess that adds to the charm some. On the west side of the park is a little pocket of wealthy-tourist shops and RV parks. It seemed like a bit of an incongruous ending to a trip of such stunning natural beauty and the campgrounds were all full anyway, so I left Zion, shooting down toward Las Vegas and the Valley of Fire.



I read a community weblog a lot that is just chocked full of good people who post interesting things all the time (link), and I'd asked some people on there if there would be any places I shouldn't miss seeing on this trip. One person made me promise to visit the Valley of Fire, and I can report here that I was not disappointed by doing so. Like many places in the American West, the Valley of Fire is composed mostly of interesting formations of unusual rocks, so if you're not into geology or vast expanses of tremendous emptiness broken only by landscapes that look like they sprang directly from the mind of Hieronymus Bosch then maybe you should stick to the cities. If you are floored by natural splendor and the inexplicable randomness of this amazing planet we live on, then visit the Valley of Fire. One note, it is so dry there that hoards of bees will descend upon any moisture they can find. It's true - I poured a small amount of water on the ground and within four minutes it was covered by about thirty bees. Amazing. Oh, I saw an owl in the desert, too.



I camped at the Valley of Fire (our National Park Service does an amazing job, by the way) and in the morning shot out to Vegas and the Hoover Dam. I used to hang out in Las Vegas once in a while when I was a kid (it's a skateboarding paradise), and because of proximity I've been there as an adult enough to know that it's kind of a creepy place, but one thing I've never done there is see the Hoover Dam. It's an engineering marvel that is just crawling with tourists. There is a vehicle check as you enter and tour groups that leave the top of the dam at regular intervals. I don't want to front here so I'll admit that I just snapped a few pix and left, but I will definitely go back for the tour at a later date. That thing is massive and has been out there forever.

Another thing I've somehow managed to avoid my entire life is Death Valley. Illustrations in an old Funk and Wagnals Picture Encyclopedia I had as a child had an entry for Death Valley under a picture of a desiccated pioneer leaning up against a rock and gripping an empty water bag. That picture has always lingered in my head somewhere, waiting for the mention of its association, so I guess I've subconsciously avoided the place out of fear. If there's any time to throw caution to the wind and confront your fears, though, it's on a cross-country motorcycle trip, so I stood in a gas station at a crossroads that lead to Las Vegas, Area 51 and Death Valley, planning a course through Death Valley and taking nervous sips from a bottle of sun-heated water.



Death Valley's fucking hot. Hot as fuck. Let me repeat here, just to be clear - Holy Fuck, Death Valley's hot. Like opening an oven set to 'broil' and jamming your head in there with the fan on. Hot and drier than anywhere you've ever been and more barren than any place you can imagine and harrowingly devoid of life - even plant life. Everyone knows that the pit of Death Valley is a couple of hundred feet below sea level, but as you descend into that lifeless basin, passing withered shrubs and chasms of arid rock and signs that warn you of severe heat damage in the valley ahead of you, warn you to pull over if you need to stop lest your tires melt into the unimaginably hot pavement, your mind flits through your list of supplies, trying to make sure you have enough water to survive even an hour of helplessness in this unimaginable heat barren. The floor of Death Valley is strewn with black rocks and sand. In the center of the valley are sand dunes a hundred feet high. The heat is unendurable, withering in the shade and more intense than anything you have ever known. Once you climb the hill out of the valley, thanking God for seeing you through one of the most trying episodes of your trip, you immediately descend into another God-damned (literally, seemingly) valley, and your heart sinks in your chest in a way you didn't know it could. Mine did, and I'll bet you a dollar that if you rode through Death Valley on a motorbike yours would, too.

In the middle of Death Valley, right in the center of this seemingly extra-terrine expanse, is a fucking adobe house. Remember those intrepid pioneers I wrote about earlier? Well, this is evidence of the craziest of them. Someone a couple of hundred years ago saw fit to build a house in the middle of Death Valley. They must have thought that if things had gotten this bad by this point, they were probably only going to get worse from here on out. Who could blame them after Oklahoma? But, Jesus - to build a house? Turn back, man! Get out of there!

(It is appropriate to note here that I got to San Francisco the same day that I crossed Death Valley, and I weighed myself as soon as I got in the apartment - I'd lost 10 pounds. 10 pounds of moisture, evaporated straight off my body by the unremitting sun of that blasted abyss. Poof! - Gone. Terrifying.)

I called Halima from Bishop, California, to tell her that I'd made it through Death Valley and would be camping in Yosemite that night. She said she was glad I was safe and that she was looking forward to seeing me. We hung up and I had an almost uncontrollable urge to drink five coffees and drive all the way to Oakland as fast as I could. I had another tug from my hot-as-Hades water bottle and headed out again.

I'd intended to camp out in Yosemite for the night, but once I'd gotten there I found every campsite in the park completely full. It was the last week of summer for California college students, something I hadn't even thought about at the beginning of my trip, and I guess this was last-gasp camping for much of the student body. Yosemite has some of the most stunning scenery that I've ever seen, anywhere, and is strangely well built up for camping, hiking and even shopping. The visitor's center is like a mall - a mall by a river under the most gorgeous waterfall you've ever seen in your life. Really, Yosemite is a place I'll be visiting again now that I live so close to it - Yay! - but while I was on my trip it was kind of a bust.

To explain; it was eight o'clock at night, all the campgrounds were full and I was 120 miles from my girl - a girl I love more than anything and who I hadn't seen in two frikkin' weeks. I felt a compelling desire to just suck it up and make the trip the rest of the way out to the coast, you know?

To explain further; riding a motorcycle cross-country is a lot harder than you think. Whether you have visions of Jack Nicholson grinning from the back of a chopper piloted by Peter Fonda, or that dirty biker-assassin from Raising Arizona grimacing as he barrels through the Arizona heat, or Ewan McGregor and Charlie Borman mugging from a train in Siberia, riding a motorcycle long-distance is a grueling endeavor and is much harder that popular images portray it to be. The best advice I got was to take an Advil in the morning and wear earplugs all day, both of which I did - but there is nothing you can do about the inevitable pain you will get in your ass from sitting on a vibrating, shambling, lurching, woefully unpadded machine atop of which you can't move too awfully much. It's hard on your ass and ears, yes, but it's also pretty hard on your inner thighs and neck, as the wind tries to whip them around as much as it can while you try your damnedest to not let it. Anyway, it's hard.

So there I was, exhausted, ten pounds lighter from my trip through the Cursed Earth and not fed since New Mexico,trying to wager the risk of riding in that condition against my desire to see my girl and sleep in a bed with my arms wrapped around her for the first time in weeks. True to my dim-witted nature, I chose to press on.

I almost died. Northwestern California is a rugged and topographically varied countryside, chocked full of curves in the road you can't see until you're upon them and drivers who know the terrain so much better than you do that they ride your rear wheel, hard, until you get out of their way. I'm sure the daylight ride is stunning, but at night this stretch of road is a bit less than inviting to the uninitiated. I almost hit a deer, I almost shot off the road at sixty miles an hour because I didn't see the curve coming until almost too late, I almost fell asleep on a straight patch and narrowly avoided swerving under an 18-wheeler, I almost rode off a cliff I didn't see until the last moment, I almost ran over a group of drunken hotties in a little town among the sequoias and I nearly got lost on a poorly marked bundle of highways outside of Oakland. The upshot of all this was that when I rode up the street that led to my girl's place, the apartment of a friend of hers who'd been good enough to let her stay there for the previous week and a half, she heard me coming. I parked the Cricket, pulled my rusty bones off of it and brushed the dust from my now sun-bleached jacket, and yanked off my bug-encrusted helmet just in time to see Halima running up the street to me, squealing and holding her arms out. We hugged for what felt like an hour and I felt the bones in my back creak with relief. I pulled out my flask of Laphroig, which I'd saved for just this moment, and we toasted our reunion, then we took a walk around the neighborhood and filled each other in on what had been going through our minds for the past two weeks. I went to bed that night happy to be with her again and ever so slightly tipsy.

I'd be lying if I said that I was glad the trip was over, however. As uncomfortable as it could be riding that bike, as tiny and insignificant as the massive country in which I live could make me feel at times, as gloomy as the weather and topography could occasionally get, I had an amazing time on the road. I will look back on this experience as one of the best of my life, and hope to do more, harder and longer trips from this point on. I'm so glad that I've done this - it's like a challenge met that I never have to think about again (though I'm sure I will).

So, at this point Halima and I have been in San Francisco proper for about a week and a half. I've done a few days work for a skipper I helped build a boat back in St. Augustine several years ago, and he's been good enough to put us up in his place for a couple of weeks while we look for an apartment. I've reconnected with an old friend or two, seen a couple of shows and begun to get a general sense of the lay of the land. Too much has gone on already to write about, really, until I have time to digest a little and make sense of it all. I will write here that San Francisco is a massive and amazing city, and I can see myslef being happy here for a very long time. that's a pretty bland thing to write, I know, so I promise you here, friends, that I will get much more detailed later on. Suffice to say for the time being, however, that I made it and am well.

Thank you so much for reading this. More to come soon, I promise you.

Everywhere that I go...

The best thing about being on the road, I find, is that every day is new and unique and full of interesting things that you've never seen before. Looking back, I see that I've been on the road for just over a week and already I'm halfway across the country. It's hard to believe it hasn't been longer; it seems like a month at least has gone by.

Before I get into the run-down of where I've been and what I've been up to, let me just say this - Ours is a huge country. You see a map and know that it's a big place full of lots of different kinds of people and terrain, but it's a hard thing to appreciate until you actually try to cross it how big and how varied it is. It's staggeringly big, that's how big it is. It's Huge.



My friend Kevin and I drove up to Eureka Springs, Arkansas, and spent a day walking around among sunburned tourists on antique streets. Eureka Springs was hailed as a curative wonderland at the beginning of the last century, and a relatively large and well-polished town grew up around the handful of little brooks that trickle out of the rocks there. It's a sort of anachronistic gem, really; every building in the downtown area is on the national historic register and great pains have obviously been taken to keep evey fleck and chunk of this place as original as possible. The period hotel atop the mountain is as authentic and intact as the period houses that line the craggy streets, and I had as much fun walking around the neighborhoods as I did taking in the galleries. The whole town has a relaxing, holiday feel to it and even atracts the odd street musician or traveling vendor. Make no mistake, this place is deep within the Ozarks and the surrounding area is as wild and lush a place as any - but the town of Eureka Springs is a quiet little gem of dichotomous culture. Next week is a Bluegrass/Volkswagon festival up there, which should tell you something. Sorry to be missing that.

The following morning I said my goodbyes to Kevin and his family and shot up to Fayettville to eat a quick breakfast before making for Oklahoma and what would turn out to be two of the most boring days of my life. Appologies to anyone who knows and loves this planar state, but I have to wonder how the pioneers made it across Oklahoma without completely losing their minds. The sage brush plane extends to the horizon in every direction for hundreds of miles on end without facet or blemish - it's striking, really, but there's so damned much of it. I won't go on about it, but I will say that Tulsa has bad roads and no good coffee houses.



I rode under a steel-grey sky for the entire day, getting sprinkled on here and there and covered with mud-spray that a steady stream of semi-trucks kicked up at me. The bleak weather and mind-numbing monotony of the ram-rod straight road made for a hard day. Eventually I stopped for the night at Boiling Springs state park, which I was directed to by a cheerful old gentleman by the name of Rob Digman. I met him in a gas staion near the park and he told me I wouldn't be sorry I went there, which my bleary eyes and vibration-numbed hands took as endorsement enough. And he was right - it was a lovely little oasis of forest on a plane of prarie. Six or seven deer jumped away from my bike as I rode in and fat little squirrels rooted around through the underbrush at the edge of my campsite. I set up my tent near a quietly moving creek that wound its way through a thicket of oak. I spent a comfortable night listening to coyotes howling, owls hooting at each other and rain spattering hypnotically on the roof of my tent. Might not sound too nice, but it was great, I'm telling you. The next morning I got up early and packed my gear, then headed out for the second half of Oklahoma. That's right, it took two days to get across that one state.



I eventually got to Black Mesa, the highest point in Oklahoma and right on the border of New Mexico, where I pullled over to look at my map and try to decide if I should take the dirt road to Fulsom or the paved road to Clayton. Once I'd crossed over from Oklahoma to New Mexico the scenery changed almost immediately, becoming more dramatic and interesting, and I wasn't sure if I should risk getting trapped in a muddy pocket of this interesting new terrain or go the safe route to the next town. As I was sitting there a guy pulled up in a truck and asked me if I was alright. I explained what I was doing and he warned me off the dirt road to Fulsom. "That road's hard," he said, "Gets kind of muddy and rocky. I wouldn't take it." Man, am I glad he convinced me not to go that way - I got a look at it from its other side when I rode through Fulsom later on and it would have been a hard and muddy trek indeed.

The road to Clayton is placid and gorgeous, though. I saw a giselle of some sort spring across the road, which was puzzling but cool, rode by several cattle ranches and over several cattle guards and some very attractive arroyos. After Clayton I took a different, paved road to Fulsom, which I had to go through to get to Raton and my campsite for the night. This road took me right by an extinct volcano (Capulin Volcano), which I took the opportunity to ride up and take a few pictures of. Then I rode through field upon field of cattle, dodging the stray cow now and again until I got to Fulsom.



Holy crap, the road from Fulsom to Raton (highway 72) is one of the most remote, stunning roads I've ever been on. It started out as single-lane black top and didn't widen for many miles, and I didn't see a soul on it until right near the end. As I rode down this tiny little country road, these little grey birds kept springing from the underbrush and flying balls-out at eye level right in front of me for a few seconds before darting off. I rode past old adobe houses and a stone church from God only knows when and field upon field of lush, green grass. It was was gorgeous.



Raton is a weird little high desert town. I camped outside of it in Sugarite Canyon for the night, right next to a guy named Jesse and his wife. They were riding their bike from Colorado back home to southern New Mexico. We shared a fire and chatted for a while before going to bed. The camp host came by my tent before I went to sleep and told me that the campsite had a resident skunk that would come by every day looking for food. "We've never had him spray anybody so far. Well, maybe a dog or two, but no people," he said. I got in my tent without seeing the little guy, but I did hear something snooping around just outside my tent during the night. Who knows?



Up early again today and got out across the high desert toward Taos. Stopped briefly in a small town and got the worst breakfast burrito yet wrought by the hands of men from a couple of demure mexican ladies running a deceptively good looking restaurant in some little town that's not even on the map. Continued on down one of the funnest roads I've yet ridden on - all kinds of switch-backs and tight little turns snaking through the low mountains - up to Eagle's Nest, then rode into Taos. Taos strikes me as a cute little tourist town more than anything else. Maybe I don't know enough about it to say, but I couldn't see any reason to stick around too long. I chatted up another biker and hit the road to Santa Fe.



Santa Fe, now, is an interesting little town. Same kind of gallery/restaurant/old pueblo set up as Taos, really, but bigger, nicer, and more active. I rode around the town square a few times before pulling over and getting a superbadass chipotle burrito at a little place called Bumble Bee's (I was looking for a place a friend had told me about called Cowgirls, but couldn't find it until I was on my way out of town. Boo.). Got kind of lost looking for highway 14 south, and when I did find it it had a stop light every fifty yards, so I redirected on over to the freeway and shot on down to Albuquerque and my friend Keith's house.

Keith and I go way back - he was my first navy bunkmate. I don't get to see this guy nearly as often as I'd like, but when I do it's always a good time. I've only met his wife, Victoria, once before but she's a proper sort - She's pregnant now, too, so there's another good person on the way. I'll try to convice them that 'Kele' is what they should name their forthcoming child.

Keith and I went downtown last night to play pool and drink a few beers. What company you go around with really makes all the difference, but I think I'd like Albuquerque pretty well even if I hadn't been hanging out with a good friend. We checked out a few places - Chama microbar, where we got a couple of their very tasty IPAs; Burt's Tiki Bar, where we drank a couple and listened to the resident DJ; the Astrobar, where we had a couple and left just before a hair band started up; the Launchpad, where we drank a couple, and played a quick game of pool while listening to a native band sing bad nu-metal; and finally the Anodine, where we both had scotch and beers and played pool and I developed a crush on one of the waitresses (I couldn't help it - she was wearing saddle-shoe high-heels). Keith has a steadier hand than I do and he spanked me at pool. Grabbed a taco on the way home and chatted until 4 am. It was good to catch up.

I'm going to roll around here for today, then tomorrow Keith and I will travel up to Chaco Canyon together and do a little hiking and camping. The following day Keith will head in to work and I'll move on to Mt. Zion national park, which by all accounts is gorgeous. I probably won't get a chance to write again until I hit San Francisco, but I'll be stopping in Bishop to see a friend of a friend, so I may get a chance to throw down a paragraph or two there. In any case, I'm a few days away from the west coast and very ready to see my girl over there. Not entirely sure I'm that ready to stop traveling yet, but I have had an amazing time so far this trip. Anyway, more soon.

Rolling Thunder...

I got lost in rural Tennessee. I had intended to shoot up through the state to the northwest but, unlikely as it sounds, I got mixed up on one of the back roads and ended up riding south for quite a while - long enough to get me just about to Alabama, in fact. Once I realized my mistake I stopped and got out the map and made a new course. Having driven so far south, however, it didn't make sense to try to get all the way back up to Reelfoot Lake, so I set my sights on Memphis and shot out directly west.

Not before taking a few pictures of Davey Crockett, however. Turns out the town in which I realized my detour, Lawrenceburg, is the birthplace of Davey Crockett and has a several memorials to him around town; a statue, a park, a school, etc. I took the opportunity to bathe in American heritage before heading out of town. Happily, there were no Davey Crockett impersonators around just then.



The road from Lawrenceburg to Savannah (TN) is marked as a scenic route on my map, and it's certainly a beautiful one. I saw a movie being filmed in a small shack along it (I even pulled over to inquire when I might see this film in my local cinema, but got the stink-eye from everyone on set, so I just sat and watched for a while. I didn't see anyone famous). It runs along the floor of a valley peppered with stately farm houses and barns, and it winds around just enough to keep it interesting but not enough to be dangerous. After Savannah, things kind of flattened out and got straighter, but I still came across the odd small town. I have to admit to being a bit surprised how vibrant many of these small town 'town centers' were. A lot of the town centers of rural towns in Georgia and Florida are vacant and lifeless, the real town activity having moved out toward the local Walmart or Sam's Club, but every town center I drove through in Tennessee was active and well in business. I was impressed. I developed a nebulous theory about small town Tennessee being a pretty decent place to live and that because of this young people were sticking around and taking an interest in these small places, thereby making them better, more vibrant places to live. I stopped in the small town center of Bolivar, Tennessee, to get a coffee and chatted up the barista about my theory, in fact, and though he gave me no concrete answers, he did give me a CD (his band) and told me that he would be moving to Nashville in a month. Kind of deflates my whole thing.



About thirty miles outside of Memphis I saw a giant raincloud in the distance. It was dark and ominous and lightening was whipping all through it, but it looked like the road might just skip it to the north, so I kept on. Shortly, the road took a southerly turn and I started to see fat raindrops splattering against my face shield. I pulled over into the fortuitous cover of a convenient gas station's diesel filling area. Lo and behold this gas station happened to be on the outskirts of a town I'd visited way back when I was 17 - Somerville, Tennessee. Funny coincidence that my detour took me through it. I sheltered under the gas station awning for about an hour before realizing that the rain wasn't going to let up, then put on the rain gear I'd so recently bought and headed out toward Memphis again. When I got there, I wimped out and got a hotel so I could dry my shoes.



The next morning the sky was clear and I saw on the news that it was 'Elvis Week' in Memphis. The news program showed the gates of Graceland thronging with the deranged faithful, but by the time I drove past they must have already opened the gates and allowed the fans to storm the castle. I took a few pictures of the graffiti that Elvis-lovers have left all over the wall around the house and moved on.

Memphis has some of the worst roads I've ever driven on and the neighborhoods swing wildly between pleasantly manicured and scarily delapitated. I got lost several times trying to leave the city, and though the way to Beale Street was ostensibly well marked, it took me four attempts to finally get there. Beale Street is a lot like Bourbon Street in New Orleans (which is to say, mostly for the tourists and of little real value) so my frustrating trip there was very short. Note to self - buy a GPS for your next trip.



I shot out of Memphis and across the Mighty Mississippi River on the I-40 in an effort to reach Alma, Arkansas as fast as I could. My old navy buddy, Kevin, lives there with his wife Kenda and their daughter Molly. I haven't seen Kevin in 14 years so I wanted to stop by and see how he's been doing. I figured I would take the 40 the entire way there, not only for purposes of speed, but also to contrast freeway travel against highway travel.

Turns out freeway travel sucks for anything other than speed. I did meet a couple of interesting people, however; one of whom, Hank, had just about completed his own cross country trip - and epic 7000-mile trip from Memphis to Washington State and back on his 1972 BMW motorcycle. We chatted for a while and he told me that he was a professional sound man and left Memphis every year during Elvis Week. We laughed about Elvis fans for a minute or two before getting back on the road and going in opposite directions.



So, I made Alma in record time, have met my buddy Kevin and his family and we've spent a relaxing evening smoking pipes and chatting about old times. Today we'll scoot up to Eureka Springs together and wander around in the Ozarks a bit. I was planning to ride up here on the bike, but it might make for a better road trip, and anyway Kevin can fill in the gaps in my local knowledge, which will be nice. I'll head out again tomorrow morning for a three day camping trip across Oklahoma and New Mexico before I stop over in Albuquerque to see another old friend. Wish me luck!

OK, OK!...

I've been really lazy. I've been kicking around Tullahoma for the past couple of days instead of getting back on the road. The combination of free food, clean sheets and a welcoming home is a hard one to pull away from, even if one is very excited to get back on the road. The true deciding factor is that I wanted to hang out with my brother a little more, which has been difficult because he's such a busy guy and I keep getting in conversations with my father that are too interesting to pull away from. Also, I've been taking a lot of naps.



It's not been all lazing about, though; I've made it up to Nashville to scoot around in the Hillsborough neighborhood a little bit as well as having a brief tour of Murfreesborough and downtown Tullahoma (such as it is). Much of central Tennessee is made up of old and picturesque towns scattered among rolling, rock-strewn hills. Lakes pop out of the scenery here and there as you drive through the countryside and old general stores or quaint townships stand wearily in the shade of lonely hollows. You'd be hard pressed to go anywhere in rural middle Tennessee without passing a field of soybeans or corn and most of the nearby famrhouses are old and drafty enough that you can see the setting sun through the slats in their sides. It's lovely out here, really.



This area is the home of many things that are distinctively American, too. There are quite a few sippin' whiskey distilleries out here - My father's creek feeds into the George Dickle distillery, not three miles from his property, and Jack Daniels comes from Lynchburg, only a few miles away. Tennessee Walking Horses come from just over the hill in Shelbyville (pronounced locally as 'Shub-vul'), and I don't guess I have to tell you what Nashville's famous for (although that's changing. Not only is country music shifting it's heart to other US cities, but lots of other kinds of really good music is coming out of Nashville recently. Check out Hammock, for instance). This is a beautiful and unique part fo the country and I'm glad I have a reason to keep coming back here.



I have decided to leave tomorrow morning, however, and make for Reelfoot Lake in northwestern Tennessee before continuing on to Alma, Arkansas and my friend Kevin's house. I'm all packed and gassed up again and I even bought some cheep raingear in town (I've been warned by everybody I know who has been through this part of the country that rainstorms kick up with little or no warning here, so I set aside my devil-may-care bravado and bought some protection). I'll be camping at Reelfoot Lake, so this will be the first real field-test of my camping gear and food kit. Hopefully I won't have to contend with too many tourists up there, but I brought along a flask of Laphroig (scotch) just in case I do.

Thanks to everyone who has commented to this blog or emailed me with good wishes! I'm glad to know some people are reading this and following my progress. It'll be a couple of days before I can write again (for real this time), but keep checking back. Take care.

The long road winds up...

My first day on the road got me all the way from Tallahassee, Florida, to Tullahoma, Tennessee in about 12 hours. I stuck to the highways that took me through Havanna, Columbus, Harpersville, Pell City, Ashville, Huntsville, Fayetteville, and Lynchburgh, and took a few breaks along the way to take pictures and stretch. There were a few bland spots in there, but most of the ride was gorgeous, particularly northern Alabama around Pell City. Middle Tennessee never fails to impress me, too, with it's gentle hills and abrupt geology. Most of the day was overcast and cool, and I was lucky enough to miss any rain and almost all rush-hour traffic in every city I happened to go through (barring Huntsville. Boo, Huntsville).



It was not a day without some worry, however. About two hours outside of Tallahassee I noticed a small amount of oil dribbling onto my left boot. Pulling over at the top of a hill overlooking Lake Tallapoosa, I checked under the bike and found that a small amount of oil was seeping out from the lower portion of the engine. I made sure that the oil level was good enough to keep going, cleaned what oil there was off the engine and ate a little trail mix before getting back on the road. I stopped every so often to check the oil level for the rest of the trip. By the time I'd gotten to Tennessee I'd gone through about half a quart - not too much really, but worrisome nonetheless. This morning I took my bike on down to the local motorcycle store - a big, shiny mega-structure in Murfreesborogh, Tennessee, called Sloan's - and was told by the guys in the service department that they'd be able to get to it in about two and a half weeks. I expressed my dismay with that schedule and told them that I was on a trip across the country and they told me there was nothing they could do about it. They did tell me, however, that there was a place just up the road, a small independent store owned by a guy called Tom Sloan, that might be able to do something for me. I thanked the guy who told me this and went up the road to find the place. I found the shop quickly enough (despite the lack of a sign out front. It's called First Kick, by the way, but you'll just have to look for a bunch of bikes out front of a white shack that sits just north of Murfreesborough on highway 41 if you're in the area) and went inside to plead my case to the mechanic I found there. Luckily, he sympathized with my situation and told me that they would put my bike at he head of the line and call me later to let me know what was going on with it.



Three hours later the shop called me and told me that they'd been unable to order the gasket that had burst so they manufactured it in-house. They charged me two hours labor and told me I could pick it up whenever I wanted. I don't know about you, but it's stuff like that that keeps me going back to smaller, local shops over dealers and huge mega-stores every time. My mechanic in Tallahassee (Big shout-out to Jower's Automotive) was that kind of small local shop that would go out of their way for you, and it inspired such loyalty in me that I never went anyplace else. let me just write this again - this place manufactured the part in-house and didn't even charge me for it! Amazing!



Anyway, while waiting for the bike I went up to Nashville and fell head-over-heals in love with an archtop acoustic guitar made by Godin. I've had issues with finding the perfect guitar for me while on the road before (more on that later). In fact, I even joked with my step-mom earlier in the day that I was going to find The One while I was travelling, but I didn't expect it to happen so early in the trip or while I actually still have enough money to afford the thing. I'm a little stuck here - I want to buy it and have it shipped. Hmmm...

This morning when I went back to pick up my bike I dropped off a six-pack of Dogfish Head 60 minute IPA (my favorite beer). I've found that giving your mechanic some beer can go a long way to showing him your appreciation, and these guys certainly seemed to enjoy what I gave them. I said to them, "Sorry, I don't know if you guys like this beer, but it's my favorite so I thought I'd get you some." One of them said back, "We like whatever beer you brought," to which another replied, "As long as it's cold, we like it." I thanked them again, paid my ticket and rode off on my newly healthy bike.

I think I'll head off to Alma, Arkansas to visit my old friend Kevin on Thursday morning. I haven't seen the guy in about 14 years, so it should be an interesting visit. I may stop over to see a lake that sits between here and there that my step-mom told me about, so my next entry may be a couple of days away. The weather's been holding out well and I don't expect to encounter anything too daunting until I get into Oklahoma, but I think I've prepared well in any case. Let's hope I'm right.

Hip-Hop will never die...unless it eats at Hip-Hop...

There are a lot of dumpy places along the Tennessee Strip in Tallahassee that trade real character for cheep beer. The rule of thumb in places like these is that the music, ambiance and drink selection are secondary to the attraction of vacuous co-eds in search of a place to hang out the shingle. Nothing wrong with getting a little loopy and getting your swerve on, no, but that kind of thing can get a bit old once you're out of your early twenties.

Until the luster leaves the veneer, however, anyone who partakes is going to need greasy places to flush out the juice, so to speak. Happily, the Tennessee Strip is replete with places only too willing to add to your premature arteriosclerosis by way of seared beef, deep-fried chicken or braised cheese on soggy bread. At one time I was sure that the king of all of these places was Guthries, what with their Gut Box (an almost perfect 'drunk food'), but my bleary notions of sodden perfection were shattered at a stroke once I set foot inside of Hip Hop Fish and Chicken.



There's no obfuscation to this place at all; it is exactly what the rather odd name implies - a fish and chicken joint. I always expect there to be Hip-hop blaring out of hidden speakers in there when I walk through the door. Instead, there is only the smell of grease and fish, the deadpan disinterest of the counter girl and the inane blaring of the laugh track of whatever show happens to be on Fox just then. It's like stopping by your gross aunt's place for a nibble after you've been to the bar.

Does that not sound like the kind of place you'd want to stop and eat? Good - you're normal. But I'm telling you, after a night of boozing and hanging out in noxious clouds of second-hand smoke, when you're firmly in the grip of the grape and your throat is sore from attempting to converse over music you don't even like at low volume, after you've quit the pub and shambled toward home only to realize you're too hungry to sleep, Hip-Hop Fish and Chicken delivers the best late-night snack you can get in Tallahassee.



My recommendation? Get the Tilapia and chicken tenders. They're served over white bread (to soak up the grease) and fries (to add additional grease), and I like to put the Hip Hop Hot Sauce on everything, just to add a little additional grease-cutting power to my meal. This place is a bit out of the way for anyone who doesn't live in either a dorm or one of the many student ghettos close to campus, but it's worth the trip if you've got both a heavy drunk on and a designated driver (all of these qualifications are utterly moot, however, if Mr. T's BBQ is open. That place trumps any other place in town, at any time of the day or night, under any circumstances short of the death of a loved one. More on the phenomenal Mr. T's later).

One Kind Favor...

When I first started fishing in Florida I would go wade-fishing with a buddy of mine. We'd tie a cooler decked out with pool-floaties to one of us and tow it through the water while we waded, about waist deep, casting around for fish. Aside from being both a spooky and inefficient way to try to catch fish, it's also pretty ineffective. I don't think we ever caught anything other than catfish and stingrays this way. After an incident involving a 12-foot alligator following us around while we tried to scurry out of the water in submerged, ankle-deep mud, we gave up wade fishing altogether and my buddy bought a canoe.

Certainly, Florida is the right kind of place for a guy who likes to sit around in a boat trying to pluck fish from the water, and north Florida has a ecology unique to the northern Gulf - the salt flats. From the first time I got in the Gulf of Mexico, I've been impressed, stunned even, with the amount of life that is constantly teaming through the waters here. Nowhere in the Gulf, however, has been more impressive and significant to me than St. Mark's lighthouse.



St. Marks lighthouse is at the end of a long road that runs through St. Marks nature preserve. The preserve itself is about a 30-minute drive outside of Tallahassee and is a wealth of natural Florida pine forest and wetland. It's a pretty great place to see indigenous Florida wildlife, too - I've seen bobcats, water moccasins, alligators and all kinds of birds doing their respective thing in the preserve, but mostly I've gone out there to hit the water.



The lighthouse itself is a rather squat structure, but Florida is flat enough that it serves as a prominent landmark from a long way off. The waters around the lighthouse are shallow, 1- to 6-feet depending on the tide, and they are just chocked full of all kinds of sea creatures. I've been scalloping here during the season and I've caught trout, redfish and flounder, too, along with more pinfish and catfish than I care to think about. The aforementioned alligator incident occurred here, and I've seen both dolphins and sea turtles out in the water almost every time I've been. Because it's both so full of fish and so close to Tallahassee, it's a fair bet that it'll be a pretty busy place almost any time you go. There's a boat ramp very near the lighthouse, so if you stick around the shore you're likely to see a steady stream of boats coming and going.



But despite the occasional traffic and over-large alligator, St. Mark's is a beautiful place to fish, hike, bird-watch or picnic. There's a visitor's center near the entrance that'll walk you though the local flora and fauna, and plenty of picnic tables and open BBQs strewn about the preserve. You'll be able to find a good photo-op about every ten feet here and I'd be surprised to hear of a person spending some time in the preserve without seeing something pretty breathtaking.

If you go, though, I'll ask you this one favor - Please don't feed the alligators that hang out near the lighthouse. Seriously. Don't.

Two wheels of fury....

Lake Ella sits just north of the center of downtown Tallahassee. It is a modest little man-made pool of water, populated by hordes of dim-witted mutant ducks and more than a few Georgia Slider turtles. Around this little lake are a small selection of specialty stores that cater mostly to jugglers and women who need either shoes or exotic gifts. These stores have been set up in what looks like an old motor-hotel; all hewn-rock bungalows arranged in a line. Most of these stores are cute and quiet and clean and good for little other than a summer diversion. One notable exception to this is Joe's Bike shop, probably the best bike shop in Tallahassee.

Joe is a New Yorker who moved down to Tallahassee for a slower way of life. He's an affable guy, always joking and willing to hang out with regulars on the stoop. His place is far from a mega-store, but carries just enough bikes and equipment so that you'll always be able to find what you need, and he has a pretty well-stocked and busy shop in the back as well. He employs a couple of guys to help him around the shop (one of whom, Pete, lived in the same one-horse town in Oregon that I did during a portion of my high school years - we even know some of the same people. Small world), and he usually has a ton of reasonably priced used bikes out front to choose from.



The real reason to patronize a place like Joe's, though, is the laid-back customer service and local feel of the place. I rode my bike all through my undergrad and I can't tell you how many times I took my ailing machine in to Joe's only to ride out an hour or so later, totally fixed up and wallet only slightly worse for wear. Joe's is that kind of place - get to know the guys and they go well out of their way to see that you're taken care of. I made sure to drop a six-pack by now and again by way of repayment, but the pleasure of that was all mine anyway - they're a fun bunch of guys to hang out with and I'll miss them terribly.

Oh, just as a side note, this place is a regular haunt of people from all ends of the bike-riding spectrum. You'll even find a fixie kid hanging out there now and again - that said, there's a place down in Railroad Square (which I'll write about later) called Krank it Up that rents out space and tools for bike repair on a pay-what-you-want basis, and is staffed by a pretty cool bunch of people. If I were more tech-savvy about my bike than I am I might have made more use of Krank it Up than I did, but asside from being an engineering dimwit I like the guys at Joe's enough to enjoy stopping by. Anyway, there you go.