Concluding: Bike Odyssey 2014 – Day 51 – Starship Log Completed

Uncanny to be home! Mercifully intact. Providentially, this turned out to be the sweetest day’s riding of the whole trip. The promised storms held off (until a shower towards the end), sunshine reigned over glorious roads, first through Pennsylvania and then up into New York on 209, the road we came down 7 weeks ago. July 7 was my return-home target all along; I’m amazed it worked out. During today’s ride, I had just touched 90 on the Interstate – a farewell gesture, having touched 100 just outside Greeley (gizzards), something Joe did too, a couple of times, for the fun of it – when the bike coughed discreetly. Glanced at my fuel gauge: I was all but out. An exit beckoned. All was well. This bike has been astonishing – not a flicker of a problem, running perfectly every day, for 10,000 miles. Today was its swansong alas, and it rode like a queen, as though aware of it. Time to sell the bike: a good time. After 12 years I’m getting a little old for a machine as heavy as this. A man should be able to lift his fallen bike; I can, but only just barely, with every ounce of strength, and no one with coronary heart disease is supposed to lift anything even close to this much weight – 900 lbs with the travel gear on it. Between 750 and 800 stripped. So ave atque vale dear bike. The trip itself has been a farewell beyond my dreams, and today was beyond perfect. Coming back up little 209 at 46 mph and revisiting the places we passed on Day 1, including the diner where we took our first lunch (tuna sandwich), was a touching finale. Topped by my welcome home to an immaculate house and bright garden – Claire’s wondrous work. Now: anyone looking for an immaculate Road King, 12 years old, perfect condition, some extras, 22,992 on the clock? Speaks several languages.

I’ll be a while processing the journey. At this point what comes through most clearly in memory are: the unfailing kindness of ‘ordinary’ Americans; the myriad splendours of the landscape; the superlative roads; the unceasing solicitousness of my brother-in-arms, Joe, who in effect carried me through the journey on his back, like Trojan Aeneas his father, the aged Anchises (I shall expect Joe to do as Aeneas did and visit me in the Underworld after my death); the strange crumbling survivors – mostly awful but some wonderful – of mom-and-pop store culture, faced with our seemingly universal human demand for homogenity. Can’t blame America. Everyone wants same old same old. At any rate they don’t want to pay one cent more to have individuality. What else of the trip comes back? – The Blue Ridge Mountains; Faulkner’s home; Jonestown, Mississippi; Mexican food in Santa Fe; Queen Mabel’s place in Taos; the Grand Prismatic Basin; the Clark Fork river’s green; conversations with Bobby; visits with beloved friends in California, Oregon, Idaho, Nebraska, Iowa; drunks and Serbs in Butte; the prairie south of Newcastle; the cemetery at Wounded Knee. Gizzards.

And what have I learnt from the trip? Well –
1. The best-run establishments (restaurants, motels) in America are those run by Indians or Pakistanis.
2. If you’re getting on in years, carry your AARP card – free donut at Dunkin’ Donuts.
3. Best fast food in America: Dunkin’ Donuts.
4. When seeking a motel discount, always say you have served in the Australian Military Police.
5. If necessary make a card to denote this.
6. Bring a pillow. (I brought one but it caught fire in Asheville, North Carolina – see Untold Tales, below.)
7. Buy a cheap electric toothbrush. (I did. I love them now!)
8. Everyone vacations in RVs now. Camping in tents went out with disco.
9. If you insist on camping, be absolutely meticulous in researching campsites, especially with regard to proximity of highway noise.
10. A good Motel 6 is the best value, among motels. A bad Motel 6 is terrible. Be prepared to pay $40 a night in the East, and in the West 80$, $160 or even $200. (Thanks, Rick, of the Western Motel in Cody, who charged half of what everyone else in Cody charges.)
11. Motorbiking (cue song) is still the greatest way to travel yet invented by man. Fast, aromatic, acrobatic, artistic. And the reliability of our Harleys deserves special mention. Speak gently to your bike; from time to time pat it on the tank like an old horse. You’ll both feel the better for it.

Untold Tales. Oh God, the pillow. Joe and I had paused to confer, with motors running. Suddenly flames rose up my leg in spectacular fashion. (Luckily I was wearing the Kevlar-lined jeans – Draggin Jeans manufacturers, please note.) I was sitting on the pillow and it touched the exhaust. Somewhere in Asheville the roadside corpse of a pillow was collected by garbagemen. Untold Tales 2 – near misses. The dog near Elk City, in the middle of the road, unable to make up its mind. staring at me as I approached at 70. It ambled across the road & to safety for both of us. The young deer north of Missoula, who shot across the road at 40 mph without warning. Had it left this 2, possibly 2 and a half seconds later…. But these were actually all of the very small number of dangerous moments. None involving other drivers. Good fortune attended us, I have to say.

Thank you for reading, if you have been! I’m now hooked on blogging and, the Bike Odyssey done, I plane to begin a new one, ‘The City and the Country,’ addressing the polarity of my daily life, bouncing from the Catskills to New York City. Two Americas. A meditation in itself.