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.

My noble steed is now a museum-grade display of the airborne bugs of North America, in the form of a montage (the Southern States beneath the South-Western bugs, beneath the Pacific bugs and now the Northern bugs). One day entomologists may find this useful. Tomorrow: home! At this point, a relief from solo biking and simply from biking at all, every day. 330 miles today (more than I intended but no accommodation appeared at any earlier juncture – all good since less mileage to cover tomorrow on the last lap), through fine Pennsylvania parkland, enlivened by 40 winks at a gas station (where I took the photo with unknowing cop in background), by several hours of rain (drizzle mainly but at 70 mph it feels like grapeshot), and by a 20-mile tailback jam caused by roadworks. Reaching the front at last, no roadwork at all, of course. (It’s Sunday.) Nonetheless American drivers brought to bear their chief national characteristic, supine subservience. Curious how national stereotypes are commonly the precise opposite of the truth. There are ornery American mavericks but if you’re seeking a nation of rugged individualists you want Russians. Supposedly the dupe of socialism, no Russian ever met a law he didn’t want to break, at once. Americans could only breathe easily if a law were passed requiring them to do so. The ‘passionate’ French? The most cold-blooded nation on earth. (Except possibly the Uruguayans.) An’ so on. My day ended wonderfully with a classic encounter to cap the trip: waiting in line for a room, the guy behind me, Larry Alpert, 46, turns out to be a Brooklyn College grad who studied under Allen the Ginz, in our office. Like the airborne bugs of N. America, they’re everywhere. (BC grads.) Brings me full circle. What a goddamn trip!!

There’s a distinctive kind of weirdness here – sometimes I think it’s the creepiest state in the Union – I first met it 24 summers ago, driving to Chicago from New York with a raging toothache, the summer my father died. It has to do with Ohio people – the absence of them. And with huge, neatly trimmed lawns all around the most featureless bungalows you’ve ever seen. Do people live here, you wonder? Or rather, do people live here? Aliens. maybe? Admittedly, the only kids I’ve seen playing outdoors, across 9000 miles (a boundary passed today) of America, I saw today in rural Ohio. But then – how could that mistake occur? Real kids? Playing? The prosecution rests. Aliens. I think the prehistoric inhabitants of this area must have sensed it, in the land. The Mound Builders, as they’re known. Or Mound People. I prefer Mound Builders – reserving Mound People for the people who best deserve this title, the contemporary citizens of Ohio. Huge. Mound-shaped. During that drive to Chicago in 1990 it felt like I’d landed on the planet of the fat. Today I was here to pay my respects to the Great Serpent Mound, an astrological monument dedicated to natural forces (unlike the work of the militaristic mound builders, seemingly a different crew, dedicated to conquest, hierarchy, and subjugation. One a culture of domination, the other of reverence. Humanity… the same as ever, it seems.) Just last month prehistoric inhabitation of the Americas has been put back once more, in time, to 100,000 BC.

At the Serpent Mound a few dozen Ohioans were gathered. Reluctant children, bossy grandmothers, crazy uncles – one of these, who clearly hadn’t read the information available at the site regarding the pre-Indian date of the Mound cultures, recited each sentence from the list of the Serpent Mound’s astrological measuring functions (left), prefacing each one with a stentorian, ‘Now, how could an Injun…?’ for the benefit of the child accompanying him. His tones were scathing enough to have graced the Roman Senate. Quomodo potuitne (a favorite Ciceronian sally) barbarus? It wasn’t clear if Uncle’s aim was simply to ridicule liberal injun-loving archaeologists everywhere, or to pave the way for his alternative theory, perhaps derived (like mine to explain today’s Ohioans) from the Ancient Aliens TV channel. Unusually, it seems, the Serpent Mound is built into a meteor impact crater; there are many other such earth sculptures from the same inspiration, more, perhaps, than we’ll ever detect. But what a beautiful American meditation.

19 miles north of the Serpent lies Hillsboro, as a tragic a town, in its own way, as I’ve come across. It’s pierced by many roads, none of which seem able to come up with a reason for visiting Hillsboro, a place suggestive of one of those magician’s assistants through whom the swords pass without drawing blood. The country fair was taking place today in the center, if such a word fits, of Hillsboro (loudspeakers provided rock music loud enough to hear 15 miles away), featuring some 30 food stalls and whirl-you-around devices, all of them brought from out of town and run by bored bigger-town slickers whose faces expressed entirely appropriate contempt for the few Hillsboro folk able to face the noise and taste the vile food. They wore a strange look, the locals, stunned and appalled as if last night had brought an attack on the town by one or more mass murderers. The heat, the screaming loudspeakers, the awful food and drink… I almost tried some fries, but, although sign language explained the price ($4 for a tiny cup) no amount of signing on my part, or even shouting, was able to communicate the idea of a napkin to wipe the grease from face and fingers. I rode the remaining 160 miles to Ashland (of all names!), Ohio, gripped by a stunned and appalled feeling to match the look on Hillsboro faces. What has happened to us humans?

Sadly, our final breakfast together – since Joe headed off this afternoon to visit family in Toronto. So much to remember, of our trip of a lifetime! Joe left me watching Brazil vs. Colombia in an Irish pub in Indianapolis. A wise move on his part. I watched, in disbelief, the worst 45 minutes of football I can recall. 22 men scratching, pulling, tripping – barely 20 seconds between free kicks. This disgrace was hailed as open and entertaining by the commentators, who are no less to blame for the collapse of the ‘beautiful game’ than the players, coaches, and fans. The second division footballers I played alongside 50 years ago in Switzerland could never have allowed themselves to present this lame display without one single piece of ‘football magic.’ (Maybe Brazil’s 2nd goal in the second half provided at least one such.) I could never have imagined that I would ever walk out on a Brazil World Cup match, let alone devoutly hope that Brazil would be soundly beaten (Colombia were no better) in the next round – and for the sake of the game!! Watch old World Cup film if you wonder why. 220 miles into a sunlit biking day, I reached Dayton, Ohio, and – as those who followed our earlier updates will know – the sign that means…home. Tomorrow more photos – new ones – from the Great Serpent Mound, final leg of my triple pilgrimage to the heart of America.

Storms seemingly behind us, we had 6, 7 hours of the most perfect biking it’s possible to imagine, in perfect biking weather (70-ish) under a clear blue sky all the way, dotted with small fluffy clouds, a kind of dream-Midwestern cloudscape. Bodies and bikes still holding up well through another long day (plenty of ice packs last night), and some interesting encounters in small towns along the way: Rte 36, Macon, Missouri, to Decatur, Illinois, and then on east on 36 to a place called Teskola. Nothing we ate could top yesterday’s gizzards (left); instead we had some good solid food at Country Kitchen in Hannibal, Missouri. This is Mark Twain’s boyhood town, and Hannibal – named after Carthage’s Hannibal, everyone says, but no one knows why – doesn’t let you forget it. It knows which side its gizzards are battered. (Both sides.) At Country Kitchen, Joe had the Big Bad Bacon Burger; I had fried eggs. over medium, an instructions few chefs understand. But our cook, Sam, speaks ‘over medium’ to perfection. Sam’s a good name for a cook – I’m thinking of Hemingway’s The Killers – and in my life a good name for a son (who is also a proficient cook, now cooking up a storm for his new family, his partner Maeve writes).

I’ve been at pains to avoid reporting any dreams (an extremely bad habit). But last night I had a dream I never expected I could possibly have. I was on a railway platform with my mother, and we were about to be loaded onto a train bound for Nazi death camp extermination. (Who dreams about this? – unless you’ve experienced it.) I was looking round desperately for a means of escape. To my left was a small square structure with cement walls and no roof. Somehow I knew that a) this structure contained gay people, and b) if I scaled a wall and jumped in I’d escape the train (at least for the moment). An agonizing debate followed – to my eternal shame. Gay or dead? In life, rather than extermination I’d have chosen a sex change – let alone merely identify myself as gay. In my dream I chose – yes, death. Please believe me when I say that the presence of my mother in the dream had nothing to do with it, doctor, and that having been steeped in Christian fundamentalism (When You Break God’s Law You Make God Cry) for the past 6 weeks had everything to do with it. The defence rests. (Also I am still dealing with lasting shame at having failed to bring myself to go and see Brokeback Mountain.)

On the outskirts of Decatur I overtook a sleek, extremely lovely black Corvette; almost at once a sleek and no less lovely white Corvette came past going the other way. This moment seemed to symbolize, for both Joe and myself, the arrival of wealth. Illinois seems like a land of plenty. Plenty of corn, of course. A lush crop. I find it reassuring to suppose that few animals will bolt across the road out of hundred-acre fields of corn. Possibly some aliens. (Signs – with Mel Gibson in the role of former priest. The ‘former’ part always comes as a relief; hard enough to picture Mel as a priest at any point.)

Outside the small tidy town of Winchester, Illinois, where we stopped for gas, we paused & I ate a banana while peering into a place I shall remember long after others are gone from mind, an empty, broken-down little farm: a white-washed shed for farm machinery with a wild rose blooming beside it, a crumbling white-washed cow byre, and cows close by it in a field full of thistles. The place hadn’t seen a mower in months, if not years. It had irresistible charm and reminded me of a hundred similar farms in postwar Europe. (Not any more! Now all such places are as tidy as a balance sheet.) Cycling around Europe, I spent many nights in such barns, at the farmer’s invitation, waking in the loft to hay smells and fragrant, steaming cow breath, and to the soft lowing and stamping of cattle eager to be milked. Ah memory!