My Epic 6,000-Mile Motorcycle Adventure Across the United States
Motorcycle Diaries Part Two
I sit huddled over a table for three when the idea first comes to me. I try — I want to let the thought pass as a friend shares stories over wine and greasy starters. The idea takes hold, refusing to loosen its grip on my all too impressionable spirit. But this call to adventure seems haphazard even for me — a strip of paper drawn from a hat of equally reckless ideas.
After dinner, I race home and phone the one friend who entertains my delusions, sometimes even partaking in them. I figure if he can’t join me at least I’ll know if I’ve finally lost my mind. “I’m going to ride my motorcycle from Oakland to Key West,” I tell him. “Do you want to come?” Unfazed by the idea or its author, he says he’s in but can’t go all the way. It’s all I need to hear.
A week later our plan of attack is sprawled out on the table of a popular cafe. The restaurant’s enclave and low lighting make for a perfect makeshift war room. If Eisenhower had a motorcycle, I think. For the next hour we study copies of U.S. maps like Lewis and Clark. The lines drawn are not by a man in a hurry but on a mission — to visit the last six states of America. I won’t point my motorcycle south until the journey’s ninth day. Like much of my life, the trip will unfold slowly and then all at once.
Our strides have extra bounce as we leave the cafe that night. We are filled with the kind of fervor that comes less easily as you get older. But as we move past bar hoppers on a brisk Oakland night, I know neither of us fully grasp the scope of our undertaking. Sure, we collected a few war stories from a 2,600-mile run around California, Nevada, and Arizona four months before but this is different. More time perched above two wheels means more can go wrong. The waning patience of the motorcycle gods, the frailty of British engineering, and the extra time with unsettled thoughts are all factors for a relatively inexperienced rider. Still, we veil the uneasiness that belies our poise before parting ways under a street lamp.
In the weeks that follow, my bare apartment becomes cluttered with a roll bag, gas can, phone mount, ratchet straps, saddle bags, bungee chords, and new helmet. I look like I’m going to the moon. I also need to get my bike serviced, a task I dread because of the tough love that accompanies each visit. Tyler, a spectacled and humorless man in his mid-50s, reprimanded me on the dimness of my headlight a few months before. This time, he takes issue with the condition of the motorcycle’s chain. “As the owner of this bike you are responsible for greasing and cleaning your chain every three hundred miles, which it does not look like you’ve been doing,” he tells me in a tone not unlike my father’s. I half expect him to tell me to call my mother more often.
When our day into the unknown finally arrives, I feel a joyous angst about all that awaits. The uncertainty, the risk, the danger — everything we’re taught to avoid is precisely what I can’t wait to head straight towards. “Go to the fear,” I like to say. For as long as I can remember, I’ve felt more at home in the lion’s den than perched safely behind the plexiglass. My compulsion to live a life less ordinary and experience as much as I can is rooted in an intimate and sometimes obsessive relationship with my mortality. Even in my youth of youths it was never lost on me I would one day cease to be. As a result, fear has driven rather that hindered most of my life. My refusal to succumb to it at all costs is my greatest strength and Achilles’ heel.
At 8:30 am, I meet my friend at his home as a light rain begins to fall. I see he’s mounted the biker prayer I gave him on his gas tank — the same one I have tucked away in my coat pocket. At least one of us will make it, I think. I linger as he casually sips a cup of coffee before kissing his wife goodbye. For a moment, I wonder if he’s getting ready to commute to work.
We head north on Interstate 80 before entrusting our route to a popular motorcycle app. “Avoid Highways” and “Windy Roads” become our favorite features, leading to longer but more interesting rides. It only takes forty-five minutes for us to feel like we’re in another country. Political leanings change as dramatically as the scenery. We are suddenly nomads in a strange, but not so distant land. I nearly forgot I’m less than a hundred miles from one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world.
For the next several hours, we drive through hamlets that look like movie sets — town after town with perfectly placed general stores and post offices parted by streets where one doesn’t need much imagination to picture the horse-drawn carriages, frock coats, and low hemlines that once crowded the dirt roads. We continue past Knights Landing, Susanville, and Tobin — a place so small you can drive through holding your breath. Its population of fifteen doesn’t even earn it the title of “town” but “census-designated place,” a classification I still don’t understand.
We make our way through Yuba City, much of which once belonged to the same John Sutter whose land gold was discovered in 1848 and led to the gold rush a year later. Ironically, the giant nuggets found on his land didn’t lead him to riches but destitution. When Sutter died in 1880 at the age of seventy-seven he was broke, but mostly broken, having been swindled and cast aside. For every person that struck it rich, thousands returned home with nothing but the lint in their pockets. Some things don’t change.
In the late afternoon, the temperature climbs to ninety degrees but the bulky gear makes it feel north of a hundred. My friend lets me take the lead as we weave past mountains as old as time in Plumas and Lassen National Forests. The roads are ours and everything is out in front. Even a hundred feet behind me I can feel my friend smiling.
Lake Almanor and Eagle Lake offer brief respites from the heat. A breeze I wish I could bottle comes off its cool waters as I gaze up at clouds that look like cotton. We stop without stress or strain every few miles to take pictures, well aware the proximity to such beauty is no guarantee we’ll return. The “some day’s” and “next time’s” aren’t as infinite as they seem, especially when the days behind start to outnumber the ones ahead. In a way, this trip is about changing the syntax of my delicate life from “I will when” to “I will now.” I’ve lived long enough to know “when” is a fickle dinner guest that often doesn’t show.
Our day ends in Alturas, a town tucked away in the northeastern corner of California. The streets are deserted as we park our bikes in front of the Niles Hotel, once the social center of the county. The first stones of what was once the Curtis Hotel were laid in 1908 before thriving then enduring the roaring twenties, Great Depression, and two world wars. By the 1970s, the building had suffered from neglect until the community decided to restore the iconic building to its former glory.
The rooms are cozy, adorned with antique furniture and tasteful art. Still, there’s a shared uneasiness between my friend and I. We’re more superstitious than we should be, particularly at our age. The halls, though charming, are lined with black and white photographs of people long gone — the kind of portraits where one feels watched, even judged. We decide to keep the door between our rooms open that night.
We leave for Oregon the following day, but in the least practical way. Efficiency, like caution, is cast aside as we dip to Nevada making a pit stop in a place called Denio Junction. Not a dull moment passes on this t-shaped intersection off the state route. An American flag waves high above an artillery gun from the Second World War as feral-looking children play unsupervised with sticks sharp enough to claim an eye. Meanwhile, a Cessna Skycatcher casually takes off less than a hundred feet away. Where are we? I wonder. In search of food, I poke my head in a dive bar filled with incredulous locals and a bartender with only one arm. Of course he’s missing an arm, I think.
“We can’t pump our own gas anymore,” I remind my friend as we make our way towards Oregon. We stop in Frenchglen, a town that could be the setting for a Nicholas Sparks novel. I can hardly believe Denio is only seventy miles away. We push on as the bugs thicken, kamikazing into our face shields as we pass through Lakeview and Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. For most of the day I feel like I’m looking through a petri dish. Still, I don’t need a clean visor to see that Oregon is one of the most beautiful places I’ll ever visit. Off in the distance, the Steens Mountains remind me of my unimportance in the most liberating way.
As we inch closer to Hines, we coast past some of the most verdant farmland I’ve seen. I swear you can tell what state you’re in by the way the hay is stacked. We pull up to our AirBnb at about 5:00 pm and are greeted by our host BJ, a kind, but tough as nails seventy-something who looks like she eats hipsters for breakfast. “I came out when I heard the bikes,” she says. She is beaming. “Before I got lymphedema I rode a six-hundred pound Harley.” I love her already.
On the third day, we rise again. We head for Idaho, a state neither of us have ever step foot in. Up ahead, my friend fidgets with the navigation on his phone while swerving towards the center divide going eighty. He looks like a mad scientist. We pull to the side of the road in Seneca, a small city nestled in the Blue Mountains to take photos and breathe in the crisp air. The road is nearly empty except for a middle-aged couple who agrees to take our picture. “It’s good to see people getting out,” the woman says.
By the time we reach Prairie City, we’ve met enough people to field a softball team. It’s a good reminder that no matter how sweet the sound of a nearby brook, or stunning the sight of snow capped mountains nothing beats human connection. Every stop is a chance to share a small piece of our journey. “Where you going?” they all want to know. Each time I say “Key West” I’m met with various expressions of disbelief. “On that?!” a man asks, pointing to my bike. I might as well say I’m going to space. Still, their parting words are always encouraging. There’s an unspoken recognition I’m living as fully as I know how, however irrational.
Just before leaving Oregon, we zip past Ironside and three-cornered hills that remind me of the Great Pyramids. But there are no photo ops as we cross the Idaho border. We have bigger problems. The Gem State is the first place we’ve seen an 80 mph speed limit. Mack trucks and soccer moms casually blow past us going ninety. I feel like I’m pedaling a Huffy.
Our day ends with a meal on a crowded patio in Boise. After dinner, we take a lazy stroll down Main Street, a boulevard lined with bars and restaurants boisterously filled on a perfect summer night in the most American of cities. We talk about aging parents, ex-girlfriends, mistakes made, and what it’s like to be ambushed by middle-age. It wasn’t so long ago we were perched on the hoods of our cars in the Oakland Hills mapping out our lives as we looked out at the bright lights of the Bay Area. Everything, like the San Francisco skyline, was out in front.
The next morning is strangely emotional as we gas up at a Shell. Our paths diverge today as my friend heads home and I continue east. “I was going to tell you not to push yourself too hard and pull over when you get tired, but I know you won’t listen to any of that,” he says. We mount our bikes and ride our last half mile together before he veers right and I go left, an image I will remember for as long as I live. For the next half hour, I glance in my rearview expecting to see him.
My mind drifts as I race towards Idaho Falls. Just before leaving, a friend asked if I ever zone out while riding. I told her I couldn’t recall a time I hadn’t. The most challenging part of the trip isn’t the fickle weather, hairpin turns, or slick roads. It’s the solitude. Alone with my thoughts for hours on end, I’m forced to confront the demons I thought I’d slayed and the noise I can mute in the daily hustle that has become much of our lives. There’s no where to hide when all you have is time. I realize the story I’ve been telling myself about myself is not as truthful as I’ve let myself believe. The dose of honesty is painful, but good, or at least necessary if I want to transcend the person I was yesterday. If it takes a damn motorcycle to get me there so be it.
One of the best parts of my journey are the bumper stickers and signs. Some are on the nose like “Coldwater Area” and “Abrupt Edge,” while others like “Keep Salem Boring” and “IM4HEMP” provide welcome amusement. My favorite is the sign for a street called “Crazy Woman Creek Road.”
I make friends at nearly every gas station, some of them not even human. Two St. Bernards pant heavily from the back of a pick-up as the temperature in American Falls soars above ninety. Their owner pokes his head around the pump before extending his hand and welcoming me to Idaho. The billboards and yard signs reveal my new friends and I don’t check the same box in November. Still, we are connected by our humanity — the need to extend our blinded hands in hopes of finding the other. We have nothing and everything in common. I wonder if the country would be less divided if everyone just hopped on a motorcycle.
After a quiet night in Idaho Falls, I leave the next day for Wyoming. I finally take the winter lining off my coat, which reminds me of how aloof I can be. I once lived in an apartment for an entire year without realizing I had a dishwasher. The lighter jacket is a new world, a far cry from the four layers I had to wear riding out of Nevada in January.
The Snake River coils around me as I head further east. The tributary extends over a thousand miles weaving through four states. It keeps me company for much of my ride and reminds me of the solace one finds in familiarity. For the first time I realize why people use pronouns to describe their bikes, something I once found hokey. But when it’s just the two of you for thousands of miles barreling into the unknown, the only witness to your madness, the fact your companion is inanimate becomes irrelevant.
I arrive in Yellowstone around noon. The entrance is lined with signs to watch for bears. For a moment, my father’s impression of Yogi Bear plays in my head. I start to worry I’m sleep deprived. But as I head further into the park, I can’t remember a time I’ve been more awake. I feel like I’m riding through a painting. The conifers, the valleys, the grasslands, and the rivers look as though they were dabbed by the brushstrokes of God herself.
I pull over to watch fly fishers cast their lines. I nearly step in bison droppings as big as catcher’s mitts. It’s clear who runs these parts. Bison, it turns out, are more dangerous than bears. I spend hours weaving through this vast wilderness, rounding perilous cliffs before being spit out into the most glorious part of the entire six thousand mile drive — Shoshone National Forest. My God, I think. If there’s a heaven, I hope it looks like Wyoming.
I stop for gas as a man fills a pick-up fixed to a livestock trailer. “Trade you gas bills,” he jokes. I can’t help but tell him something he already knows — that Shoshone is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. “Are you from around here?” I ask. “I am,” he says proudly. “Lucky you,” I tell him. He just smiles.
The next day, I drive past a makeshift museum as signs point to rocks half a billion years old. My appreciation for my insignificance deepens with each turn. I pull over to peruse a sign that tells me I’m close to one of the ten camps that imprisoned over 120,000 Japanese Americans with one stroke of Roosevelt’s pen. I’m moved the same way I was when I visited the Kigali Genocide Memorial in Rwanda. The proximity to the crime lifts the injustice from the pages of history books. I know this really happened because I can feel it.
I grab lunch and plant myself on a curb in front of the Gillette Cheese House when a woman in her sixties approaches. “I own that store,” she says, pointing to the sign. “The previous owners retired. I found out it cost more to take the sign down than to put a new one up so I just kept it,” she tells me. “It’s a farmers market now.” I follow her inside and buy an eight dollar juice I know I won’t drink. On my way out she tells me to have a safe trip. “I’ll be thinking of you,” she says. It’s nice to be thought of, I think.
Bandana wearing Harley girls rumble by as I head back to the Arbuckle Lodge. I’m half convinced everyone in Wyoming owns a motorcycle, but I’m the only one wearing a helmet. My body is weary but my mind won’t rest. It runs on a merciless loop as I toss and turn all night. I start to question if prioritizing seeing the world — of living life on my own terms has come at too high a cost. I am equal parts Type A as I am B, which often leads to emotional tempests I cannot subdue. One minute I’m hopping on the back of a stranger’s scooter on the streets of Ljubljana, the next I’m scheduling my day within an inch of its life. I can obsess over the status that comes with titles and conventional success before considering a life wiping down table tops so long as the cafe is near the sea. I am one giant contradiction. I am a mess. I am human.
Tonight, the theme of my crisis is relationships. I wonder if I’ve messed one too many up. Not so much by what I’ve said, but what I’ve failed to. I can’t help but think I let too many women I didn’t deserve walk away so I could be left on my own to explore, to “figure myself out,” while clinging to the myth that both had to be done alone. The thoughts are agonizing, gaining strength with each restless turn. I look at the clock and realize I’ve been awake in bed for three hours. Really?! I think. We have to do this now?!
I get up at 4:45 am. The bags under my eyes are the size of coasters. I need to leave early if I want to see the Badlands and make it to North Dakota today. If everything goes according to plan, I’ll cut through half the state of South Dakota before heading north to Bismarck. The plan is bold, unreasonable at best but it’s too late to be practical.
The sun is already up by the time my bike hums to life at 5:43 am. Summer days last an eternity in these parts. There’s more time to do but less time to dream.
By late morning my priorities are already in question. I pass by the Motorcycle Museum & Hall of Fame in Sturgis but decide to stop at Wall Drug. Instead of learning about the pioneers of motorcycling, I’m taking pictures of a giant rabbit. What has my life come to? I wonder. I just hope I don’t see highway signs for a three-legged cow.
I arrive at the Badlands by early afternoon. It is equally strange as it is beautiful. I just wish I knew what I was looking at. A sign tells me the Lakota people were the first to call the soft sedimentary rock “mako sica” or “land bad.” French-Canadian fur trappers agreed. The lack of water, grueling temperatures, and nearly impenetrable landscape landed it the name “les mauvais terres.” Today, tourists the world over can’t get enough of those same ravines, gullies and sharp spires, making it a playground for grown-ups.
After an hour, I head north to the other Dakota. I swear it’s the hottest day so far. It’s a hundred and two degrees when I pass through Herreid. For the first time on my trip, I nearly run out of gas before a sleepy town called Selby appears like a mirage. My jacket is covered with so many bugs they look like they’re woven into the fabric.
Just as I’m about to leave, I see a woman with an uncanny resemblance to my childhood best friend’s mom — one of three women I said goodbye to knowing it would be the last. I’m taken back to a simpler time, but am careful not to be swept away. I can’t. I am cripplingly sentimental and still have so far to go.
Dark clouds threaten as I near the state’s capital. I ride with abandon trying to avoid rain when a billboard I’m convinced only I can see appears. BE PATIENT it says. On cue, I loosen my grip on the throttle and lift my head above the windscreen. I arrive in Bismarck without a scratch or drop of water. I wonder how many other moments in my life I could slow down.
The next morning, I head to Minnesota. The roads are straight for miles. I long for a bend, a mountain to curl around, or just a tree-lined street. Still, the land of 10,000 lakes offers a kind of simple beauty well worth the drive. After crossing the border it dawns on me the last time I was here was as a starry-eyed young actor. I spent nine unforgettable weeks at the Guthrie Theater convinced it was just a matter of time before I’d grace the stages of the Majestic and Belasco theaters on Broadway. I miss the mentors I found, the friends I made, but mostly the clarity I had about what to do with my one life.
I arrive in St. Cloud by early evening. The city’s collage of Asian Americans, women draped in hijabs, and Somali markets offers comfort, while the steady chorus of sirens makes me feel like I’m back in Oakland. My ears ring and my hands shake as I shamelessly slurp miso soup in the parking lot of a Japanese restaurant. I am depleted. I have nothing left to give. My only source of strength is fueled by a kind of madness — the realization I can’t wait to do it all again tomorrow.
I decide the drive to Madison will be a “just get me there day.” I forfeit the longer, more scenic routes to spare my stiff back and rigid hands. On this morning, there’s no denying I am officially a middle-aged man. “Beautiful day for a bike ride,” a man says as I get ready to leave. Is it? I think.
My spirits are lifted soon enough. I cross the Wisconsin border into Hudson, a scenic city situated by the St. Croix River. Each town seems more charming than the next and the topography changes with each turn. One moment I’m in an Andrew Wyeth painting, the next I’m convinced the rolling hills could pass for parts of Tuscany. There are more hues of green than I knew existed.
I arrive in Madison by the early afternoon, making my way down Monroe, a tree-lined street with impeccable old homes. I see people doing yoga in a park before pulling up to my AirBnb where I hear a man whistling “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” Is this place for real? I wonder.
I wake up early the next day. By now, I can suit up, fasten my gear, and plan my route in under five minutes. I’ve grown handy with the ratchet straps, bungee chords, and saddle bags I’m forced to wrangle in each new town. Not bad for someone who didn’t know how to check the oil a few weeks before.
The sun is shy today, rarely poking its head from behind plump clouds. Fitchburg, Oregon, and Evansville offer final looks of America’s Dairyland before I cross the border into Illinois. I miss Wisconsin already. The Land of Lincoln is no slouch though. I marvel at the lush farmlands and hundred year old homes even as I zip past them on my way to the capital. “You gonna beat the rain?” a man asks at a gas station in Hampshire. “Gonna try. I’m heading to Springfield,” I tell him. “You got a haul!” he says. “Watch out for the maniacs. They ain’t on bikes!”
I beg, barter, and plead but it still rains buckets just five minutes from where I’m staying. Visibility and common sense are low as I nearly hydroplane to my off-ramp.
By morning, the clouds are mostly gone. I zig zag my way through downtown, bouncing from the capital building to Lincoln’s home before glancing at the time. Another long day awaits. I need to leave soon. Still, something inside nudges me to stop at the Lincoln Tomb before heading south.
Murals, plaques, and statues of Lincoln are on virtually every corner. His presence a hundred and fifty-six years after his death is still binding. We could use someone like him today, I think.
When I arrive at his resting place, I see a middle-aged couple waiting near an obelisk. I take a few pictures of the cemetery and giant bronze sculptures before getting ready to leave. Then, a groundskeeper unlocks the tomb’s heavy steel doors and waves the couple inside. “You want to come in?” he asks. “Yes,” I say.
The south entrance leads to a rotunda filled with reduced-scale versions of Lincoln statues and plaques with excerpts from his most historic speeches. The tomb is spotless with highly polished marble and bronze trim. The hallways take visitors to the burial chambers I later discover see an average of eight hundred visitors a day during the summer months. But today, there isn’t another soul in sight as I gaze at the massive granite cenotaph. Lincoln’s remains are in a concrete vault ten feet below the marble floor. I am, somehow, alone with the sixteenth president; an experience I find unexpectedly moving.
Upon leaving the tomb, I see the groundskeeper who let me in. “How do most people describe their experience here?” I want to know. He pauses before asking what it felt like for me. “Humbling,” I tell him. “That’s what most people say.”
Later that day, I make my way over the Ohio River past the golden wheat fields of Paducah, Kentucky. I court the Ohio once more before two-timing with the Mississippi on my way to Missouri. The Show-Me State isn’t distinct from anything I’ve seen, but it’s still damn beautiful. I also can’t help but marvel at the patriotism in this part of the country. There’s a veterans museum, cemetery, plaque, or statue at practically every turn.
The day ends in a less inspiring way than how it began. But even in a drab hotel room in Blytheville, Arkansas I have something to celebrate. I have now been to all fifty states.
The sky looks restless and the air is thick when I leave the next morning. I ride with a confidence earned from racking up four hundred miles a day for nearly two weeks. I know which cars to shadow, where the state troopers like to hide, and how slow you really need to go in a work zone. My tolerance for discomfort has heightened and my patience deepened. In some peculiar way, my character has been strengthened by two wheels and a steel frame.
The rain in Crocket County no longer fazes me. There’s something strangely poetic about it. Aside from my drenched pants, I am at peace. My poncho never sees the light of day except when I take it out to wrap it around my notebook.
By the time I reach Mississippi I’m singing a very different tune. The rain here is different. It attacks instead of falls. My wet gloves sit in a soaked saddlebag leaving my hands prey to what feel like nails. I can’t stop my body from shaking. Up ahead I see violent flashes of lightning as the water comes down in sheets. Cars flash hazard lights, some pull over. The GPS on my phone shuts off before I pry it from its mount. Still, I decide to keep going. I must look like a madman.
Then, the clouds part as the sun take center stage. The humid air in Alabama begins to dry my clothes. My phone comes to life and I can see again. Not even the confederate flags I see waving in the distance can dampen my spirits.
I’m too early to check into my AirBnb when I reach Birmingham. There is nothing sweet about this part of Alabama, at least not today. Birmingham ends up being the most challenging part of the trip. IT. WILL. NOT. STOP. RAINING. I doodle on a Starbucks napkin, waiting — hoping the deluge will relent when a woman approaches. For the next thirty minutes, she tries to convince me to attend her Christian megachurch. She makes me pull out my phone and scroll through videos of sermons and the testimonials of former skeptics. I tell her I was raised Catholic before she says, “I never met a Catholic who had a true relationship with God.” I decide to take my chances with the rain.
I weave through rush hour as passing cars glance over with pity. The mileage and extra weight means my back tire’s tread is nearly shot. The flooded roads aren’t helping. Somehow, I reach the street where I’m staying which turns out to be the easy part. “The driveway is not for the faint of heart,” the host tells me — a claim that ends up being a not so subtle understatement. The entrance to the parking lot is at a sixty degree angle and now perilously slick from all the rain. Is this how it ends? I wonder. On a damn driveway? I cross the street and square my bike with the steep road. I take a deep breath and begin turning the throttle for what may be the last time. I feel like Evel Knievel as I mash across the street trying to gain enough speed to scale the treacherous peak. The tires cling to whatever grooves they can lugging my terrified body to the top. I will live another day.
My reward is the realization parking will be the least of my troubles tonight. Everything I own is completely soaked. I lay my clothes on the hard wood floor hoping a tired ceiling fan will dry something — anything I can wear tomorrow. It doesn’t. I end up sleeping in a towel.
My goal the next morning is simple — to get the hell out of Alabama. I miss being dry. I put on my wet clothes, load my bike, and begin chasing the sun. Ten miles outside of Montgomery my prayers are answered. My gear goes from wet to damp, a compromise I’ll take. All is forgiven.
Heading east, the strip malls start to bleed together into some colorless corporate collage. I find the endless Walmarts and Burger King’s depressing. Each town is a sobering reminder of our conditioning to eat and buy what we don’t need. I may need to dismount from my high horse, but I can’t help but think we can do better.
In the early afternoon, I blast past a Welcome to Florida sign. I feel like I’ve just won the 24 Hours of Le Mans. For the first time since my journey began, I allow my weary mind to daydream of Key West. Before, it all just seemed too much— grandiose at best. Whenever my tangled thoughts drifted to the beaches, corral reefs, and key lime pie of Florida’s island city, I’d reel them in and tuck them away. But today, everything feels different. Hell, I think. I might just pull this off.
The cornstalks and cattle ranches are not what I think of when I picture Florida. I soon discover the beach bodies and Art Deco hotels on Ocean Drive are the exception not the rule. The roads are quiet. For long stretches, I see no one as I drive past trees so straight they look like they’re saluting. I make my way through Suwannee and Lafayette county and spot more confederate flags than Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama combined. They wave casually above rest stops and homes in towns that otherwise seem like any other. I decide to keep my helmet on when I stop for gas.
I roam Tallahassee for a night, staring at the Spanish moss that drapes the oak trees that line the city streets. They offer a spooky kind of romanticism that feels distinctly southern. I feel like I’m paddling through a Bayou.
The next evening, I walk the white sands of Siesta Beach in Sarasota. I nearly forgot how much I need the ocean. The stroll feels bittersweet. I wonder how I made it this far, well aware the end is near. But mostly, I marvel at how fast it all went by. I realize the trip has become the perfect metaphor for my life as I watch the sea swallow the sun.
I arrive in Miami the following afternoon. My first stop is at a book store in Coral Gables. I stroll by an artist selling paintings in front of a storefront. He sees me clutching my helmet and asks about my bike. I tell him I rode to Miami from California — a piece of information I can see he has trouble processing.
Our conversation is cordial and later proves important for the rest of my journey. After I tell him I’m leaving for Key West the following morning, he asks where I’ll be staying. “I’m just going for the day,” I say. He looks at me like I just said the world is flat. “You should stay there,” he insists. “But it’s only a hundred and sixty miles,” I reply. “I know my friend, but there’s only one road and you have to drive very slow. There are cops everywhere.”
Moments later, another man confirms my hero’s journey has not come full circle. The reward must wait. I have one final test. A quick search for hotels in Key West reveals the remaining rooms are close to six hundred dollars a night, while every online itinerary suggests taking at least two days for the drive. What am I going to do? I think. Key West was the whole point of the trip.
I decide to take an old, and deeply flawed, approach from the playbook of my youth. The part of me that once believed anything can be achieved if you work harder and rise earlier is reawakened. I lift my kickstand at 5:39 am the next morning and head south to finish what I started.
The streets of Magic City are eerily quiet as I head onto the highway for U.S. Route 1. Signs for Key West energize me, but also make the final destination seem deceivingly close. By the time the sun rises, it’s clear I’m not the only one trying to escape the city. By 6:30 am the road is teeming with cars. The ride starts to feel like a commute to work. My California plate is not the only giveaway I’m an outsider. SUV’s and pick-ups hauling boats tailgate on the narrow road with no regard for the speed limit I’ve been conditioned to believe. Cars jockey for inches as we enter the first of the keys.
I lift my visor to take in the cool breeze as I coast into Key Largo. The streets are still sleepy, lined with storefronts and a few power-walking locals. I watch my speedometer like a vitals monitor as the car in front of me gets a ticket for going half a mile over the speed limit. There are police cars everywhere.
Still, I find a rhythm between throttle and break, playing a permissible tune under a watchful eye. Passing over ocean highways from one key to the next feels like riding through a string of pearls. The picturesque towns, sailboats, and residents casting fishing lines off old railway bridges makes me understand the race to get here. My favorite part of the ride is the Seven Mile Bridge, which links Knights Key with Little Duck Key. I’d take this road to Patagonia if I could.
Billboards for tours of President Truman’s house tell me I’m close. I open my coat slightly and consider ditching my gloves as the cool morning concedes to the midday sun. For the first time in the day I grow restless when a sign appears. My irrational dream, the best kind, has somehow come true. After sixteen states, fifteen days, fourteen cities, a dozen state parks, hundred degree days, biblical rains, an emotional breakdown, and 5,772 miles I am exactly where I’m supposed to be. I have made it to Key West.
The next few minutes are a haze. I hop off my bike and snap photos, texting images to every friend I can think of. “Mission Accomplished,” the message reads. Even friends in different time zones pause before racing to work, or rushing kids off to school to offer a few congratulatory words. What good is reaching any destination if it can’t be shared with the people you love?
Then, something strange happens as I return to my bike. My smile fades, the scope of what I’ve just done lost. I feel nothing. The unbridled joy that permeated my weary veins is gone the same way it was moments after reaching the top of Mount Kilimanjaro. Half an hour after making it to Africa’s tallest peak, my friend and I turned around and quietly began our descent.
For the first time in my life, the hokey hashtags, bumper stickers, and refrigerator magnets read like sage ancient scrolls. It really is about the journey. Even on the most unforgiving days, it was never lost on me the real living was in the space between two points. The arrivals into each new town were memorable, but always felt anticlimactic — like someone had let the air out of a balloon. Looking back, the excitement I felt upon each landing was not about what the city had to offer, but the realization each new place was just a stopover until I got to do it all over again.
Two days after reaching Key West, I drive forty miles north of Miami and drop my bike off at a shipping company in Pompano Beach. Dark clouds envelop the city as I pepper a contract with my initials. I hand the clipboard back to an affable man in his late fifties before leaving my bike on the loading dock. I am strangely unsentimental about seeing her go. I understand, perhaps for the first time, the root of my deepest pain is attachment — the refusal to let go of the past. Just as I can’t recreate the first time I fell in love, or moved to New York, or make my parents young again, I cannot re-enact the journey just taken. Even if the roads were the same, I would not be. And this, I think, is the only way one grows.
As I make my way to the lobby, there is a deafening crash of thunder. The rain falls in buckets as I take a seat in a colorless waiting room. Just minutes after my arrival the warehouse parking lot is nearly submerged. I scroll my phone in search of a ride, when a smile breaks the plain of my lips. I finally beat the rain.
