I was overwrought with this sense of being lost in my own city, in my own routine, burying my thoughts in “Jupiter’s Travels”, the Bible of motorcycle tour books, and wishing I could be that. So with pen to paper, I started mapping a route on a hand drawn map of the US of where I would wander on my own two wheels for months at a time to places where I didn’t know a soul, on a motorcycle I had had for a couple of months, and a license I only had a few weeks more. So I settled on mid-April to run from the rains and chase the sun.
My route would take me down the West Coast, stopping when I needed to or in the odd city I had a friend, then taking a sharp turn east, aiming towards Mojave and the Grand Canyon. Through endless desert, across helpful strangers, and finally estranged family I’d gone a decade without seeing: an uncle, a brother, a grandmother, and a nephew I had never met. I would end up on the couches of slam poets, Vietnam vets, fellow motorcycle vagabonds, pitching tents off of desert highways, and in strangers’ backyards.
There is something simultaneously visceral and intimate about experiencing the world you see every day, on a motorcycle. You become an active participant in the places you travel. You are vulnerable and exposed to the whims of nature. A landslide in California necessitates a new route south, wind and sand storms in West Texas with 55 mph gusts drop visibility near to ten feet, a forest fire on the Outer Banks in North Carolina damn near traps you, and you are chased by thunder storms all the way from New York City back to the Emerald City. Never before had I felt so alive or so tested and tried. No matter what, I would take a day dodging the apples from a jack knifed semi in a West Texas windstorm, to the doldrums of wondering what I could be doing over a cup of coffee waiting for my shift to start.
[/col_5] [col_5]So many people were excited over the idea of my trip and I hadn’t even done anything yet. I realized it’s because they all wanted to do the same thing: unplug from the everyday and reconnect with something natural, something that breaks them out of the mold. The reality is, not very many people think they can, and even fewer convince themselves otherwise. Pulling the trigger and leaving your debt, your job, and all the comforts of the familiar is the hardest part.
As hard as my nearly 10,000 miles and 3 months solo around the country were, the rewards were immeasurable; waking up in a tent on the California coast to the sound of waves and the smell of saltwater, going to sleep looking at a completely different horizon as you watch the colors of the sun dance across the sky in shades you had only seen in National Geographic before. I planned on chasing that perfect day, that perfect trip, that perfect experience, and all of the sudden I was in it, pitching a tent in the Mojave surrounded by what I dreamed up in my head. All those miles ago in a coffee shop in a city that felt like it was about to crush me with all its weight.
Even the worse parts made for some of the best adventures. It wouldn’t be a true adventure if everything went off without a hitch. When I returned, I had more to say about the first time I had ever seen the Grand Canyon. I remembered the night I spent ill equipped camped out in the high desert freezing my ass off and waking up and having to chip the ice off my tent to open the zipper. Or the time I got so sick I spent the day in a hole-in-the-wall diner sipping the motor oil they called coffee, only to get kicked out at closing to break my fever in my tent in the woods, having hallucinations of bears clawing at my tent (come to think of it, the bears might have actually happened). Having to buy a length of chain at a bodega in Bed-Stuy in Brooklyn and padlocking my motorcycle to an apartment because 30 minutes ago a crowd of people drinking on a porch told me, “You’ll be lucky if that shiny red motorcycle is still there in the morning,” then coming home from a speakyeasy at 5:30 AM and praising the Gods it’s still there. Then there’s the time I had to pry my frozen hands off of my handlebars in the freezing rain and put them on the side of the engine to warm up in the middle of Theodore Roosevelt National Park.
I still have urges to wander off into the distance and torture myself with a challenge because going on my trip didn’t cure any of my wanderlust, it cultivated it. It proved that I could do it and that the risk was worth it. I want to see the world, all of it, even if it’s just one mile at a time. What replaced the complacency and coffee shop procrastination was to know that I could, and succeed at it one mile at a time.
[/col_5] [/row]Words and Images by: Zach Takasawa