Across America By Motorcycle

Addendum: In England Everyone Has a Motorcycle

2010-09-16T09:17:00.000-07:00

I actually got this before the trip, but forgot about it.
Here's one of the articles mentioned by Shepherd in the book, from the archives of the LA Times. I tried to find the article from the Kansas City Star as well, but their archives aren't online, and my visit there didn't allow for a trip to the newspaper.

There also a 1919 article from Motorcycling and Bicycling Magazine about him available from Google Books, a 1922 mention in the journal Engineering and Contracting, and a handful of other things. He seems to have been a member, while he was writing Across America, of the Birmingham Natural History and Philosophical Society.
Shepherd's name is also attached to the out-of-print book "Full Story of Capt. Hinkler's Death and Return," and the L.A. Times article mentions another, previous book, "Through England By Motorbike," which I would love to get my hands on.

The Final Stretch

2010-07-01T12:38:00.000-07:00

The next morning I continued along route 40, crossing the "Y bridge" at Zanesville, and finishing Ohio. West Virginia was by in a flash, as the road crossed the other great American mountain range into Pennsylvania.
Near Hagerstown, MD, with less than 100 miles to go, my check of the chain showed that the last of my chain clips was not gone, but broken, and it didn't look like it would last. I had used the last of my wire, and when I stopped at a garage, the best they could come up with were a handful of paper clips.
I rode to Twigg Cycles in Hagerstown, and told them what was going on. They were determined to help me out, and put the bike up on a lift while I waited.
They returned shortly with a diagnosis: the master link on the chain had been a bit wider than the rest, which wouldn't have been a problem, except my rear wheel hub had enough play in it that the chain was contacting something at highway speed, resulting in the disappearances of the many clips I had gone through in the past 2,000 miles. They replaced the link, cautioned me to take care of the hub before taking any more trips, and then refused to take any money for their services.
The uneven quality of the motorcycle shops I found on my trip made me appreciate a place like Twigg, or Dirt Cheap Offroad, or Ross's Blue Star in Kansas City, or my friends back home at Modern Classics. They were not just places that sold motorcycles, but knew them inside and out, and appreciated that I was far from home and in need of their help. There were a lot of others who didn't, but there are still places and people who are willing to go out of their way to help a stranded traveler, and I am grateful for that. It's something that didn't exist for Shepherd, and without them my trip might have taken as long as his. It's something I will remember on my next trip to Ely, Nevada, where I plan to either open an independent motorcycle shop, or throw a brick through the window of a motorcycle dealership, depending on the state of my finances at the time.
But I digress.
After Hagerstown, the scenery became familiar as I neared Charm City, and the miles seemed to stretch as I missed my planned arrival time. The road became more fraught with potential disaster as I contemplated making it this far only to fail in the last few miles. A truck crowding me through a construction zone became my mortal enemy as he rode too close to my rear wheel, until the single lane turned to two, and I was able to see the fire engine behind him, and we waved mutual apologies.
Finally, I reached my traditional final stop, pulled onto the sidewalk and went inside, where my friends were waiting to buy me dinner and a National Bohemian beer.
After 21 days, across 14 states and 7,300 miles, it tasted like home.

With Apologies to Columbus, Ohio.

2010-07-01T12:06:00.000-07:00

Our disagreement probably wasn't entirely Columbus's fault. I take some of the blame. I'm sure there are some lovely parts of the city, I just didn't happen to be in any of them.
By the time I got there, the distant thunderstorm had been on top of me for a while. The streets were flooding, and visibility was down to next to nothing.
As Route 40 got to the city, the old motels and campgrounds had run out. I checked for a room at a hotel named for the road, but got a bad vibe from the place that was confirmed by a police officer at the next gas station, who told me it was a good place to buy drugs or get stabbed. Fifty dollars seemed a bit dear for either, so I kept going to a chain hotel further along.
It is tempting to say, as I did say to the hotel owner when I checked out an hour later and demanded a refund, that the reason I left Columbus in the middle of the night was because of the uncleanliness of the room, the general atmosphere of danger, or the tough-looking prostitutes and their pimp setting up shop in the room next to mine.
These things were all factual, and it is certainly possible that they would have become an issue, but really I left because I couldn't get a hamburger.
In the particular area of Columbus where I found myself that Sunday around midnight, the only places to eat were the drive-thru portions of several fast food places, which was fine, or would have been, but they steadfastly refused to sell me anything because I didn't have a car. After my third unsuccessful attempt, I decided I needed to get out of town.
The rain had stopped for the moment, but returned just as the lights of the city faded behind me. I was rocketing along I-70 in the dark, in the rain, unseen and unable to see, and even in my somewhat Columbus-addled state this course seemed suicidal. I pulled off after about 50 miles of that, got a sandwich at a truck stop and a room across the street.
After unloading my bike, I turned the heater on in my room, laid my riding gear across it, then woke up the next morning in my wet clothes.

The Old Roads

2010-07-01T10:58:00.000-07:00

I got my first motorcycle, a 1974 Honda CB 360, relatively late, at the age of 24, and like all new motorcyclists, I had the idea that going faster is a sign of a superior rider. This is partly true-- the San Franciscans who led us along Highway 1 back in California had the skill to take the curves at a pace I couldn't keep up with, but it wasn't speed that made them good, it was the smoothness with which they negotiated the road.
It is certainly possible to go flat out during the straightaways, then brake to a reasonable speed for the corners, but I believe the better choice is to pick a speed that will allow you, with minor adjustment, to run the whole thing at a consistent pace. One of my friends calls it "slowing down to go faster," and while it is a lousy strategy for racing, it is perhaps a good one for everything else.
When I woke up in Missouri I had almost 1,000 miles left to go to get to Baltimore. The engine troubles and chain-checking stops had put my arrival at home back by a day. I resolved to take I-70 the rest of the way to make up time, but before noon I was exhausted, and in danger of falling asleep. One of my only complaints about the KLR was the effect wind had on it, which is exaggerated by its height and corresponding high center of gravity. Every semi sends it into a near death wobble, and every gust of wind leans it over as I fight to keep it going straight. Between that struggle and the amount of riding I had done over the preceeding weeks, I was just about finished, right when I wanted to be home the most.
Rather than continue on 70, stopping every hundred miles or so to wake myself up, I decided to cut over to U.S. 40, the "National Road," which was once, like so many of the roads we had traveled with Shepherd, a major route or commerce and tourism.
Back in Ohio, when Rod and I were headed west, we had faced a choice between 40 and 70 at a "National Road" tourist center. I had asked the elderly clerk whether 40 would slow us down much on the way to Indianapolis, and she had said that it would, but seemed disappointed by the question. As I had passed through the secondary roads that existed where Shepherd had gone-- the Santa Fe Trail, small bits of Route 66, the Pacific Coast Highway, I had reflected on her disappointment and even began to feel that I had failed in some way when I departed from Shepherd's path to save time. Thinking that the smaller road might be less tiring, I decided to slow down for a while, and rolled into Indiana, then Ohio, slowing at each town.
Shepherd followed the old roads before most of them were paved. They had yet to pass through their boom and eventual bust. Stretches of 40 near large cities have gone to seed-- rows of strip clubs and seedy motels. Elsewhere the motels have been turned into housing, and on some stretched the travelers' amenities still exist, as in a bubble, the way they did in Colby, Kansas.
I began to recognize the old signs of life along the once-proud route 40, where towns once welcomed tourists on their way to see America. Route 70 and its ilk were anathema to the idea of travel for the sake of it. They were simply a way to get from departure to destination with a minimum of discomfort that brought with it a minimum of change-- the ground-level equivalent of air travel-- where nothing is experienced of the local character that makes the journey worthwhile.
At one point I lost route 40 in a small city, but recognized it again a few blocks away, not because of any signs, but because I knew the buildings belonged to it, almost hidden under decades of changing tenants, but still there in the architecture, in the old brick buildings and the squat side-by-side hotels and former hotels. Between towns there was nothing, but fields and farms and houses, then a changing speed limit would indicate another town, sometimes just a gas station and a restaurant. The fatigue had left me and I began to anticipate the next town on the map and wonder what it would bring, and the miles went by.
The old road took an unexpected detour as it began to get dark, through a wooded area and across a series of dams near the Miami River. I stopped at the Taylorsville Dam to take a picture.
Nearby, a young family had also stopped.
The son was pointing across the river, saying "See, it's over there!" as he led his mother and father by the hand. I asked them what they were looking for, and the mother told me he believed there was a way to walk down to the river below.
The father-- younger than I am, with a full beard more neatly trimmed than the one I had grown over the trip, asked where I was headed, and the four of us talked for a while about the country and the places we had been, then they wished me luck on my trip and I wished them luck on their quest for the river.
I sat on the edge of the dam and smoked a cigarette, watching them negotiate the steep bank on the other side, calling to each other with the boy leading the way.
Far in the distance, I could see a gathering storm, and I decided to stop when it caught up with me, but in the fading light, as I rolled through Ohio, I felt like I could ride all night. Every town and farm was beautiful in the darkness, and when the rain finally came, it was close to midnight and I was somewhere on the edge of Columbus, Ohio, just a short day's ride from home.

Thrift+Patience=Success

2010-07-01T09:48:00.000-07:00

From Colby, I had two options-- back to I-70 a few miles south, or continuing along route 24, passing through all the small towns, and their corresponding drops in speed limit. I decided to try the slower route. I could always drop back down to 70 if it looked like I wasn't going to make it through Kansas that day, which was my goal. Much as I would've like to stop again with Ross and Kelly in Kansas City, I wanted to make it farther than that.
One of the factors in the failure of my chain on Pikes Peak was my own failure to clean and lubricate it, so I was now performing that ritual every night or morning without fail. When I stopped for breakfast along route 24, I realized that I had forgotten it that morning, so I jacked the rear tire up on my makeshift stand. As I spun the wheel, I noticed that the clip holding the chain's master link together had gone missing. This was bad, and could have turned out to be catastrophic if the chain had let go somewhere in the 400 miles since I had last checked it.
I didn't have another clip, so I went to the small engine repair store next door, hoping that some lawn-mower or ATV used the same part. They were closed, so the best I could do was a piece of wire I found in the parking lot, which held up so well as I looked for a motorcycle shop that I left it on for the next 300 miles or so, when it broke. In the meantime I had found two replacement links at a shop, although I had failed in my attempts to get someone to rivet it properly.
I checked it at every stop, and often as not found that the clip was missing again, so I either replaced the link or used more of the precious bit of wire I had found, while I tried to figure out what was causing it.
Because of the uncertainty with the chain, I stuck to the smaller road. In my mind, the possibilities of chain failure ran to rear-wheel lockup and holing the engine case (perhaps because the latter was a common problem on early editions of my other bike, the Honda CB750. I am uncertain whether this is a danger with the KLR).
In case of the former, I would rather it happened on a sparsely-traveled country road than an interstate with semis bearing down on me.
I had made a joke to Rod, that the trip would've been longer without him there because I would be stopping at every "World's Largest Ball of String" in America, so when I actually came across it in Cawker City, Kansas, I had to stop and pay my respects.

The entire town of Cawker City seemed mainly devoted to the ball of twine. A banner announced the upcoming twine festival, and there was a gift shop across the street. The shop showed all the signs of being open-- a neon sign proclaimed it so, and the door was unlocked. There was no one inside, though. I left the cash for a Ball of Twine t-shirt on the counter with a note, and continued on.
I made it through Kansas and halfway across Missouri, losing and picking up new chain clips every few hundred miles, and rejoining I-70 somewhere around the border.
I stopped near Fulton, MO, mostly because of the promise of a place called "Panhead Billy's Smokehouse" and the idea that there would be campsites nearby. Outside Billy's, the parking lot was filled with chrome cruisers, and a young man was staring at my bike.
Traveling on a purposefully ugly motorcycle in a world of candy-colored dream machines elicits some odd reactions, from the guys outside the Hotel Nevada who wondered that it moved at all, to the young man in Kansas who took offense when I came out to remove my key-- he sniffed "You don't have to worry, mine's nicer anyway," then seemed to want to fight me in front of his pretty blond girlfriend, who looked somewhat embarrassed about the whole thing.
The kid outside Billy's Smokehouse, who apparently worked there, had a positive reaction: "That's great! I have a CB550 rat bike myself."
It was nice to be appreciated for a change, and I think my bike (which at this point I had taken to calling "Lizzie") liked the attention.
Billy's brisket was good, but my ideas about campgrounds turned out to be misguided, so Lizzie and I spent the night in a motel near the interstate.

All Hail Kansas

2010-06-26T08:57:00.000-07:00

After three days of rest in Colorado, Rod and I parted company. He went north and I began to head east toward home. My plan was to make it home as quickly as possible on I-70, a major highway which runs more or less straight from Denver to Baltimore, but my trip began to take a somewhat Sherpherd-ian turn at this point, beginning before I had even made it out of Colorado, in the part of that state which should rightfully belong to Kansas.
At highway speed, the bike began to die on me, as if it was running out of gas. I pulled off the highway, first at a gas station, then at one of the few places that afforded shade-- under an overpass-- where I unpacked and disassembled the motorcycle. I had settled on a handful of things to check, with the telephone assistance of my friend Mountain Eagle in Colorado, and I didn't want to do this twice, so I checked vacuum lines, gas lines, and the spark plug all in one go. Something seemed to work, and after a few hours by the side of the road I had everything back together again, and it ran fine.
When I got somewhere for lunch, I borrowed a wi-fi network and checked one of the KLR sites and found this under "known issues":
"Gas boiling in fuel line (if it's very hot out, generally over 100-105 deg F, and if side shroud vents are covered)."
Which sounds ridiculous to me, but it was around 110, and I believe my tank panniers were covering the vents before I stopped, but not when I re-packed the bike. I think that was probably what fixed the problem.
After lunch somewhere in Kansas, I took time to admire the cloud formations up ahead.

They turned out to be less attractive up close. As I continued, I was suddenly hit with a blast of wind and rain that blinded me completely and nearly forced me off the road. I made it to the shoulder, and the storm stopped as suddenly as it arrived while I put on my rain gear.
I caught it again a few miles later, and this time when it cleared, traffic had stopped for a tractor trailer that had jack-knifed and overturned across the road. I went around it, and the rain became more constant, so for the first time in my life I found an overpass to take shelter from a rain-storm.
There were already several cars there, and a few motorcyclists. As I removed my helmet I exchanged a sort of "Holy shit" glance with a nearby Harley rider, and we both laughed and shook our heads. It turned out that he was 30,000 miles into a "trip around the country," and we both wondered if we were about to witness a tornado. Then the hail started.
After about 20 minutes of cowering under an overpass, with weather threatening from the east, west and south, I decided to take a smaller road-- route 24, that headed north for a bit then paralleled I-70 for a long ways, said goodbye and headed out.
As sunset approached, the road passed through Colby, Kansas, and I found a cheap room in an old-style motor inn and a cold beer at the B Hive tavern, which I was told was owned by the mayor of Colby.
Colby looked just like the hundreds of small towns I had passed through, developed along the rail lines and later the highways. It occurred to me that the "See America" movement, of which Shepherd had unwillingly been a pioneer, had left its mark on these towns, in the small family motels and service stations that lined the roads, before they were abandoned in favor of the monstrous I-70s of the world, which promised faster travel and the homogeneous comforts of the giant strip mall that crosses America along its current major arteries. A few miles away, Holiday Inn promised travelers a night of comfort as uniform and standardized as a Budweiser and a Big Mac for $80 a night. I stayed at the Country Club Drive Motel for $30, and was glad of it.

Tornado country

2010-06-25T21:52:00.000-07:00

Apologies to my reader (Hi Mom!) for the lack of recent updates.
Wifi and cell servce were difficult to come by in the mountains of Colorado.
I'll go back and fill in the gaps later, when I get near a computer. Right now there's a lot of country between me and home, and most of it's Kansas.
Cheers,
Chris

from the B Hive bar in Colby, KS, where the farm boys are starting to get rowdy.

Motorcycle People

2010-06-22T08:32:00.000-07:00

"We are motorcycle people; we walk tall and we laugh at whatever's funny. We shit on the chests of the Weird...." - Hunter S. Thompson

One of the excuses for this trip was a gathering in Buena Vista, Colorado of a loosely affiliated group of motorcycle enthusiasts that Rod and I are both a part of. We had reserved a group campsite in the mountains, and it was a short day to get there, so we detoured through Hunter Thompson's old stomping grounds at Woody Creek, then on through Aspen and Independence Pass. After so many days of interminably long straight roads, the curves through the mountains were a good change, although the steep drop at the side of the road was slightly terrifying.

We arrived at the campsite to a warm welcome, and spent the next three days catching up with old friends and making some new ones. The second day there I rode to the top of Pikes Peak for a quick early morning jaunt, only to have my chain break on the way down, which turned into an all-day misadventure as I limped from shop to shop trying to find a replacement. Luckily, the chain didn't part completely, only broke a few rollers off, so the bike moved, but made a horrible clunking sound with every rotation of the chain, and threatened to break the sprockets if I pushed it too far. A place called "Dirt Cheap Off-Road" was out of stock on the chain I needed thanks to an ordering mistake, but located an almost-new chain on a bike the owner had cannibalized for a sprocket to go on his own bike. The mechanic there ground my old chain off and replaced it.

Although the chain would cause further problems later in the trip, for now I was safe to rocket around the mountains of Colorado with my friends, and spend the nights drinking beer and telling stories by the fire.

Loneliest Road, Part II

2010-06-21T07:54:00.000-07:00

I reached the Hotel Nevada in Ely around nightfall, and Rod had already gotten a room. Ely is a pit stop for motorcyclists traveling across the country, and I had the satisfaction of parking my ratty KLR among the chrome Harleys in front of the hotel, and later, sitting outside smoking, of hearing one of my fellow travelers, pointing to my bike, say to his companion "How would you like to travel a long way on that?"
I told them you got used to it.
After talking to a few of the motorcyclists there (including a couple from Delaware who were running the length of Route 50 from Ocean City to Sacramento) and some beers at the hotel bar listening to the stories of a down-on-his-luck miner, I went to bed secure in the knowledge that one of the two motorcycle shops that opened at 8 a.m. would have the things I needed to fix my flat tire. Sadly, this was not to be.

The first, a Yahama dealership, didn't open, although it showed all the signs of being a going concern. I asked around and discovered that they hadn't opened their doors in weeks.
No problem, I went to the Kawasaki dealership other end of town, where they actually had new models of my bike in the window, only to be told that they didn't do tires, and didn't carry the things I needed to do it myself. For those who aren't familiar with the way motorcycle dealerships work, this is completely absurd.

It took several minutes of staring in disbelief before I was able to ask the "mechanic" where it could be accomplished. He suggested the auto parts store, where they did have a patch kit and some tire irons, but no new tubes. I again cursed the fact that I hadn't brought my tire tools. I had had a great deal of trouble getting the rear tire on before I left, and resolved that it would be better in the future to pay someone with a tire-changing machine to do it for me. I didn't know then that we would be taking "America's Loneliest Road."
I called a friend who is more active than I on the various motorcycle-touring message boards on the internet. He looked at Ely on the map, said "Jesus Christ" and then posted a request for help on advrider.com. As I write this, many days later, the request has received no response.
As I made my travels to the dealerships and auto stores of Ely, it began to dawn on me that the tire was holding air-- the tire slime I had put in the night before seemed to be doing its job. Rather than pull the tube and patch it, risking another hole as I muscled the tire back onto the rim, I decided to leave it alone, and try to make it to the next town, which, upon inquiry, turned out to be Delta, Utah, some 150 miles east. I broke every warning on the Tire Slime bottle, and got there before the shop closed, with Rod riding behind me and watching the tire for signs of losing air (or exploding).

At the shop in Delta, the service manager diagnosed the problem with the tire-- I had damaged the bead putting it on, exposing a bit of the metal belt that ran through the rubber. Over some 4,500 miles, it had rubbed a hole in the inner tube, causing the mystery flat. He advised me to get another tire, although they didn't have one in stock, and put a piece of duct tape over the damaged area. I figured if it had lasted this long without the duct tape, it should be fine for the rest of the trip, and ignored his advice.
The long straightaways of the loneliest road gradually gave way to the alien rock formations of Utah, and we camped that night in Green River, near the Colorado border.

Loneliest Road

2010-06-20T20:57:00.000-07:00

the stretch of route 50 that runs through Nevada is known as the loneliest road in America, and it seems like a misnomer while you're riding it-- there's plenty of traffic, and it's a breathtaking piece of the country. The name fits, however, when you've got a leaky rear tire and you're 20 miles out of Ely, Nevada, and everyone keeps passing you by.
Rod went ahead to Ely to check for motorcycle stores who mIght have the right size inner tube, although they were closed on a Sunday night. For some reason I decided not to bring my tire-changing equipment.
I asked myself what Shepherd would have done, and the answer seems obvious. He'd fill the tire with twigs and scrub brush, eat a rattlesnake for dinner, and sleep by the railroad bridge.
I got the tire to hold a little air, then limped it into Ely on the sand next to the road.

Mad Motor-cyclists

2010-06-20T20:51:00.000-07:00

"I have often thought there must be a guardian angel watching over mad motor-cyclists." -- C. K. Shepherd

Shepherd planned to return to New York with Lizzie, up through Yosemite and East across Canada, but his never-ending mechanical difficulties forced him to abandon the return trip.
He sold Lizzie in San Francisco.
For our part, we made it up the Pacific Coast Highway and spent the night in a San Francisco Hotel. The next morning, a friend took us on a spirited ride on Highway 1 north of the city.
We said goodbye to Shepherd and Lizzie, and I can honestly say I miss having them along. Cyril was an excellent guide. Right now we're headed back east, on "the loneliest road in America."

"Thus ends my tale of woe. It is a strange thing, but nevertheless true, that now I have done with it and written about it and done with writing about it, I still think what a glorious trip it was and what a perfect ass I was to do it, and what a still greater ass I was to say anything about it!"
--C. K. Shepherd

It was a motor-cycle!

2010-06-18T22:31:00.000-07:00

"I saw something else on the horizon too. It started as a little black speck on the road, seeming to swerve now and then from one side to another. It emitted a strange noise that at first was scarcely to be heard, but increased until it reverberated indefinitely from the bare angular mountain ranges.
It was a motor-cycle!"
- C.K. Shepherd

We rode a short ways from Barstow to the Calico Ghost Town, a reconstructed mining town. There we were met by our friend Greg, who took us on a geologic tour on the way to his house. We stopped by the side of the highway to see the San Andreas fault, and pulled off to walk around some rock formations that have been used as a backdrop for old westerns.
Greg introduced us to the California phenomenon of lane-splitting, wherein one actually drives a motorcycle between the rows of traffic. California is the only state that allows it, as far as I know, and the cars actually get out of the way to allow us through.
After a comfortable night at Greg's house, we went to the Malcolm Smith's motorcycle shop, and Long Beach BMW, where we met another friend, also named Greg. After lunch the two Gregs lead us up to Signal Hill for a view of the city, then we got underway for a late start up the Pacific Coast Highway towards San Francisco.

"Never at any time have I seen public highways so completely covered with motor cars." --C.K. Shepherd

The sun is vertically above

2010-06-15T22:39:00.000-07:00

"It is just mid-day. The sun is vertically above. It beats down on my shoulders and dries up the skin of my hands. My hair, over which I had never worn a hat since I left New York, is bleached to a light yellow colour and stands erect, stiff and brittle. The alkali sand and dust have absorbed all the moisture from my fingers and gradually cracks and cuts are developing in my finger tips and at the joints. I find it easier to grasp the handle bars with the palms of my hands alone. My clothes are saturated with dust and my trench boots are cut and scratched, with the seams broken away ; the right sole has pulled away and threatens to come off altogether unless carefully used. I feel that the sooner I get out of the Mohave Desert the better it will be for me."
-C.K. Shepherd

We've made a habit on this trip of ignoring the well-intentioned advice of strangers.
At a diner named for Route 66, a man wanted to send us a different route than the one we were taking which would have allowed us to avoid the wind. I asked if it would be worse wind than Kansas, then had trouble understanding his response, which was to shake his head and mutter "Oh my God," before leaving to return to his table. Rod thought he meant the wind wasn't as bad, so we went on.
Some where in Arizona, tantalizingly close to the California border, we spoke to a gas station manager and motorcycle rider who cautioned us that we would never make it to Barstow in the mid-afternoon heat. We were wearing the wrong kind of clothes, he said, and seemed to think we would end up a pile of bleached bones by the side of the road. We went on, and made it to Barstow just fine, where we got a hotel room for the first time in more than a week.

I left the Grand Canyon with regret.

2010-06-15T12:52:00.000-07:00

Never had I been in such wild and barren country. It was quite beyond hope of cultivation in most places, being strewn with rough stones, rocks, and boulders, and only sparsely covered with meagre-looking grass which, in its efforts to keep alive at all, had to arrange itself in small tufts dotted here and there in order to derive the maximum nutriment from the scanty, unfruitful soil.
- C.K. Shepherd

No updates for a while, partly due to a lack of wifi, partly some phone charging issues, but mostly I just had no earthly idea how to describe the trip from Dodge City, into Colorado, to Las Vegas, NM and after a night there, on to the Grand Canyon where we spent last night. I still don't. The landscape continues to become more beautiful, culminating in the canyon, which no matter how many pictures, movies or accounts you have seen or read, is breathtaking.
We camped at Desert View on the south rim of the canyon, and took time to see everything we could without hiking into the canyon, which neither of us prepared for, and both of us regretted. Shepherd spent quite a bit of time here, and it is easy to see why.
As we left, Rod took the normal road out and I detoured onto Bright Angel Wash, a dirt road which runs through the woods by a railroad track.

I left the Grand Canyon with regret. Everything was so wonderful and I just seemed to have begun to make friends with it. At first it all seemed so great, so awful, so grotesque as to give one the impression of anything but friendliness. I had begun to overcome that feeling, as everyone does in time. The truth is that it takes a long acquaintanceship with the giant wonders of the world to form anything approaching a true idea of them."
- C.K. Shepherd

Architects and laymen

2010-06-14T22:44:00.000-07:00

"This is the only type of architecture that can be referred to as truly "American," saving perhaps the unenvied skyscraper of the East. This latter, however, belongs to no school and knows no creed; it is not indigenous to the soil or produced by environment, native material, or climate. Instead, it defiles the heavens and cuts the landscape into futuristic nightmares of edge and angle.
By far the choicest flower of this renaissance style is the New Art Museum at Santa Fe. Recently completed, it is admired by all, architects and laymen alike.
-C.K. Shepherd

If one looks far and long enough

2010-06-13T08:48:00.000-07:00

At any point, if one looks far and long enough, one can find the original tracks that centuries ago were formed by the old prairie-schooners as they journeyed westward across the plains to Santa Fe.
--C.K. Shepherd

This is no longer true, although there are several places in Kansas where they claim the Santa Fe Trail can still be seen. We tried each time, and failed to see them. This, for instance, is claimed to be a part of the trail, at least it seemed to be where the sign was pointing.

Endless weary prairie.

2010-06-11T20:27:00.000-07:00

The Santa Fe Trail is the oldest and most interesting highway in America. Rather should it be said that the pioneers over what later became known as the Santa Fe Trail were the first to leave permanent marks on routes that have since become "highways" between the Central-Western and the Far-Western States. In the days of the ox team and prairie-schooner, the plains and mountains were crossed by trails, usually along the lines of least resistance, keeping as close as possible to bases of supplies and water. Travel over the Santa Fe Trail began about 1822, starting from Little Rock, Arkansas (pronounced Arkansaw), and following the Arkansas River west. A few years later, this trail was superseded by a more permanent one going west from Kansas City (then called Westport) to "Great Bend," a base situated, as its name implies, on a great bend of the Arkansas River, and thence to Santa Fe by a choice of two routes. An important trade with the Spanish population of the south-west was early developed, reaching its zenith in the '60s. This route, the one which I followed, has now been marked a considerable part of the way by stone monuments erected by the " Daughters of the American Revolution " and constituted the chief inroad from the East to the Far West.
--C.K. Shepherd

The Santa Fe Trail is well marked along highway 56, and we followed it from Missouri through Kansas.
There are several places to pull off and see the ruts left by the thousands of wagons headed west, and we did pull off, but it must take a trained eye to distinguish the trail.
Kansas is pretty enough, but there is an awful lot of it.
The winds were unrelenting. The first day they came from the south, hot and dry and threatening to blow us off the road. We spent the night in Dodge City, but the closest thing to a saloon was the Appleby's, which was a disapointment. The next day the wind came on like a switch had been thrown, this time from the north, dropping the temperature considerably.
As we crossed the Colorado border, it stopped. The "welcome to colorful Colorado" sign seemed like a bit of an unfair dig at their drab neighbors, but it proved accurate.
Around La Junta, we started heading south for New Mexico.

"Before me lie 500 miles of perfectly flat and uninteresting country before I leave the State of Kansas and enter Colorado. Then follow another 200 equally flat, equally drear, to be crossed before the Rockies loom into sight. Seven hundred miles of endless weary prairie, stretching always, everywhere, as far as the eye can see, with never a hill nor a dale nor hardly a tree in sight!—Nothing but boundless, illimitable corn, wheat and prairie."
-- C.K. Shepherd

Hannibal to Kansas City

2010-06-11T05:21:00.000-07:00

JUDGE. - " And what has this gentleman been doing?"

SPEED COP (producing notebook and reading therefrom). - "Driving a motor-cycle in excess of the legal speed limit, namely at forty-five miles at hour."
-C.K. Shepherd (relating an experience in Hagerstown, MD)

Somewhere in Missouri we were executing what I thought were safe, even skillful, passes on a two lane stretch of highway, when it occurred to me that the drivers in the state weren't very good at being passed, speeding up right at the wrong time, that sort of thing.
Apparently the feeling was mutual, as someone called the law to report two motorcyclists executing "bad passes." This is patently false, as I have never made a bad pass at anyone, but it was enough to bring a state trooper, who wrote us up almost apologetically for exceeding the speed limit (for the record, we were doing 60 at the start of a 50 mile per hour construction zone). She was a rider herself, and wished us luck on our trip. I promised her we'd stay under the limit, and we continued on, chastened, to Kansas City, with every truck and RV passing us by. It is a very low sort of person who would report something like this to the law, and in my opinion they probably hate us for our freedom. Like terrorists.
Regardless, we made it to Kansas City, were we met up with my friend Ross, motorcycle racer, master mechanic, expert machinist, and co-owner of Blue Star Motorcycle Co., the finest independent motorcycle shop in the mid-west.
Ross and his wife Kelly took us in for the night and fed us, and we all passed the evening on their front porch talking and drinking beer with their friends. They more than made up for Missouri's earlier unkindness.

Now on to Kansas, and possibly the Garden of Eden.

The Hanniballians, if such they are called

2010-06-10T08:27:00.001-07:00

Hannibal bristles with statues, tablets, posters, placards, and picture-postcards. They all have the same theme for a
subject—" Mark Twain ." The Hanniballians, if such they are called, are just as bad. I believe it is not possible for a stranger to be in Hannibal for five minutes without being told that Mark Twain was born there. If the " clerk" at the refreshment bar doesn't tell you, the man at the post office does. If the young " fellar " who pumps a couple of gallons of " gas " into your tank forgets to tell you, the old girl at the fruit-shop doesn't. They must have a secret code in Hannibal whereby they arrange these things. And I will guarantee there aren't two out of every dozen picture-postcards on sale in Hannibal that don't show Mark Twain's birthplace or his cave or his statue or his ass or his ox or something that he either did or did not " immortalize."
--C.K. Shepherd

I am sad to report that today Mark Twain has been largely forgotten in Hannibal.
We pondered this turn of fate at the Mark Twain Dinette, after a night spent at Mark Twain Caves Campground near Sawyer's Creek. We took a leisurely stroll past the Mark Twain Boyhood Home, and looked for signs of the author at the Mark Twain Museum and the New Mark Twain Museum (which is nearer the Mark Twain Hotel), all to no avail. I even asked the woman at the Hannibal Visitor Center if there was any sign here that the great man had ever existed, but she just laughed nervously.
The only real mention of him that I could find were several signs posted near the boyhood home, warning tourists that the museum employed no Mark Twain impersonators, but this is a common enough scam in these small mid-western towns, and it was likely just a coincidence.
We had to content ourselves with looking out at the Mississippi River, as Twain himself might have done from time to time, perhaps while he sat on the bench in the Mark Twain Park near the Mark Twain riverboat, under a statue of some riverboat pilot or other.

But I digress...

2010-06-09T22:07:00.000-07:00

A small note that has nothing to do with CKS, although it may be the real reason he traveled solo.
As much as I enjoy having Rod along for the trip, there is a small annoyance whenever we travel together:
When you are traveling on a heavily laden motorcycle, people tend to ask where you are headed, and where you have been. Starting at Tim Hortons in Dayton, while I was typing the last post, and throughout the next few weeks, I will have the following conversation approximately 18 million times:

Well-meaning stranger: Where you coming from?
Me: Baltimore
WMS: That's a long way! Where YOU coming from?
Rod: Toronto.
WMS: HOLY CRAP!!!!! You rode all the way here from Toronto?!?!?!??!!1!!!

Toronto may be in another country, but it is not, in fact, on the moon.
It is 440 miles from Toronto to Dayton, where we met up.If you take the quick route, which I didn't, it's 491 miles from Baltimore to Dayton. So wherever we travel from here on out, I have gone at least 51 miles farther, and am, thus, 51 miles better than Rod.
It's not the biggest deal in the world, but I am a very petty person.
A very petty person who has traveled farther than Rod.

The right kind of air

2010-06-09T07:15:00.001-07:00

"I was pleased with Dayton. As I left it behind me, I wished it prosperity. It seemed to have the right kind of air about it....I wouldn't even have killed a mosquito in Dayton !" -CKS

Shepherd's wishes of prosperity seem to have taken root, if strip malls can be considered a sign of success.
A quick update from Tim Horton's free wifi. Yesterday I joined Shepherd in Hagerstown and followed route 40 up through Cumberland, to Uniontown and Washington, Pa.
There are two kinds of long motorcycle trip: the carefree pleasure jaunt, and the death slog to get somewhere specific. Yesterday was a mix of the two, as I had to meet my friend Rod in Dayton. He was the first person I told about the trip, and it took about five minutes to get an email back saying he was coming. We picked Dayton as a meeting place,
and Rod came down from Toronto.
I had an imaginary schedule for the first few days, but i've abandoned it, and I'm much happier about that.
From here, Shepherd went to Cincinatti, then back up to Indianapolis.
We'll skip that, head on to Indianapolis, then pick up his trail on the other side. Looks like route 36 from there through Missouri, which I believe was the route of the Pike's Peak Ocean to Ocean Highway.

" Increased attention is this year being focussed on the ' See America' idea, and motorists planning a trans-continental trip will naturally select the route of greatest scenic and historic interest. That is why the discriminating tourist will travel over the Pike's Peak Ocean-to-Ocean Highway, the improved central route from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast."

-- Tourism literature quoted by C.K. Shepherd

"Never was such a grossly misleading impression of ease, comfort, and luxury perpetrated upon an unsuspecting Englishman ! It was well said that the pen is mightier than the sword. If ever again I find myself so utterly demented as to motor-cycle across the United States before proper roads have been constructed, may Heaven preserve me from 'The Appian Way of America' !"

-- C.K Shepherd

It's raining in Dayton.

These are the days that must happen to you

2010-06-08T04:59:00.000-07:00

Time to go.

Encumbrances

2010-06-01T05:09:00.000-07:00

"For the benefit of brother motor-cyclists who may be interested in such details I may add that I dispensed entirely with the use of goggles from beginning to end, and except at stops in large towns on the way I wore no hat. I think that when the motor-cyclist gets accustomed to doing without these encumbrances he will find the joys of motor-cycling considerably enhanced."
-C.K. Shepherd

This is a point on which I disagree with Cyril completely.

It may be a measure of the times, higher highway speeds, or increased traffic, or the evolution of safety gear, but I don't ride without a full-face helmet, gloves, jacket, riding pants, and heavy boots, even in the heat of the summer. There is still a strain of motorcyclist that wants to lobby against helmet laws as an an unnecessary government intrusion, but the Hurt Report, among other things, have long convinced me that the best way to reduce my own risk is to wear proper gear. Also, it is always good policy to dress like an astronaut, because everyone likes astronauts, or at least respects them.

As far as stuff I am taking, I'm afraid I have Shepherd beat there, too. I installed a cell phone charger the other day, so I can hopefully keep up this blog from the road. I've become pathetically dependent on an Iphone a friend gave me, so my repair manuals, campsite-finding apps and video games are all on there as well, along with Shepherd's book.

For general motorcycle-camping stuff, I've got my usual tent and sleeping bag arrangement, clothes, tools, etc., etc., etc., all packed into saddle bags, a tank bag, top case, and an extra dry bag on the passenger seat. I've added a couple of things this trip-- a camp stove that runs on gasoline, coffee-making stuff, a hammock (I want to see how practical it is to sleep in one before I buy one of those fancy hammock tents).

I'm entering into the phase of trip planning where I stay up late and figure out how everything I want to bring will fit onto the bike, and the best configuration of weight and accessibility. This is also the phase when my wife makes fun of me, and wonders why there's motorcycle gear all over the living room floor. The whole mess would probably all fit into one of those very large backpacks that hikers use, but compared to what Shepherd had with him it seems extravagant.

Then again, maybe not. Shepherd had two bags, one of which he shipped from place to place ahead of him, and the other, a dressing case, was strapped to the rack of his bike.

"That dressing-case must have weighed fifty or sixty pounds, and with the blanket around it looked an alarming size when in situ. There was no hope for it. I'm that kind of individual who always likes plenty of silk shirts and pyjamas and things, so it didn't occasion me the slightest worry if the people did stare wildly at me as I passed through their towns and villages.
And they sure did!"
-CKS

An aggravated series of dust-heaps, mud-pools and cow-paths.

2010-05-28T18:54:00.000-07:00

"The reader may think that I am dwelling unduly on the subject of roads, but I do so at this juncture because it was a subject which now became of increasing magnitude. Practically the last sign of paved road of any kind between this point and the Pacific Coast (some 2,500 miles away) would be encountered at Indianapolis, and from there onwards were universally the execrable "dirt" roads that so seriously threaten not only the comfort but the safety of motor-cycling. I was not even disappointed at the outlook, because I came to America without even expecting any form of trail or route across its entirety to be at my disposal. But I feel the natural resentment of the Englishman when I am led to believe that there is a luxurious "highway" ahead, only to find an aggravated series of dust-heaps, mud-pools, and cow-paths!"
-C.K. Shepherd

Shepherd traveled over roads that had names-- the Pike's Peak Ocean to Ocean Highway, the National Old Trails Road (pictured in the map at the top of the page), the Santa Fe Trail-- all before the route numbering system began.

In some cases he mentions specific roads, but more useful is his habit of listing just about every city, town and burg he passes through, even if only to wonder that so small a place shows up on his map at all.

The cities are more useful in figuring out where he went because the roads themselves were moved, in some cases several times over the years before disappearing almost entirely under newly constructed roads. Many of Shepherd's "highways" were the trails used by settlers during the westward expansion, and had seemingly not been much improved as he struggled to find his way between ruts in the mud left by cars and wagons. Some followed next to the railways, to be near a source of supplies. In some cases, he couldn't figure out where the road was even supposed to be.

The map above this post, (click here for a larger image) from the excellent American Roads site, of the National Old Trails Highway follows Shepherd's path pretty closely, and illustrates the difficulty of figuring out where it was-- maps of the US from the teens and twenties just don't seem to have a lot of detail. A lot of them are more like the old AAA triptiks than actual maps.

I'm still researching the roads, and wishing I had started this a few months ago, but it looks like Route 40 follows pretty much the same path as the National Old Trails Road (with a few detours), more or less through Kansas and just into Colorado, where Shepherd hangs a left to head down the Santa Fe Trail. I should say right up front that I'm not planning on visiting New York or Washington, DC on this trip, partly because I go to both of them fairly often, and partly because, let's face it, I've got a long trip ahead of me, I don't need to be adding anything for historical accuracy. I'll probably give Cincinnati (where Shepherd detours to pick up money from the post office) a miss as well.

So anyway, looks like I'll pick up his trail in Hagerstown, head west to La Junta, CO; then South to Albuquerque, NM; west again to Los Angeles, and up the California coast to San Franscisco.

When you put it that way, it sounds pretty straightforward.

Edit: Something like this, as far as I can tell.

View Larger Map

Such was this machine

2010-05-27T05:46:00.000-07:00

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever, and to those who know the call of the open road and who love to feel the rush of the wind and the glamor of speed, such was this machine." -- C.K. Shepherd

Shepherd made his trip on a brand new Henderson four-cylinder motorcycle. Wikipedia tells me that Henderson made bikes from 1911 to 1931, and they were the largest and fastest motorcycles of their time. He never specifies, but from the pictures, Shepherd's bike, which he comes to call "Lizzie," was likely a Henderson 1918 Model H, like this one:

Much as I'd like so say that I picked up a 1918 Henderson for the trip, it wasn't in the budget, so I'll be riding my 2007 KLR 650, a single-cylinder dual sport, tastefully appointed in flat black paint and reflective caution tape. It's not as pretty as the Henderson, but it probably would have made Shepherd's off-road travels a little easier if he had had one. With about a week and a half to go before liftoff, I need to take care of some things.

New tires, new brake pads, maybe a valve adjustment to keep ahead of the scheduled maintenance. Shepherd says "there is nothing at all interesting in the narrative of repairing a puncture," so I'll spare you the tire changing story, except to say he's probably right.

"I arrived in San Francisco with the same tyres I had when I started, and they were still good for several hundreds of miles more."-- C.K. Shepherd.

Here's hoping.

Preface

2010-05-26T08:48:00.000-07:00

"So that was how it happened."-- C.K. Shepherd

In 1918, shortly after the end of World War I, an officer of the Royal Air Force decided that he had nothing better to do than go and see America. He accomplished this the following year by riding his motorcycle on a meandering three month trip beginning in New York City and ending in San Francisco, and he wrote a book about it, called simply "Across America By Motorcycle."

His name was Cyril K. Shepherd, and here is how he described the trip later:

The whole trip, which covered just fifty miles short of 5,000, was undertaken quite alone, and although spread over about three months, constituted a day or two short of a month of actual riding....
The total number of replacements to the engine alone comprised the following: Five new cylinders; three pistons; five gudgeon pins; three complete sets of bearings; two connecting rods, and eleven sparking plugs.
The machine was entirely overhauled on four occasions between the Atlantic and the Pacific, and on three of these by recognized agents of the manufacturers. The engine cut-out switch was the only part of the machine that did not break, come loose, or go wrong sooner or later. I was thrown off 142 times, and after that I stopped counting! Apart from that I had no trouble.

I came across Shepherd's book at the Internet Archive a few years ago, where it had fallen into the public domain and been uploaded by a library in Berkeley, California. There aren't many books of motorcycle travel I would consider "great," but Across America is one of my favorites, partly for the historical window it opens to a different age of travel, but mostly for Shepherd's narration.

Some ideas hit you out of the blue and suddenly the path ahead is clear, and it doesn't seem to make a difference whether the ideas are particularly good ones. I'm a freelance writer, living in Baltimore, and I've been planning a cross-country motorcycle trip for some time. By "planning" I mean that I knew I would start in Baltimore, go to the other side of the country, and then come back. So there were several thousands of miles in between that I had not yet accounted for.

Then the other day I realized what I needed to do. I had to follow in the tire tracks of an (admittedly rather obscure) English motorcyclist and author, and take the route that he had taken some 90 years before, to see how things had changed.

I'm not planning on exactly re-enacting his trip. I don't have three months free, most of the roads he used are long gone (more on that later) and I don't think I can pull off a mustache. I'll do my best, though, to see some of the things he saw, and run a course as close to his as time and circumstance allow. This will be the record of that trip, updated as often as I can.

So that's how it happened.