The Great Wide Open
March 2022
Alphabetic coincidence and the minutiae of an English county’s education policy in the mid-1970s may not be the obvious starting point for a four-month, 16,500 mile motorcycling odyssey around North America. But it’s where this one began. Sort of.
Twenty-seven miles south-west of London lies the municipality of Guildford. It’s still classified as a town despite the 1936 Neo-Gothic/Art Deco cathedral that towers over it from nearby Stag Hill, a cathedral being the traditional, defining distinction between a town and a city. Despite three attempts - most recently in 2022 - by local grandees to get formal recognition as a municipality to rival other recently minted metropolises of Chelmsford, Dundee, Milton Keynes and sunny Preston, it remains just a town albeit with a steep, attractive cobbled High Street that none of its former peers can boast. This aside, it’s home to a couple of dreary insurance companies and serves - as it always has done - as a quintessential commuter terminus for the nearby capital, ringed by a belt of small, bucolic villages.
In the 1970s, each of these villages had its own, distinct identity. Most had their own schools and some, their own cottage hospitals. Predictably, uneconomic publicly-funded services became sitting ducks for the grim attentions of bean counters, keen on consolidation and the accompanying savings, who presided over these rural idylls. One victim of their slide-rules were the quaintly-named ‘Junior’ schools as some taught only a handful of pupils.
Eight miles south of Guildford was Cranleigh, the largest of the surrounding villages. So the schools serving the nearby parishes of Bramley, Ewhurst, Rudgwick, Shamley Green and others were closed, under the auspices of economy, and to provide better ‘outcomes’ although they were probably just called ‘results’ then. Children would be bussed to Cranleigh, to its newly expanded ‘Middle School’, and randomly mixed into classes based on age alone. In my case, nine or ten.
TU and TY were adjacent on the register of the class I was put in, so sat next to a ‘Richard Tull’. The same Richard Tull whose Florida swimming pool I was sat by in late February 2022.
Having stayed in touch and made it to the early autumn of our years, retirement was now on the horizon for both of us. I had recently sold my business and took two weeks off. First, to peddle a rented bicycle gently around Miami Beach for a couple of days, before getting the bright yellow Brightline train up the Atlantic coast to where Richard and his wife, Paula had escaped from New York.
I played two atrocious rounds of golf and gave up for life after the second. There was no hissy fit, I just threw my golf shoes in the trash; f**ing hate the game; end. But other than that, I did very little. Having been tightened to a very specific torque and kept there for nearly twenty years, just having time in the Florida sun and surf, early dinners, good wine, good company and late rising probably did me more good than I care to admit.
During the second week, I was woken one morning by a ‘Balance Alert’ text message from Natwest: the final payment from the sale of the business had cleared. It was exactly the figure expected but still a shock to learn of it through a medium once the preserve of gormless teenagers to exchange banalities with one another.
Twenty years ago, I was a frequent visitor to both US coasts but that stopped when I founded a mainly domestic business. So in the last two decades, it’s been just two unsuccessful trips to raise finance, one successful but maddening one to the US Patent Office in Washington, a Christmas break in New York and a memorable biking tour with Swith to California that took in Los Angeles, Death Valley, Yosemite, Napa Valley, San Franciso and - of course - Route 1: the Pacific Coast Highway.
But after every one of thirty visits or so, when sipping a cool beer in the early evening while waiting for the plane home, I’d want to come back. Specifically and increasingly, I felt I was missing out and wanted to fill in the gaps between the few, big cities I had come to know well.
Although a proud European and constantly awed by what’s on the UK’s doorstep, the vitality, pace, and optimism of the USA always grab me the minute I get off the plane. And this latest trip - my first visit to Miami - was no different. Despite taste warnings from jaded travellers about it being a cultural dessert, there are no limits to the depths of my superficiality and I loved it.
From the Art Deco cityscape of South Beach, the Latin rhythms drifting out of the shops & cafes, the mid-afternoon strong craft beer at beach bars, the high-rise glitz and bling of Brickell, the urban dead-tech chic of the downtown hinterland art district… I lapped it all up. Even the hour-long wait in the bar at Joe’s Stone Crabs and parodically high bill for very simple (but very fresh) seafood didn’t dampen my ardour.
So that text message put the finishing touch to a grand ten days. That evening, after celebratory giant steaks and giant wine, we were sipping giant ‘Old Fashioneds’ as post-dinner cocktails by the pool while Richard waived around a giant cigar. And in that reflective mood of the well-fed, half-pissed tourist, I wondered aloud what an epic, once-in-a-lifetime motorcycle trip around the USA might look like.
There are so many ‘must-sees’, the itinerary virtually writes itself: Florida Keys, Grand Canyon, the Rockies, Yellowstone, Mount Rushmore, Giant Redwoods, Cape Cod, Blue Ridge Mountains, and so on. If you plug all of these and more into Google Maps, it will work out a pretty decent route, albeit that individual destinations are each about 1,000 miles apart. But after filling in the blanks with a few locations representing obscure and trainspotterish obsessions, an irregular figure-of-eight started to emerge…
Bryant Motorsports of Hobe Sound hold the Treasure Coast BMW motorcycle franchise along with agencies for Ducati and Harley-Davidson. So next morning, we trundled down US95 to pay them a visit.
“No problem, sir, we can sell you a new BMW K1600GT just like the one you have at home and we’ll buy it back from you when you’re done with it at the market price.”
This was estimated at 60% of the sticker price once he’d heard the mileage I planned to cover.
“Yes, you can order it but it must be registered to a Florida resident with a Florida address and driving licence. You’ll need to order about nine months before you want it as deliveries are slow”
My pal’s newly acquired status as a Floridian ticked the box marked ‘legal formalities’ and as we were still in the long shadow of COVID, the extended lead time was unsurprising.
“And you’ll need to pay for it when it turns up but we’ll store it for you as long as you like.”
Well, this all looked very simple, albeit at an eye-brow-raising cost. In the end, it wasn’t simple and the cost could be reduced, but I will return to this subject later.
Conchy Joe’s (pronounced Conkey) on Jenson Beach is a bar-cum-seafood restaurant with a reggae band on Sunday afternoons. The clientele largely resemble delegates to a ZZ Top Convention - the men at least — and a very friendly bunch they are too. Getting lagered up mid-afternoon on 9% IPA while shucking oysters, listening to Aswad and Bob Marley covers is the perfect way to spend the sabbath. I’m surprised there isn’t a church in Florida dedicated to this form of worship, as every other denomination seems to be catered for. I got chatting with a Harley owner at the bar and told him what I was planning.
“You’ve gotta do the Twisted Sisters” he advised, oblivious to the double-entendre - as he explained this is a celebrated group of roads in West Texas, well off the beaten track.
“What about the Cherahola Skyway and the Moonshiners?” protested his pal “They’re great also”.
“Are they close?”
“Nah, they’re in Tennesee”
Only about 1,500 miles away then, I calculated, as the scale of the planned endeavour started to come into focus…
But bit by bit, a clearer picture started to emerge and by the time I boarded the plane home a few days later, I had my outline plan: 100 nights, 87 days riding covering 16,500 miles.
Start in Florida in February when the weather is kind then head south to the quays. Back around the Gulf Coast to Texas and onto Austin to catch the tale end of the SXSW festival before New Mexico and southern Colorado.
The Utah desert and Grand Canyon would follow, before Vegas and California. I’ve ridden the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) between Los Angeles and San Francisco a few times as I have Napa Valley, so would skip this. But PCH to Seattle would be new. Likewise, nearby Vancouver Island and city, both of which I’d never heard a bad word about.
A UK-dwelling, ice-hockey aficionado and regular visitor to Canada told me about the Ice Parkway that goes from Jasper to Banff and then back to the USA so this became a ‘must-do’. And after watching the late, great Anthony Bourdain eat and booze his way around Montana, the towns of Butte and Livingston slotted neatly into place.
Those with a good mental map of the USA will know that Yellowstone is ‘relatively’ (that word again…) close and two or three days south of that is Denver. This would be an opportunity to ride some of the very best roads in the Rockies, which would likely be snowbound when I was in southern Colorado, six weeks earlier.
North of Denver lies Mount Rushmore. Then, it would be arrow-straight roads across Native American reservations in South Dakota and Minnesota before pitching up in Wisconsin and then Chicago.
Between two of the Great Lakes to Detroit and then Niagara before Vermont via the Adirondack Mountains, by which time it will be nearly summer. And so, after Maine, Cape Cod, and Martha’s Vineyard, the contrast of the Hudson Valley beckons. And then Washington DC, but with no visit to the Patent Office this time.
Time now to go West(ish) through Virginia and the Blue Ridge Mountains before Little Switzerland in North Carolina. Then Nashville, the live music capital of the US and the home of what is referred to variously as Country & Western, Alt-Country, Americana or New American music. Whatever the label, “Three Chords and The Truth” is a genre I’ve developed a guilty pleasure for over two decades of listening to Bob Harris’s Radio 2 show on a Thursday evening. After that, onto Memphis, then turn around and arrive back on the east coast in Charleston, North Carolina. Finally, down the coast to where I started via Savannah and Cape Canaveral.
So there you have it: the ultimate USA road trip distilled into 400 words or thereabouts. My target year was 2024. I would turn 60 in August 2023 and having witnessed friends over the last decade not make this milestone, it simply had to be done while still an option.
For now though; back to work.