XC 1X2

Today, Memorial Day, is surreal to see whenever I am back east. It is a reminder of a cultural divide between the west and the rest of the country. Out west, Memorial Day occurs. It's marked on the calendar. Most people know it happens on a Monday. Some people even have it off. Fewer still will make plans in advance to throw a barbecue. We have a sense that we are supposed to grill and wear American flag shorts but nobody really does. This is not the case in the South.  All through my drive today were reminders that things come to a stop for Memorial Day out here. Finding lunch on the road was difficult. I wound up at a Japanese restaurant in a small Carolina town. Read: teriyaki joint with a drive through. As I came to a rest stop in the Carolinas, I saw men getting out of their cars with fishing poles to take advantage of the bountiful lake and lax open container enforcement. At an interstate rest stop. Not a nature preserve, a rest stop. BMW has a factory on the way and I d...

My attempt to sleep in today was foiled by the sun. I guess the rays are smaller than the gaps between the blinds in this room. After I managed to admit defeat, I hopped on the bike and rode into Atlanta. Nick had recommended a donut shop so I picked up a pistachio rose donut and a mint julep donut from there. Luckily, the pouch on the back of my jacket is large enough to fit two donuts comfortably and they survived their journey. After tea and donuts, we met up with his dad. We meandered to a local brewery where we smoked a beer and waited for our booth to open up at Topgolf. For those not in the know, and I was not until today, Topgolf is essentially a driving range with a bowling alley atmosphere. As you hook and slice your way through ball after ball, waitresses bring snacks and libations to your table to keep things running smoothly. The range is set up so it can track the trajectory of the ball and where it winds up. This allows them to have a number of games for you to play. We ...

No shade to the fine city of Tullahoma, but I was glad to leave. I pointed the front of my bike south, the rest of it followed. After an early morning start I took a quick break to rest my feet in South Pittsburg Tennessee. The home of Lodge cast iron. As a proper cast iron junkie I simply had to peek in their company store and have a little look around. The most notable thing, the factory seconds. Anything that's not perfect enough for retail gets stacked in a corner and sold at a steep discount. When I found myself seriously thinking about how to strap an eleven pound cast iron wok to my bike, I decided it was time to leave. It was not until later that I realized that one of their smaller pans would make an ideal sidestand foot for soft ground. Oh well. Home of heavy bludgeons I kept on down the interstate until a critical moment in my bike's life came up. The odometer ticked over a fifth digit. Many bikes don't get that far. That was a proud moment and I'm glad to ha...

When I tell people that I'm motorcycling across the country, many of them will say something along the lines of "wow, that sounds hard." Maybe it's my distaste for sounding too cocky (even I have my limits) but I will usually answer "the bike does most of the work." Today, the work was more evenly distributed. I woke up in Nashville early with an upset stomach. Evidently the hot chicken had gotten to me. After settling myself and trying to grab a few more winks of sleep, my departure to Atlanta was further delayed by rain. Rain is the enemy of the motorcyclist. It lowers your ability to control the bike, gets you wet, and the drops can hurt at speed. Between these sentiments and my natural Californian instincts, I was forced to sleep in longer still. I finally left Nashville just before eleven in the middle of a shower, yuck. I resolved to make my first meal of the day lunch in Shelbyville, a small town in Tennessee of about twenty thousand. Home to a coke a...

My last full day in central time. Adjusting the clock on the bike is a pain in the ass. They won't let you do it while you're moving. Even a Moto Guzzi is not free of electronic nannying. I woke up in the sleepy suburb of Bartlett. Fare well to Memphis. The first place I've been to on this trip with a disregard for traffic law that can rival Los Angeles. God bless y'all. I decided to take the highways today because I had more time to do it and the check in time for my Airbnb wasn't until 4PM anyway. I caffeinated myself and steamed out, no need for breakfast. I held out for the first two hours until I got to Henderson, Tennessee. I stopped for lunch at The Chow Wagon. Real country eatin' If you squint you can see the real country prices Everything I had for lunch was either sweetened or fried and none of it was made on site. All part of the fun. I've always regarded mustard as the appropriate topping for a corn dog, images of a perfect sine wave of mustard a...

Man plans God laughs. The plan for today was that I would leave Fayetteville at around nine, get into Memphis by five, explore the city, and sleep at a reasonable hour in the nearby suburb of Bartlett. This morning it still looked like that would be the case, complete with the prediction of good weather. An easy 311 miles was in store for me. The main bridge crossing the Mississippi into Memphis has a crack in it and is closed. This has redirected traffic to the smaller surrounding bridges. I stuck to the interstate until about Little Rock. By then the traffic from the bridge closure had gotten so bad that it was going to take the same amount of time to just stick to the highways. I cursed this country's fear of lane splitting and made my way east the old-fashioned way. Not a whole lot to report today. I stopped in the town of Brinkley to rest for a while. I really did not enjoy today. Maybe it was the overbearing heat. Maybe it was the knowledge that our country's crumbling in...

Today my cousin Janie and I woke up at a reasonable hour (as late as we could bear) and plotted a course for Eureka Springs. To put it flatly, this is a strange place. A quick history... The natives discovered the mineral-rich cold springs while living in the area. After Jackson's Indian removal, they natives covered the springs up. They laid waiting for the first European settlers to unearth them and begin hawking their (alleged) healing powers. After a local judge said that the springs healed him (his eye doctor friend set up a practice in a local cave) a town grew to cater to the ailing tourists. The town was notable from its large black population from the end of slavery to the 1920s when klan activity quashed things. The town became known as somewhat forward-thinking much to the chagrin of one of its most famous residents, Gerald Smith. Smith was many things, a friend of Huey Long, a Nazi sympathizer, and great fun to be around at parties. He is locally known for constructing ...

There is a certain pleasure that comes with visiting friends or family at their hometown for the second time. The first time you see them, everyone feels compelled to fall into the tourist routine. We've all been there at breakfast where the conversation sounds like "well here you can..." or "if you guys like to...". The second time you visit someone you've already seen it all. Their list of local things to show you is exhausted, they don't feel a need to play tour guide, and you don't have to play tourist. Good morning, there's banana bread on the counter, how about we just hang out today. My younger cousin Janie hopped in her car and drove us out to the Coler preserve where we went for a walk. We talked about our futures, where we were going to live, and the grim realities of public transportation in the US. We migrated out and got lunch with my cousin in law Beth and made our way back home. I booked lodging for Memphis and Nashville while Jani...

Growing up in California, I have heard a lot of people talking about how southerners pace themselves. People use phrases like "time moves differently down there" or "things are slower in the South." Melissa helped me to get a feel for that today. Melissa is a proper daughter of the south from Mississippi who has relocated to The Okay City for work. She was staying at the same Airbnb as me. Last night she was invaluable in helping to put me in touch with the manager so I could get back in to my room after I locked myself (and my phone) out. This morning, I woke up early, incredibly early. So early that I could have gotten to Fayetteville by lunch. I was excited. I made tea, packed my bags, and prepared to load up the bike. When I got outside, Melissa was there enjoying the morning. We chatted for a while about her daughter who had come up in conversation the previous night. After picking up her two bachelor's degrees, she decided to backpack through Europe for ov...

Somehow waking up after all that absinthe was not very hard. As I left Amarillo I began to reflect on it (the city, not the booze). What is Amarillo? To an extent it seems like the peak of a Route 66 town. Everything for the traveler. Comfortable, good food, inoffensive. These are not bad things, but there is more to a city than being inoffensive. The magic thing about Amarillo is that it is bad to nobody, but it is not great for me. To each their own, we live in a big country and there is plenty of room for things I do not particularly care for. On my way out, I had breakfast at a biker bar. I thought this was a good idea because it would be easy for me to watch my bike while I ate. This is vital if, like me, you've stashed your most vital belongings in a set of soft saddlebags that don't even need to be cut open with a knife. To the thieves reading this: please just unzip the bags to get to my laptop. If you cut them open I will not have a safe place for my clean underwear. T...

Editor's note: the author was drunk on absinthe when he wrote this. Author's note: Don't listen to the editor, he's drunk

Finally, a relaxing day. This was my first day where I didn't touch the bike once. After the thrashing that was the last two days, I was happy for it. I slept for nine hours and I still felt sleepy during the day. Being a recovery day, not much went on. I grabbed breakfast for Daniel and I at a local restaurant which allowed me to consume more green hatch chilies. Or as they're called here, green. Tea and biscochitos followed. For those not in the know, a biscochito is a traditional New Mexican cookie that is best described as a very flat once-baked biscotto. Delicious. I spent most of the day on the couch learning about the history of Los Alamos, let's just say it's strange. To TL;DR it for you, there was a ranch school here where they taught the sons of the rich how to be outdoorsmen. Oppenheimer was tasked with finding a place to figure out how to build an atom bomb and he liked the way it looked here. Many of the older buildings in the center of town were built by t...

Waking up this morning was a strange experience. I closed my eyes for just a second. I cracked them back open and noticed sun coming through the shades of my room. This made me panic and woke me up before eight. Good for an early start I guess. Wolfed down the protein bar I bought in the Montclair Starbucks the day before to gain access to their bathroom, "Sir if it's locked there's probably just someone in it," and hit the road. The Airbnb I woke up in, same one I went to sleep in I was expecting to be frozen half to death in the brisk Flagstaff morning but it didn't happen. Sixty degrees and lovely. It only took about an hour before I had to stop, get gas, and pull the liners out of my gear. Every time I get gas someone stops to talk to me, this never happened in LA or Santa Barbara. In Winslow, three different people came up to talk to me about motorcycles, traveling, or what have you as I changed from cold to warm gear. There was one crazy man who told me abou...

My alarm went off at six AM. Too bad for me I had been up since five, I get excited before I travel. I was staring at the shade for a very long hour pleading for the sun to rise as slowly as possible. Unfortunately, the sun rose in an ordinary fashion and it became time to leave. I fitted my bag, straightened things out one last time, said goodbye to my parents, and I was off! It would have felt odd leaving Santa Barbara for the last time in a while if I wasn't so damn tired. LA has a funny was of saying goodbye. After a pleasant cruise down the PCH with some lovely 'May Grey' fog on the water, I found myself stuck in traffic on the 101 as it came to the 405. Not even seven thirty and already people are trapped in this nonsense. YUCK! One last opportunity to lane split before I have to salivate at gaps in traffic for two months. You may have noticed one critical step missing from this plan. Breakfast! At eight thirty I pulled in to Pasadena and met Arielle at her favorite b...

What a day. Wake up. Finish undergrad. Grab lunch with Katrina. Grab tea with Mom. Pack. Store what’s left. Dinner with Mom and Dad. Gas up the bike. Beer with the parents, Katrina, and Brandon. Write. This blurry shot was the only photo I got of my last beer in Santa Barbara, guess I'll have to reread that camera manual Every part of today was jam-packed with something. I’ve just finished seven years of undergraduate education and I don’t know how to feel about it. I’m just so busy. Maybe while I’m on the road it’ll hit me. Right now it feels like I’m moving at a thousand miles an hour planning over a thousand miles of journeying. There is so much to plan even when you don’t keep a schedule. Funny how even when you hop on a bike you still have a need for a clock. I’m keeping an eye on the weather. There’s a storm brewing over Texas (sounds cool to say) and I’m going to be riding through it on Friday or Saturday. Hopefully it doesn’t delay my getting to Fayetteville. I’m excited fo...