In the newsroom where I used to work, an editor I greatly admired had no patience for reporters who seldom left their desks. The stories are out there, he told us. So get out there and find them.

I’m hoping that’s just what I’ll manage to do, as my motorcycle and I launch a 10-week-long road trip around America: Find stories, that is. Ideally ones that help shed a little light on what’s going to happen to our country.

Will the economy continue to sour? Will more jobs disappear? Will basic services we’ve long taken for granted fall in the rush to cut even more government programs? Will more post offices close? More roads languish in disrepair? (There, even Harley shudders at the prospect.)

Our government might change too — but for better or worse? In the national elections now only a year away, will Democrats or Republicans prevail? I’m thinking the answer to that could make all the difference.  So part of what I’m most curious to learn is which way the majority of you all might be leaning – and why.

Where exactly Harley and I will travel is open-ended. But in general terms, beginning in Portland, Ore. in late September, we plan to ride east across the northern half of the country in October, then return west across the southern half in November.

A half century ago, Nobel Prize winning author John Steinbeck launched a similar journey. It was the autumn of 1960, a presidential election year, and the country had just reached another crossroads. The candidates then were Kennedy and Nixon, and their prescriptions for the future differed sharply. Especially on the question of jobs.

So Steinbeck ordered one of the very first truck-camper vehicles ever made and set off to “rediscover America” with only a dog named Charley beside him.  His best-selling chronicle of that journey, which extended over 10,000 miles, crossing 34 states, was published two years later as Travels with Charley. It soon won critical acclaim.

I like to think, however, that the greatest reward Steinbeck received was simply the chance to travel once again and gather stories to tell, including some that really mattered.

In exchange, I think, his readers may have been less surprised than others by what happened to America next. Namely, the wild and tempestuous Sixties — with all the hopes and violence and victories and defeats that came with them. The signs were clearly visible, all along the road.