Travels with Harley

Harley in Fort Townsend

A few notes from our late-September shakedown cruise, a 600-mile-long counter-clockwise ring around the Olympic Peninsula of northwest Washington, beginning in Tacoma, ending at Cape Disappointment, the terminus of the Lewis & Clark Trail at the sea-mouth of the Columbia River.

All in all, a nice prologue, one that featured low-mileage days and lots of time-taking to refine packing systems and hone camp-site drills. Also for me a chance to grow more accustomed to Harley’s new forward foot controls.

In Port Townsend, I got to enjoy the hospitality of old friends — Anchorage ex-pats Bill and Mindy Dwyer — at their cheery hand-crafted home on a ridge thick with ripe berries, black-tailed deer & well-fed coyotes.

There I also got to log onto the New York Times’ “How to Start Your Own Blog” course, which culminated in the launch of Travels with Harley, this chronicle of our projected 10,000-mile trip around America. (And by the way, please feel free to offer blog-site suggestions — everything and anything here can still be revised.)

Blue skies over the days that followed led to a couple of nice hikes into Olympic National Park near Port Angeles, including a pilgrimage to the lip of Elwha Dam — site of what’s projected to be the largest dam demolition in U.S. history. The goal: to restore the Elwha’s salmon runs of old and enrich an entire ecosystem dependent on that biomass. Work at the dam had just begun a week earlier (detailed post to follow).

Then on Day Six, while camping at the very sea bluff where Lewis & Clark first spotted the Pacific Ocean, our little tent camp was hammered by a huge Pacific storm. By morning the gale had grown to 60-80-mph winds that severely tested my decamping and packing in a hurricane skills. I would end up thoroughly soaked.

Crossing the slippery four-mile-long bridge to Astoria, Ore. (with wave-spray blowing over the side) was completely out of the question on two wheels, so we retreated instead to a small seaside town, finding refuge there inside the warm glow of the Mermaid Inn (cue Chapter 1 of Moby Dick) and lasted out the storm.

With the sun shining the next day, our shake-down cruise both resumed and concluded. Arrived at our home base in Portland, Ore. with an entire bag of odds and ends I knew by then I really didn’t need for the journey. Then on Wednesday, Sept. 28, another blue-sky day, Harley and I finally embarked on our trip east across the northern half of America — feeling a lot lighter and a little smarter respectively.

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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.