TRAPPED

A few months ago, feeling trapped by COVID-19 like so many others, and after reading something regarding European’s surprise at how little Americans travel their own country, I decided to take a motorcycle trip to see all of the states to which I had not yet been.  A friend of mine travels everywhere and I love hearing about it, so I thought: why not me on a motorcycle?  Imagine, driving down the open highway, no traffic, gorgeous sunshine, warm temps, seeing what the country had to offer.  Everywhere would be beautiful, particularly if I chose my roads carefully.  How awesome was this going to be?!  Once the idea took hold in my brain, it 100% owned me.  I could picture the ride in my head, and it was amazing with everything going flawlessly: no idiot drivers, smooth road conditions, no construction anywhere, no animals appearing to try to commit suicide, not a single bump in my road.    Given how enamored I was with the thought of just riding my motorcycle, I didn’t think about it, but if I had, I would have imagined amazing, inexpensive hotels to stay in every night with wonderful vegan meals available everywhere I went.  This was going to be marvelous!  I would like to say I started thinking about everything involved, but like many of the impulsive decisions I make, I could not.  I could truly only think about the joy of the open road, which roads those would be, and how my motorcycle and I would hold up.

Let me start by saying, I am not young.  I wouldn’t put myself in the old category yet (although my daughter would!), but my twenties – when decisions like this are excusably made – are so far behind me, I can hardly remember them, and I’m not even close to retirement, when trips like this are generally feasible.  Along with not being young, I have some trouble with my joints which can, at times, make using the clutch on my motorcycle very difficult.  This is especially true in traffic.  Holding the gas open can also be troublesome on long drives.  And this would be a LONG drive.  I might need to make some adjustments to my riding style, or my ride.  I could look into that later.  Why spoil the dream, right?

My first decision after looking at a US map was: no interstates!  What would I see from the interstate?  Endless fast food and hotel chains, gas stations and rest stops?  I wouldn’t really SEE the states, and that’s what I wanted.  While looking at the map, thinking of all roads I could travel, I got even more excited.  The logistics of getting to Arkansas and Maine and North Dakota without using interstates did not occur to me then.  I only thought that when I was done, I’d be able to say I’d been to every state in the country, except Alaska (and that could be another trip) and that every single thing I saw would be thrilling. 

While I don’t usually take more than a week at a time of vacation (which usually consists of spending a week in Sisters, Oregon going to the Quilter’s Affair for quilting classes and the show; or going to the California State Fair; the Black Sheep Gathering; or the Oregon Flock and Fiber to show our Angora goats), this was a whole different animal.  No exact destination – only a loose timeline, and a whole lot to think about.

Eventually I realized that even if I took only interstates, it would take me more than a week, and maybe more than two, to visit all of these states.  I needed to plan this thing out.  As much as I initially thought I could just throw some underwear and socks in a bag and hit the road in all its awesomeness, just deciding how much time I would need to take off work entailed some thoughtful planning.  I needed to get to some serious thinking done.  I needed to know how long it would take me to do this epic drive.

Looking at the map I thought, “Planning this trip is going to be fun!”  I have already visited many states, but there are 17 that I’ve yet to see. Thirty-four percent of our states are as yet, unseen by me.  That did seem like a lot, and it excited me further to think that I’d be fixing that with this trip.  Because Alaska would be a separate trip, I would need to visit 16 states.  These states are, rather inconveniently, (or maybe conveniently) not lined up nicely.  They are Arkansas, Delaware, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, New Jersey, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont and West Virginia. 

I started researching the best motorcycle roads in each state.  It turns out, there are websites for these things!  I got the most use out of Best Biking Roads.  This site was easy – just enter the state, pull up the map and see what coincides with where you’re going.  I also read blogs, forums, looked at other sites, and read a lot about the states I’d be visiting to see where I would get to see the best of each of them.  Then I had to link these roads up with my destinations. And by “destinations,” I mean the states; I had no plan in mind of what to do once I got there. As I said, I just thought about the open road and how enjoyable that would be.  I hadn’t given a single thought as to what I would see or where I would go, or even where my overnight stops would be.  I attribute a lot of that to COVID-19, but also to my failure to clearly look at things when I first come up with an idea.  It takes some time for me to become practical.  There will be plenty of time for practicality later. My head full of fantasies regarding the wonders I would see and the fun I would have, completely untainted by any sort of reality that I know exists, I imagined myself on the open road without a care in the world.  I would enjoy this vision, at least intermittently, for a long time to come.  If I could just hold onto these great feelings, I was going to have a great year!