On the road Long-distance ride
Lodi to Tampa, the long way
A ten-day cross-country motorcycle trip that deliberately avoided the interstates, three states, and any day longer than seven hours in the saddle.
“The trip wasn't to get from California to Florida. The trip was the route.”
The brief I gave myself
Get from Lodi, California to Tampa, Florida on a motorcycle, with these constraints: no interstates wherever a parallel state highway exists. No Texas, no Louisiana, no Alabama — for reasons of weather, geography, or having ridden them before. No day longer than seven hours in the saddle. Sleep where the route leads, not where the planning says.
The route
Up out of the Central Valley through the Sierra foothills, across Nevada on US-50 (“the loneliest road in America,” more or less accurately), through southern Utah and the Colorado plateau, down into New Mexico via Taos, across the Texas panhandle on the narrowest legal diagonal, into Oklahoma, then Arkansas, then the long swing east through Tennessee that culminates in the Tail of the Dragon. From there: down through the Blue Ridge into Georgia, across the panhandle, home.
Ten days. About 3,400 miles. Three states fewer than the direct route, and several thousand more curves.
What I planned
- Daily mileage targets, with stretch and contingency versions
- A bag of paper maps to supplement GPS in places without reception
- Lodging booked one or two nights ahead, never more
- A small set of detours I’d take if the weather or mood permitted
- A no-podcasts rule for the first three hours of each day
What I didn’t plan for
The rain in eastern New Mexico, which made me re-route around a mountain pass and add half a day. The hour I spent at a gas station in Arkansas talking to a retired carpenter who used to ride the same model bike. The shop in Tennessee that re-cut a key I’d lost the duplicate of without charging me. The way the Tail of the Dragon, after thousands of miles of buildup, is over in twenty minutes and you stand in the parking lot at Deals Gap not quite sure what to do with yourself.
What I learned
That the longest stretches are easier than the moderate ones. The body settles in after the third hour and stays settled until the seventh; it’s the four-hour days that leave you stiff.
That you make better decisions when you’re tired and outdoors than when you’re fresh and indoors.
That solitude on the road and solitude at a desk are different elements. One restores the other.
The honest part
I cried twice. Once at a viewpoint above the Rio Grande Gorge, for no reason I could name. Once in a motel parking lot in Knoxville, also for no reason I could name. The trip didn’t fix anything — there was nothing to fix — but it cleared the desk in my head in a way nothing else seems to.
I’m planning the next one. The fall ride through the Appalachians, shorter, on roads I’ve been daydreaming about.
Bike: it doesn’t matter, but for the curious — a sport-tourer with enough range and enough seat to make a day on it not punitive.