So I think this blog is finished along with my travels by motorcycle. In more than 10,000 miles of travel, I've written over 100,000 words, which is the equivalent of a good-sized book. But somewhere along the way I lost my enthusiasm and blogging started to feel like a chore. I think at least part of the reason is that a comprehensive travelogue became too restrictive a format, and the effort of keeping it up weekly slipped all too easily into an obligation. I want to keep writing but I need a...

Honestly, at this point in the trip I was kind of wanting to be done, and I guess I'm feeling the same way about this blog, hence the long delay. I stopped taking notes after Truth or Consequences, and nothing really epic happened. I guess I was learning how to take care of Sugar, and nothing went wrong except for some difficulty starting in the mornings and leaking a quart of oil every thousand miles, which made a real mess on the underside but happily also kept the chain lubricated. Another fa...

It took a some time to get clear of the sprawl around Phoenix, and on the way I stopped to buy groceries, change my oil, and put balancing goo into the tires. I'd sworn off interstates, and luckily there were good alternative routes to my next destination of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. Shortly after clearing the exurbs, US 60 started to climb into the mountains, with lovely switchbacks, tree-filled ravines, and roadside weeds heavy with flowers and seed pods. I climbed over a very scenic ...

This blog has gotten way behind. Sorry about that! I've been keeping busy and using my free time to rest, and the days are getting shorter. The last post got as far as Phoenix, and now I'm writing this from back in Cobb Camp at Osceola National Forest in Florida, which means I've made a complete loop around the country: 23 states and over 9,000 miles on a pair of old Honda CT90's. I'll try and catch up soon, now that this journey is drawing to a close and I'm headed back home to North Carolina. ...

Getting out of Los Angeles took a while but it was easier than I expected. I got right on the interstate, but traffic was light and the speed limit was 45 so I could actually keep up with it. As I cleared the outskirts, there were fewer lanes and the speed limit ratcheted up to 70, but having a vague impression that California cops were sticklers for the law, I stayed in the rightmost lane rather than riding the shoulder. Traffic became pretty heavy and included more tractor trailers than I'd se...

My next stop was Los Angeles, and since there weren't a whole lot of routes to get there, I decided to ride down the shoulder of Interstate 15. Getting out of Las Vegas was a little stressful, but once the road went out into the Mojave Desert it was smooth sailing. The shoulder was wide, so it was like I had a lane to myself, and just had to watch out for stopped cars and exits, of which there weren't very many. The first really interesting sight was the towers of the Ivanpah Solar Power Facilit...

I was now entering the distinctive basin and range topography, which was created by the continent stretching and pieces of the crust rising, sinking, or tilting without the support of their neighbors. This resulted in long mountain ranges running roughly north to south, with flat valleys in between. Where the crust has tilted, the mountains are gently sloped on one side and steep on the other, which I could see very clearly from the air when flying from Denver to Bozeman. From the ground, my exp...

I wouldn't have thought people would want to be riding ATVs in the wee hours, but at Bannock Pass there was a steady traffic of trucks loading and unloading through much of the night, and I could see tiny headlights and tail lights creeping over the mountains in the dark. Maybe they were all getting in position for the start of Elk season like those Minnesotans. I was up to see the sun rise over Montana, and walked briskly up and down the hill to see it better and beat the chill. After a cold br...

Okay, I may have waxed poetic about North Carolina's humidity, but I must admit I enjoy the dry weather too. Daytime temperatures in Montana were in the 70s and nighttime temperatures were in the 40s. I slept out under the stars every night, and with the smoke cleared a little they were quite brilliant. With the shorter days it got dark more quickly, and you could walk out and see the milky way just an hour or two after sunset. I spent a good bit of time catching up with SE and TB, since we'd ha...

This was my last week of visiting home, so I tried to pack in the social time. On Saturday night AP and GB came over and we had a light dinner on my parents back porch. On Sunday morning I went over to my friend JD's house to have brunch with him and his Croatian girlfriend N, who had finally managed to get a visa to visit the US. He was making biscuits with eggs and bacon by way of introducing her to some local cuisine, and I brought over a few tomatoes from the garden. Everything was delicious...

The ranch was suddenly a lot less lonesome when SE and TB returned from their trip to New York. Several days of driving had left them pretty exhausted, so I cooked up a homecoming feast. SC also joined us for dinner, having just come back from Washington to work on his electrical project. We ate leftovers for the next couple days while they settled back in. SE and TB were surprised at how bad the wildfire smoke had become, although I'd gotten pretty used to it by now. It even seemed to be interf...

Well, more of the sedentary life. The Montana weather remained very pleasant, but smoke from the surrounding wildfires got worse. Nearby mountains were always hazy and the distant ones sometimes disappeared from view altogether. The sun would turn a dark red while still high in the sky, creating an eerie twilight. Sometimes the air smelled like a campfire, but mostly I guess my nose got used to it. Spending almost all my time outside, there wasn't much I could do about it, except to change my ex...

Well now I've stopped for a while and things are slowing down. I plan to spend July in Montana and August in the Carolinas, then it's back to the journey west. So there'll be less motorcycle adventure, and I might post every other week sometimes so there's more to talk about. On Monday the 21st, I arrived at the ranch of my friends SE and TB, who I hadn't seen since shortly before they moved from North Carolina to Montana last fall. My head was still buzzing from the road, but soon I was relaxi...

NOTE: This week is broken into multiple parts on account of having too much material for one post. The week starts here. Let me start by adding a little commentary on white-truck-guy from week 41b. I don't want y'all to think I'm turning naive about people or trying to suppress genuine protective fear. I've been mugged before with a (supposed) gun pointed at me, and felt that kind of basic fear that's very centering. Of course in that situation I was carrying absolutely nothing to steal and wou...

NOTE: This week is broken into multiple parts on account of having too much material for one post. The week starts here. Leaving Lac Qui Parle in the early morning, I rode into Big Stone County, passed by what I believe was the big stone, and arrived in Ortonville, a little old town on the steep banks of Big Stone Lake. I stopped at the post office to mail my wood stove home; it was starting to feel like a waste of space for several reasons, not least the unusually hot weather that continued to...

NOTE: This week is broken into multiple parts on account of having too much material for one post. After breakfast and a shower, I said goodbye to DS and got on the road, headed west toward Minnesota. The air was filled with the sounds and smells of summer: buzzing insects, grass and aromatic field herbs effervescing in the sunshine, and spring's pollen fermenting in lakes and ponds. I'd elected to take the scenic route to squeeze the last bit of juice I could out of Wisconsin, and I was soon o...

Well I'm not usually into touristy things, but DS and I decided to go down and see the Wisconsin Dells on Saturday. But first we stopped by the very nice farmer's market in Stevens Point to pick up fresh produce and duck eggs. DS knew most of the vendors because he used to sell there, so I got to hear all the inside dirt. Then after a few errands, we started on the hour and a half drive west to the dells. When we got there, it reminded me a lot of a beach town, with a huge main drag lined with e...

Despite having done most of my packing the night before and being out of bed very early, I got into an enjoyable conversation with my hosts and didn't say goodbye and hit the road until after 9. The plan was to travel as far west as I could on Sunday, then take Monday to reach the middle of Wisconsin. I rode down to Kinross, and past the prisons and the Chippewa County International Airport (presumably with flights to Canada in better times), and worked my way southwest on farm roads. OsmAnd too...

On Saturday morning I hauled all my gear out to the parking lot of Nordhouse Dunes and headed up the coast on 31 toward the Straits of Mackinac. I stopped in Traverse City for vegan tamales, and the locals were all gratefully chilling outside in the sunshine (it had been snowing only a week or so before!). I bought some groceries at Oryana, the local bobo grocery store, in preparation for entering the great food desert of far northern Michigan. I was heading up to visit my friends JC and ES in S...

I left Centerville and drove north through Dayton, winding among the ivy-covered hillsides of wealthy neighborhoods, the brickwork of historic downtown, across the Great Miami River (why are so many things around Dayton named Miami?), through neighborhoods with weedy lots and broken windows, the gas stations and strip malls of the outskirts, and finally back into flat farmland. The fields were covered in brown stubble, and the air was filled with the smell of herbicides sprayed from countless tr...

It was another sunny but chilly spring morning when I packed up and rolled out of Wayne National Forest on my way northwest. At first the land was still mountainous, with beautiful steep and winding roads through deciduous forests, but little by little it began to flatten out, first into rolling pastures and woodlots and then into flat fields and grain elevators. I had definitely crossed the Appalachians. And as the land got flatter, people's accents shaded from Southern toward Midwestern. My ro...

After stopping for lunch near Abingdon, I decided to start navigating using OsmAnd, which allows you to set a detailed vehicle profile including minimum, maximum, and preferred speeds, and often picks much more interesting routes than Google. I was not disappointed, and was soon winding through the mountains of western Virginia on tiny roads designated only with three digit numbers, and seeing only a few other cars, which was good because often the roads narrowed to a single lane. The scenery wa...

On Sunday morning I headed north and west towards a campground called "The Scales" in Jefferson National Forest in Virginia. The morning's ride took me through lovely piedmont pastureland, intensely green and dotted with yellow flowers. Having determined that veggie plates at barbecue restaurants can be a good nutrient-dense food option in the hinterlands, I attempted to stop at one near Lexington. I should have known from the state of the parking lot, but it wasn't until I got to the entrance t...

I decided to try a one week juice fast to see if it would accelerate the healing of my ulcerative colitis, and for that I needed a place with enough power to run a juicer and near a grocery store where I could buy fresh produce. I wound up staying at Pearl Mill Flats in Durham, which is an awesome little apartment complex with a courtyard in the middle and a real community feeling. There were lots of sweet older folks gardening and chatting, and what looked like an outdoor potluck on Sunday nigh...

Things I Did Replaced Punkin's carburetor with a much nicer one. Stretching the rubber air hose to fit it was such a challenge that I had to take a long break and come back to it, but eventually determination and elbow grease won the day. And wow what a difference it makes! The throttle response is butter smooth and the extra power is palpable. Disassembled and lubricated Punkin's front suspension. One of the grease fittings was clogged with dried grease, but after many rounds of soaking it in...

After a leisurely early morning at the M-S house, I packed up and headed inland for Columbia to visit family friends. The green fields were brushed with swaths of rust-red grasses and pale purple wildflowers, and the masses of wisteria vines hanging by the roadside gave off clouds of their sweet scent. It was a sunny day but the air was cool and dry from the recent front, adding a sharp edge to the lush atmosphere of spring. I stopped for lunch at an interesting-looking place called Gypsy's Vill...

Friday night was difficult. I felt achy and sensitive to the bright moonlight, the smell of bug spray drifting on the wind, and the sound of a generator running through the night. I got up to pee just before dawn and saw a fire over at PP's campsite, so I decided I might as well get up. I went over and sat by the fire swatting mosquitoes and listening to stories: piglets from the family hog farm sitting in rocking chairs and watching TV with his sisters, a work crew tossing stunned horseflies up...

It was Friday night at Cobb Camp and the weekenders were rolling in with massive trucks and tents, hauling multiple ATVs on trailers. Hard as it was to leave my new friends, it was time to go. After I'd packed up on Saturday morning I visited a little more with PP, and read him and L the kayaker a poem that had come to mind while hearing PP's stories. He said it was deep and he'd need to spend some time translating it into hillbilly, but that he got the gist and enjoyed it. As I was about to rid...

When I left Beaufort the air was warm and tinged with the smoke from controlled burns, smelling sometimes like a campfire and sometimes like fine pipe tobacco. As I passed Savannah the dock cranes stood out in the hazy distance like huge skeletal beasts. I made a stop near Darien, Georgia at the "smallest church in America" which had a very pretty little chapel. In one corner there was a tiny food bank, and two bulletin boards with all kinds of messages: prayers, sweet notes to estranged relativ...

It was a bit chilly heading out of North Myrtle Beach. My first stop was at an Asian Grocery to get some tea, dried fruit, and produce, and then I got onto 17 and headed south. At one point I was stopped on the side of the road changing jackets when a Sheriff's car went by trailing a line of Harley riders in formation, a line so long it stretched out of sight. They kept passing and passing, there must have been a hundred at least, and eventually I realized it had to be a funeral procession. I'd ...

Well, twenty-six weeks, so it's been half a year since I started on this adventure! I decided to head south to ride out the remaining cold weather and test out all my new gear, then pass back through North Carolina for a resupply and continue north in a counterclockwise circle around the country. On Sunday I did the last bit of packing and cleaning in the early morning light and carted my baggage out to the driveway to load onto Punkin. Luckily it all fit and seemed pretty well balanced. My mom ...

Well, Punkin was pretty much ready to hit the road, and the forecast predicted a stretch of sunny weather perfect for drying out gear, so I decided to spend the week transitioning from sedentary life back to nomadic life. I moved out of my canvas tent and into a more portable one, just in time for a cold and rainy Monday that let me test out my foldable wood stove, which heated the tent well in short bursts. The stove's a bit temperamental and I'm still learning to use it, but heat on demand mak...

Things I Did Tried to take the motorcycle skills test. Several weeks ago I'd scheduled an appointment to complete the requirements for my full motorcycle endorsement. The appointment was on Wednesday afternoon, and I'd practiced a bunch in a parking lot and even rode over to the actual DMV to run through the whole test several times on their course. I was ready. But when I showed up, they said the test was cancelled because the pavement was wet! When I told them I was perfectly capable of ridi...

Things I Did Got a waterproof motorcycle jacket and boots just in time for a bunch of freezing rain. Stayed warm and dry; everything works as advertised. Admired the old minibike that RM fixed up for his wife ML. It was made in the 60s and belonged to her sister, and the cute thing is it's red with white trim just like Punkin but less than half the size. I guess that color scheme was just the bees knees in those days. RM put a 160cc engine into it (as compared to Punkin's 125cc engine), so it'...

Things I Did Talked to my friend NS in Los Angeles to give him some advice on a movie script he's writing about a software developer who stumbles into a crazy sci-fi action romp. It was nice catching up and I look forward to eventually making my way down there for a visit. Took a day trip to the garage on Saturday and improved the handlebar attachment, installed a cigarette lighter socket for phone chargers and other accessories, and organized all my stuff to fit in a bin so the "fun table" in...

Things that Happened Hung out with AP and JP, my friends since early childhood, around the fire on Saturday night and over breakfast at Small Cafe on Sunday morning. It was quite cold but we had some good conversations about old times, all the stuff that's changed, real estate, and having kids vs not having kids. I guess we're solidly middle-aged now, but I feel like this is a very good part of my life. As I was getting ready to go to breakfast, I discovered that all of Kiddo's cables had froz...

Things I Did Helped RM fiddle with the tuning of Punkin's carburetor. I'm not sure we've got it right yet, because if it's tuned to idle at the correct speed when hot, it won't idle at all when it's cold. I need to learn more about the fine points of carburation. Helped my dad, his firewood dealer, and the dealer's teenage son unload and stack some firewood. Rode up the Haw River and moved into my lodgings in Graham: a room in a huge old colonial built in 1919 by a general returning from World...

Once again I'm finding it hard to string events together into a smooth narrative, so I'm not going to bother. It's all lists this week but I'll go back to the old format if and when it makes sense. Things I Did Spent a sunny Saturday morning hanging out with RM and JS and helping them reassemble a backhoe. Installed a new key-switch in Punkin so it's impossible to kick start without the keys. Also glued on some reflectors for safety. Met with Santa to sign a bill of sale for Punkin. Afterward...

I'm not feeling in much of a storytelling mood this week but some important things happened, so I'll just hit the highlights: I finished Punkin's air, exhaust, and electrical systems and RM and I started the engine. There was a problem at first because gas was leaking out of the carburetor, and after we'd called the quality of the cheap carb into question and removed the float bowl, we figured out that I'd plugged the fuel line into a vacuum port (in my defense it did not come with documentatio...

It's 2021! I think last year was both the best and worst year of my life so far. What a ride it's been. I hope you're all as well as can be expected and do please reach out if you feel like catching up. Saturday was Boxing Day. RM and ML were having a family brunch in the garage with RM's daughter and her boyfriend, just back from a trip to California, and they made me up a delicious plate. Then my family had moved the celebrations planned for Christmas Eve to Boxing Day because the weather was...

Saturday was my birthday, and the weather was fine and sunny. Over at the garage the social scene was in full swing, ES dropped by with a curly-haired little terrier under one arm. He was bringing in a hay spear that SF had welded up for him, which is a plate with three projecting spikes that you attach to a tractor and run through bales of hay to move them around. This one had bent and twisted under the weight of 1000+ pound bales. While RM and I were chatting with ES about tractors and wood st...

The big story this week was discovering Punkin's origins, so I'll just tell about that thematically and then mention other notable things that happened this week. On Saturday morning I was in the garage early and ran into a problem extracting a screw from a new part. I thought an impact driver might do the trick but was having trouble finding one when I heard that distinctive k-k-k-k sound coming through the woods. Following it to its source, I found EG and someone I didn't know doing some frami...

I spent Saturday morning blogging and catching up on some important business, like applying for next year's health insurance. Kiddo got pressed into service to give my parent's car another jump start, it always amazes me that that's possible but it hasn't failed so far. There seemed to be some kind of electrical problem with the car, and later in the week RM diagnosed it as being a slow drainage through the power lock circuit which was "solved" by pulling a fuse. In the afternoon I dropped by to...

Sedentary life always seems to settle into a pattern, for better or worse. Possessions find a customary place, routines are optimized, new skills are honed until they require less and less thought. It's an interesting challenge to grapple with the occasional anxiety this brings up, the way the known can be as scary in its own way as the unknown. Will this go on forever? Is this really the life I want to be living? But most times I'm too absorbed in the moment to worry about that, and I've had qu...

For some reason I keep expecting things to slow down, but it was a surprisingly busy week. On Saturday morning I ordered a new engine for Punkin, a Lifan 125cc with a semi-auto 4-up transmission and electric start built in. Then it was time for my first car-driving practice with my dad. The plan was to take a load of trash and recycling to the collection center, come back to pick up my mom and take her to her weekly Nia class, then run some errands in town and take her home on the way back. Alth...

Well I don't really have any travel adventures planned for the near future, so this blog is going to become a bit more about domesticity and nature, with maybe the odd philosophical musing thrown in when I get the urge. If you get bored, you could check back in around New Years and maybe something more exciting will be happening. Or life could get exciting in some way I'm not planning for, because there's still some more 2020 left! On Saturday, potential social plans fell through so I didn't ha...

Originally I was signed up for dirt biking classes on Saturday and Sunday, but it turned out that hunters were also using the land so the Saturday class was cancelled and the beginner class was moved to Sunday. Since I had a place to stay all weekend and was already planning to be off work on Friday and Monday, I decided to follow the original schedule and take Saturday as a vacation day. I spent Saturday morning blogging, then headed into town for a little tourism. My Airbnb host S was in the M...

I spent the first part of Saturday puttering around camp. I started a batch of honey locust hooch, borrowing two quart mason jars, filling them with torn up pods, and pouring boiling water over them. The fermentation got off to a slow start because of the cold but there have been bubbles so I assume wild yeasts are doing their thing in there. I made a rack for drying clothes out of some bamboo I found in the back of the garden. I talked to my mom while filling a huge box with sticks that had com...

This week was mostly about establishing a base camp out on my family's land. I'd set the big tent up the Saturday before to let the plastic-smelling vinyl floor and the treated canvas air out a bit, but I'd pretty much just dumped my stuff on the floor and taken off. Since Thursday had been leg day with all the hiking and Friday had been arm day with all the paddling, I started out a little sore on Saturday, but loosened up by gathering a huge load of sticks and breaking them into lengths for m...

On Saturday morning, I left the Extended Stay America as early as I could, happy to get into the fresh air, and headed downtown. I dropped by the farmers market and picked up some watermelon radishes and a hefty loaf of Danish rye bread. Then I went to my storage unit and reorganized gear, storing the tent I'd been carrying around and picking up some extra clothes for the cooler weather. The plan was to go out to my family's land in the township of Hadley and set up a base camp for the next few ...

The week started with my alarm going off at 4am on Saturday, because I had to help my dad with a database replacement for work (unfortunately for us, we have to do these things at odd hours to disturb the smallest number of users). I made some instant coffee with butter melted into it, which kept me sharp all the way through, and we finished the job without anything going wrong. I spent the rest of the day pretty lazily, shopping for a shelter system that'll allow me to keep working as it gets c...

My plan had been to do some camping and explore the western part of Croatan National Forest, but the rain coming in over the weekend made me reconsider. I decided to just make it a day trip on Saturday instead, and mostly to places I'd already been. The weather was cool, humid, and gray, and for the first time it felt like fall had properly arrived out here on the coast. The sycamore leaves had turned a tarnished bronze by the side of highway 70 down to Beaufort. I had decided to visit the marit...

Saturday was a nice lazy day. My parents had some motor oil in their trunk so I improvised a funnel out of cardboard and Kiddo got a top-up. We spent some nice time on the beach just sitting around, got a sprinkling of rain but not enough to make us pack up, and went back to the house where AP and GB grilled up some delicious hamburgers and fresh local scallops. I spent the afternoon reading and napping in a hammock chair and packed up most of my stuff because I had to wake up early in the morni...

I woke up Saturday morning at Oyster Point, and the rain had moved on, though it was still cloudy. Since I wasn't in a big rush to get to my next destination, I slept in a bit and packed up slowly. On a little walk down to the boat ramp, I met a van-dweller from California, who had just visited his son and newborn grandson in Statesville and was headed to the outer banks to see the wild ponies and properly finish his sea-to-shining-sea trip. We had a nice conversation and then I finished packing...

On Saturday morning I set off toward the coast, and although I knew I could make it all the way in one epic day of riding, I decided to break it into two parts and take a more leisurely pace. My route followed the path of the Neuse River, which starts just upstream of Falls Lake and empties into the Pamlico Sound on the northern border of Croatan National Forest. Just about midway in between is Busco Beach, a park for off-road vehicles encircled by an ox-bow bend of the Neuse, and they offered c...

On Saturday I loaded up my scooter Kiddo with an 18 gallon plastic tub strapped to each side and set off to the Rolling View Campground at Falls Lake State Recreation Area to camp for the week, work, and test out all my new gear. Kiddo handled fine with the extra weight, but was noticeably slower going up hills. I think whenever I wind up heading away from the coast I might should get a more powerful bike to handle the mountain slopes without slowing to a crawl and pissing off the cagers even mo...