"We're on a mission from God" Dave announced, only half joking. This was after the 7th or so "Amazing Coincidence." His recently acquired '64 Corvette had begun running like crap after more than 1900 relatively trouble-free miles. She had begun belching black smoke, missing, getting horrible fuel mileage, and stumbling on acceleration and it was getting worse over time. What were the chances in the next garage we came to would be owned by a guy who'd worked on Corvettes for 17 years of his life and could rebuild a Holley carburetor blindfolded? Especially since we were in the middle of East Nowhere, Utah?
How about 100%?
It seems as if the Universe supports those who put themselves out there. She provides travelers possessing the right attitude(s) the persons, places and resources needed to continue their adventure. I'm not talking about blasting across I-40 in a late model car at 80mph, in a desperate rush to GET there. I'm talking about driving an older, slower, less reliable vehicle down the back roads and blue highways across America on a trip where the journey, the people you meet, and the stops along the way, are as valued as reaching the destination.
The only thing you can do wrong on such a trip is to hurry up and miss the people and things you were intended to encounter and enjoy. To insist on getting to your destination by a certain date. Target fixation.
There will be endless miles of mind numbing boredom across Texas, Kansas, South Dakota, or whatever other part of "fly-over country" you choose to cross middle America. There won't be many stories written about battling endless winds sweeping across wheat fields. Some parts of the road trip are best left out, or describe with only a brief sentence or two; i.e. for two days I battled a gusty crosswind which made riding a motorcycle sheer misery. I was happy to get off the motorcycle and help some broken down motorists simply for the respite it gave me from battling the unceasing wind.
Ahh, but the breakdown is part of the story too, the mother and daughter whose car simply quit in the middle of nowhere. How State Farm's customer service agent (CSR) couldn't FIND the road on a map to dispatch a tow truck. How I used a can of hairspray to diagnose that it was a fuel problem; either a failed fuel pump, or a tank of bad gas. The highway, you see, had two names, highway 54 / 400 east of Pratt, Kansas and no amount of telling the CSR we were near 70th Avenue and Highway 400 could get our location through, however loudly I repeated it.
I eventually convinced the Mom to dial 911, talk to the Pratt sheriff, and have them dispatch a local tow truck, along with calling Enterprise to arrange a rental. I then stayed with them until the flatbed arrived. Would you want your wife and daughter left alone, stranded alongside a lonely highway. I was proud of the fact I had gotten the engine to start using canned hairspray as fuel, and could tell the tow driver what to tell the mechanic to look for. Isn't everyone looking for a chance to be a hero in some small way?
As for State Farm, what do you say when the CSR assures you the road you are on does not exist. Now or later? "Hey, you need better mapping software!" Especially when a corporation like State Farm won't let them exit the application and go to something like Google maps to see what was going on.
Dave and I had certain rules. If a town had a square, we made a lap around it. Stop at every scenic overlook or historical marker. But this was overshadowed by the Seldon Directive. Don't decide until you have to, and then take the obvious choice. There were clearly roads, restaurants, and places along the way emblazoned with our names and invisible arrows or "Stop Here!" tags. . A "Y" in the road where one path was clearly the one we should take. At times we overshot stopping points, immediately recognizing them as such , like an ice cream/malt shop on a sweltering hot day, and promptly U-turned. When we failed to stop at the obvious point and got ahead of the "schedule" the Universe wanted us on it was equally obvious; there would be no gas, no motel, no where to eat, or we'd encounter some delaying action that forced us back onto the schedule we were supposed to be on. It might be road construction, an accident, cattle in the road, or a dozen red lights in a row. The worst of these was a mechanical breakdown.
The Vette had required six or seven repairs by this point as it was driven right out of a barn and onto an Interstate. Apparently we had been going too fast. And if that damn glove box door slammed down on my knees one more time, I was going to rip it from the dash and throw it out the window Or so I threatened. The semi-circular, all-metal door must have weighed ten pounds unlike the plastic of today's cars.
I always had trouble road tripping alone. Somehow it never seemed worth it to take that side road, detour, get off the bike. After a few days on the road I'd begin fixating on "Getting There." and speed up, mentally calculating the time and distance remaining every hour or so.
This trip was going to be a particular challenge. I'd traveled from Huntsville Alabama to Durango Colorado a half dozen times. I'd already taken almost all of the interesting routes ("scenic byways") I could reasonably insert into the trek. I would now have to detour, as much as 100 miles, to ride along additional blue highways and "best motorcycle roads" pointed out by numerous websites as worthy of riding.
A blogger wrote: "Are there ANY bad roads in NW Arkansas?" Roads through the Ozark mountains provide lightly traveled, incredibly scenic twisties. There are numerous routes. My all-time favorite is the Hwy 21 from Clarksville to Huntsville Arkansas. I rode this early one morning and only encountered a handful of cars going the other way in nearly 100 miles of road.
I was determined to ride highway 23, aka "The Pig Trail" this time.
Highway 65, north from Little Rock, was a 100 mile stretch of endless restaurants, RV parks, small towns and antique stores. I'd done it in my RV, but had little desire to do it again. The only benefit was you could find anything you wanted to eat somewhere along it's length. Or any antique item your heart desired. Mine was a beautiful antique woodstove; however, there was no way to put it in the RV despite the astoundingly cheap pricetag.
In contrast, Kansas was all about finding "the least painful route across." For me that was traveling from Miami, Oklahoma, to Independence Kansas. It was rolling hills, and not nearly as excruciating as Western Kansas. From Miami to Grove Oklahoma took you over the Lake of the Cherokees, a wonderful recreation area prior to incarceration on the plains of Kansas.
Using software like www.motorcycleroads.com and the Greatest Road app, I found a route that COULD be incorporated into a Huntsville to Durango trek without excess detour; Hwy 90/43 across SW Missouri from Southwest City to Washburn MO.
