Blogging a multi day ride on my Harley seems to me to have a paradoxical twist. One is a fundamental desire to travel and explore with a complete independence from today’s technologies that hold us hostage behind the illusion of making our lives easier. It can be perceived that I posses the ‘Wild West’ mentality of riding off into the sunset with just your Harley and your thoughts. This is possibly rooted deep in my DNA. And in contrast, the blog seems like a virtual world which is a byproduct of a static internet. Regardless, both have a similar start; looking at a blank page or the beginning of an empty road figuring out how to start and where to go…

It is not my intent to use this blog as a venue to spew out random poetic thoughts during my trip of endless broken white lines that I pass by on my 2000 plus mile experience. This blog is a place to document my too short journey and to keep my family and friends up to date on my location and experiences. I have little to no expectations of some sort of great clarity or unique insights as a result. However, I am completely open for the unexpected that may be worth sharing.

This is one more for the bucket list! (for those of you how know me, know I have been fortunate to have the opportunities and the fortitude to have had a good start filling my bucket already) I am consumed by the opportunity that is presenting itself to me; being a dad and a husband is by far the most rewarding and enjoyable part of my life, no exception. However, with my daughter leaving the country of the summer, my boys are old enough not to need me on a daily (or weekly for that matter) basis any more and Sherri heading off on an adventure of her own with her sisters and cousin to hike Half Dome in Yosemite, I can finally embark on my long nurtured fantasy of riding off for days on my 09 Harley Davidson Road Glide without a set destination. The biker cliché ‘it is the journey not destination’ will be highly embraced with my anticipation that is bubbling out weeks ahead of the trip.

So at the risk of immediately contradicting myself, and the realities of the finite opportunity to be nomadic, I had to create some sort of plan with a promise to myself to allow it to stay fluid and to only look at my watch when it becomes necessary to figure out where I am going to lay my head down that evening.

I kept entertaining the idea of coming to California and riding up the coast. The plan on the surface sounded very cool; twisty roads, ocean views and the California mentality that I was born in to. But as I sit here in La Jolla typing away this opening to my blog as a means to channel some of the excitement of this trip I have worked up in my imagination, I am coming to the conclusion that the realities might be different.

As of now I plan on taking this trip alone and I see California as a trip to take with my best friends, whether that is the one who rides on the back of my bike or my wingman who rides next to me. Sometime you can feel your loneliest where you are surrounded by a bunch of people endlessly going in different directions. Finding that unique tavern or vista or person may be more challenging alone on the bustling coast than the rural areas north of Arizona.

So maybe a ‘four corners’ ride would work for me. There is enough mystery, legends and national parks to keep me intrigued. There are endless miles of twisty roads, cool weather and rusty old bars to fire up my spirit. I guess the ‘no plan’ plan is Gerome (how do I go north and not stop there??), the Grand Canyon (I have always wanted to see the Sky Walk), the Vermilion Canyons, Bryce, Zyon, the Wasatch Range, Apen, Vail, Lead Ville, Silverton, Uray, Taos, Santa Fe to name a concept of where I may go. I plan on doing the hotel thing but I am packing a tent and a sleeping bag if the occasion, or poor timing, should present the necessity of sleeping offs to the side somewhere.