good vibrations

'Best selling book at the 2001 London Boat Show!' - Kelvin Hughes

A few years ago, I found myself between boats and hence well in funds, so my wife Roz and I decided to blow some of it while we could. I’d been itching to ride a Harley-Davidson across America for years, but a life at sea had restricted my US travels to the coasts. Now it was the High Plains or bust.

Inconveniently, Roz had never even sat on a bike. I didn’t fancy a passenger for twelve thousand miles, and she couldn’t face clinging to me for a hundred days, so she borrowed an ancient 100cc Suzuki and made it to the Driving Test centre on her forty-fifth birthday. To her own surprise, she passed. Tand the following morning we flew to Baltimore and she bought a yellow 883 ‘Sportster’, all leather tassels, sexy buckhorn bars and straight-through pipes. It met my Soft-tail off the ship from Southampton and we were away.

The rest of the trip is about me having an improbably exciting time while Roz reached a truce with the massive reality of the US road-burner. The ride of a lifetime was soon transformed into a pilgrimage in search of the American people who the Harleys dragged from under stones, off mountainsides, out of the swamps and the prairie dust. They looked after us, rode with us, worked with us, filled us with drink, took us to church on Sunday and to the cleaners at the poker table. A few threatened us. Most treated us like royalty.   « click the tiny images for full-sized pics »

The scenery was phenomenal, but it is the folks I’ll remember - and riding Death Valley with an engine air-cooled by wind 35 degrees hotter than my blood.

To read some extracts, visit the biking home page. For the full, hard ride in your armchair, grab a copy of Good Vibrations, £7.99 from right here. Hit this link to get to the cash desk!