50 Days and 8466 Miles Across America
by Russell Ferrier

Editors Note: This is the personal journal of Russell Ferrier, an irreverent, outspoken Australian who just completed his journey. Over the next few months we will trace his route through his journal and share sights and sounds and people he met along the way. We will get a sometimes humorous, sometimes poignant, sometimes complimentary, and sometimes not too flattering, but always honest view of America and Americans through a visitor's eyes. Russell calls them as he sees them.

Week One

Whoever said it was a midlife crisis ? Just because I turn 40 this year has nothing to do with it.

What do you do when you have two months to spend in the USA and a motorbike that is sitting idly, going nowhere ? I know ride across the country!

Don’t ask me why I thought of this. Don’t ask me if it’s a good idea either. Probably not. At least not on a Kawasaki Ninja 600.

I mean most smart people who decide to embark on a 5000 mile journey by motorbike choose to do so on a cruiser, or one of those ridiculous Honda Goldwings (a mobile home on two wheels). Not me – I thought it’d be fun to ride across the USA, through desert and over mountain, across swampland and verdant valley, on a sports bike, hunched over, face down and cramped up. See pic of bike. Oh and picture me with all the added accessories on my bike…side bags, tank bag and back pack ! Comfy !

Ask me when it’s over if I had fun…I hope to be able to say yes.

Anyway, there’s a plan of sorts and a route to go with it. I don’t want to do more than 200 miles per day, allowing frequent overnight stops and time to see the country. In the next 5 weeks, it goes like this :

Day minus 1 : in getting my bike serviced and so having to catch a bus for a day, I noticed how many kooks there are living in San Diego. I mean real nutters. And they ALL catch the bus. I broke up a kicking and screaming cat fight between one 30 something portly black mamma carrying a baby and an older slightly crumpled white woman, after the driver of the bus failed to intervene. Hmm, I like private transport more!

San Diego, for all its charm seems, to have an unusually high percentage of bums and derros (an Aussie word for derelict human beings). Good weather has its draw backs.

Day 1: Sunday April 13 - despite weather reports of storms, the day turns out fine so I manage the short 70mile (115km) journey to Laguna Beach. Sun, babes and buff boys on beaches. Hard life these SoCals have.

Day 2: Monday April 14 – who ever sang “it never rains in Southern California” !! HAH !! The storm arrived. Stranded at the home of friends, I sit, contemplating my navel.

Day 3: Tuesday April 15 - Laguna Beach to Palm Springs - BLUE SKY !!! I set off at 8am. Wound my way up through cold hills and down through green ravines, around Lake Elsinore to Palm Springs. I see why those huge windmills in the desert work so well ! I was nearly blown over & once pushed sideways by high winds. I need to gain weight!

Day 4: Wednesday April 16 - Palm Springs & Indian Canyon - 84F/27C cloudless degrees. What's better than to spend a day than hiking alone through incredible cactus riddled desert canyons, through oases, along an ice-water stream surrounded on either side by enormous palm trees? Answer: finding a large flat rock to lie on, dangle your feet in the stream and read about a book about quantum physics*! This is how life should be ;)

*"Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century", by Michio Kaku.

Highly recommended reading...thanks Sameer.

Note on the American view of recent events in Iraq: So far I've heard a great deal from locals in CA, which suggests that whilst Bush is not very popular, the war was the right thing and support for the troops is paramount. On a surface level, people seem fairly quick to trot out the old dialogue and BS you hear every day on TV. Beware if you don't launch into a blast of patriotic dribble on cue here! But scratch a little deeper and there is a more honest understanding of events. EG: "It's the middle class" that keeps the USA going, one Vietnam Vet kept telling me last night. "They're happy, well off and they pay their taxes. The middle class don't exist in Iraq but now they have a chance to create one. And live without fear of speaking out when they choose to". Ah yes, but was this the reason for the war I asked? To create a stable middle class, to allow for freedom of speech and to banish the tyranny of a dictator? "Well, no". There seems to be a general understanding and agreement that the war was purely about the government's financial interests, oil and control of said production and distribution. Obviously! That's why the US hasn't intervened in so many African nations with hideous dictators. Take Zimbabwe...no oil there! Still, it strikes me as frightening one man's perception that the world will be a better place, with the creation of yet another sluggish, dumber, fatter group of middle class people, who exist only to consume, with little more than self gratification as a reason for being. Yes there are exceptions, and hard working intelligent people here. But on average I get the impression that locals here are striving less, think less, and aware of less, than in 1979 when I first came here!

Note on US fatness (this is a real bug bear of mine ...) I have suddenly become aware that all American hotel elevators I have been in this trip, including those in apartment buildings, don't have mirrors. Interesting contrast with those in Argentina, which nearly always have one mirror on each wall ! Perhaps it's because the Argentines aren't on average, fat. No wait.. not that. It's just that they're so vain.

Day 5: Thursday April 17 - Palm Springs California to Prescott Arizona - 70F/ 20C cloudy

Through desert and past giant wind turbines out of Palm Springs, climbing to 4000ft to flat open high desert plains of central California. Joshua Tree Park is so named for the massive cacti, 8-20 feet high. standing in supplication, like Joseph, provide an awesome landscape of massive smooth boulders lying in piles of small groups around large Frightening left to right wind gusts of 30mph according to the news, had me hanging on and going slower than planned. But still those hot dry still hours were great too, whizzing along at 80mph with nothing on either side but flat open plain. Terrain changed a lot in the 340 mile ride. From dull to green valley and endless open space of Arizona. Craggy like crumpled paper mountains are the norm here. Climbed to 6100 feet to Prescott. COLD !! Changing scenery too from desert and cacti to pines and forest.

Note: I find that all Motel 6's rooms are exactly the same!

Day 6: Friday April 18 - Prescott to Sedona, Arizona 65F/ 15C cloudy

A short ride just 60 miles from Prescott, winding up 89A mountain road as it climbs to 7100 feet. Riding behind another biker you get the experience of how to take hairpin corners and the best line of the road. Today was the first day I really noticed other bikers. There's a good camaraderie amongst "us" even though everyone else seems to be on a Harley. And boy can they travel fast. Nothing can prepare you for the spectacle of the view as you come winding down through canyons, approaching the cliff-side town of Jerome and see what I thought was the Grand Canyon miles across a green valley, miles in the distance. Not, in fact, but still quite something huge! It gets better. As you travel across the valley then up another lesser rise of hills, a vista opens up with the most incredible red rock landscape imaginable. Huge pillars of glowing rock climbing into the skies alongside wide ranges of multi-layered, multi-colored cliffs - all in brilliant reds and oranges. This is Sedona - a spectacle unlike anything I have ever seen. I can see why the native Navajo Indians worshipped this sacred place. Being Easter weekend I feared the worst for finding accommodation. But I found a place to stay at the Sedona Healing Center, a spiritual retreat, built as several dome-shaped structures, tucked in a canyon in the heart of the town, with unbelievable views, run by a local man world famous for his teachings in healing, meditation and well-being. OK Sedona is known in the world for being only one of 3 places where there are very strong vortexes (magnetic & electric energy) radiating or emanating from the ground, and so it attracts all sorts of people for the special properties the area emits.

Now I am not sure what to believe...but I can say that having slept one night in the center, I had more dreams last night than I can recall having in the past year. Hmmm.....

Day 7: Saturday April 19 - Sedona 72F / 21C partly cloudy

I couldn't wait to get out and hike so I grabbed backpack, and headed for Cathedral Rock, a towering group of red rocks rising cathedral-like out of the surrounding landscape. Tough hiking up to 8000 feet but views that are breathtaking of surrounding valleys. In between clouds the sun comes out and thankfully warms me up ! More later...as I explore other areas this afternoon.

To be continued.....Week Two