29th October 2006 The Drake Motel, Nashville, Tennessee.
A sign under the not-all-working neon Drake Motel sign says ‘Stay where the stars stay’. There is a signed cardboard cut out of Dolly Parton in the foyer.
I rode here from Memphis, leaving my cabin at the Memphis-Graceland campground this morning. The day before I’d visited Graceland - it was just across the road. I was surprised to be impressed by it. Shouldn’t have been I suppose, but I’ve never really been a fan. The visitor center across the road from the house hummed to piped Elvis, and the short trip to the house was taken in minibuses that ran constantly to and fro. Walking seemed like the obvious choice.
Inside, with the exception of the two front rooms, each room was a moment of high late 60’s early 70’s interior design. Mirrored or carpeted ceilings or walls, huge sofas, quality hifi, those greens and yellows of the period, great and some not-so-great furniture. All in all pretty cool.
I spent 9 days in Saint Louis, pulling myself together and generally having a good time with the people I met. Tom the owner of the Huck Finn Hostel, Rebecca who worked there, the guys who came through, Nathan and Nick, and my neighbours Sarah, Chris, and Aaron. St Louis has a pretty good sculpture park too, a huge stainless steel arch, great music and loads of bars - particularly in the district of Soulard, where the hostel is.
On my last day Tom took me to the amazing St Louis City Museum - an astonishing place. Take a look at the photos. Three floors of labyrinths, sculptures, fish, birds and an eclectic collection of artifacts; porticos, bank vaults, boulders, buses, aeroplanes, fire engines, fairground attractions, miniature trains, so much stuff that it bursts out of the building in an artfully constructed open air jungle gym. It’s utterly delightful. I could have spent days there.
I took the back roads to Nashville, and stopped for lunch near a place called Jack’s Creek. The sound of crickets was all around and the hot sun on my neck. Everywhere was the yellow and orange of autumn, and a large yellow butterfly flew by. There were no clouds in the sky and I could hear a small plane, or maybe it was a boat on one of the lakes near by. I’d ridden over great roads through forested hills, passed fields of cotton, some harvested and packed in large rectangular stacks at the roadside. Small farms with rusting machinery standing idly under fir trees whose scent lifted me and reminded me of holidays in Greece. Earlier as I’d left Somerville on the r64, I’d seen an avenue of trees decorated with streamers of toilet paper blowing in the wind.
I am heading towards Miami, not my original destination of course, but from there I’ll fly to Argentina. I’ll spend a couple of weeks there with Nushka and plan what to do on my return. Mileage 3084

18th October 2006. Huckleberry Finn Hostel, St Louis. Its 9.55am and I am hung over. I arrived here yesterday afternoon in a bit of a state. In the morning, as I finished loading up the bike outside another ghastly motel, German rode off on his own. I heard him start his bike, but that wasn’t strange because he likes to warm it up before we leave. I didn’t see him leave, I had gone back to our room for something, which I’m sure was exactly his intension. Thinking about it now he must have planned to leave like that the day before. That night he’d left most of this luggage on his bike saying he was too tired to unload it. Seemed plausible, we’d just ridden 300 miles through another rainstorm from Chicago towards St Louis, passing the Springfield on our way. So I sat like a lemon by my bike for an hour and a half wondering if anyone could really leave like that. And this person was a friend. It’s not that he left without reason, we had argued again in Chicago. And although when we were in Columbus he’d suggested a compromise of staying a couple more weeks in the US, in Chicago he told me he’d changed his mind. We’d stopped for brunch at the designer everything (except the food) McDonalds in Chicago. It also turned out that he figured those two weeks would have to be made up in Central America, not only that but he said he might decide to fly to Buenos Aries from somewhere in Central or South America, leaving me to do what? Also, he’d decided to give up on us reaching the west coast. He’s been there. I was pretty angry again. Why such a hurry? This should be the most amazing journey of our lives. To be fair to him, although I scarcely see the point, he did say he wants to be in Buenos Aries for Christmas before we left. I told I thought it would take twice as long as that, six rather than three months. However, we agreed we wouldn’t rush, and would have time to stop for a day or two here and there. I figured it would take as long as it takes.
In McDonalds I showed him the map, the distance he wants to cover and the time he wants to do it in. I told him I think its madness. It is over 350 miles a day, without stopping anywhere. And what are the roads going to be like in Mexico and beyond? Pretty bad I reckon. He just said he wants to try. And I couldn’t get what I would call a good reason from him; being back in London for a weekend job he says they say they won’t keep for him; seeing his family, who live in Buenos Aries, for Christmas, and what I think is the big one and which was only hinted at; spending time with his girlfriend. He also came up with a new one about some vague business deal with his dad. I don’t believe him.
I wonder why he is doing this journey. At no point has he been particularly interested in where we are, or amazingly, where we are going. In the mornings he is on his bike, engine running, having not even looked at the map as far as I know. Certainly not discussed with me where we are going, on which roads, or how far. So fixated is he, he has never asked me what I’d like to see on route.
I can’t bear the thought of riding through, or rather past, so many fascinating places all the way to Argentina. It is quite a relief to be able to sit here and write without the nag of having to get on the road, to ride all day in order to stay another night in a neon-lit low rise interstate motel. And it was a pleasure to be able to spend time talking to the locals at the bar on the corner of the street along the road from the Huckleberry Finn Hostel. I’m almost enjoying spending time getting over the headache its given me.
Evidently our goals on this journey were too different. I will have to think of another plan, a different journey. I have some ideas and I’m looking forward to it. I can’t properly understand how he could do such a thing. Surely, after all we’ve done to get his far could we not have agreed to compromise or at least to go our separate ways? The loss of a friend is a terrible thing, but I hope he makes it. Milage 2423

14/11/2006. Arrived at the Monticello, 100 miles north of Indianapolis 8pmish. Pretty bloody cold on the road again. Not so windy with clear sky and startling light all day. Left the Motel 8, a motel that has almost given up the pretense of actually being a motel, at 9.30. A triumph, the earliest we’ve manage to get off in the morning. The plan is to try to do better tomorrow, and get into Chicago early. Went straight to the Speedway. Looked at very fast cars not moving. Look pictures. Maurizio decided to head off on his own - probably for the best. We took a last picture of the three of us at the Speedway. German and I took the 421 north. Not riding far, quiet roads, some of them even a bit bendy. Landscape almost uniformly flat, which I liked. Big sky. Many of the fields of maize we passed displayed at the roadside signs stating the name of the manufacturer whose genetically modified grain had produced the crop. Alarming in a rural kind of way. Mileage 1945.

13/11/2006. I thought I’d left the worst motel on Earth at 11am this morning, but in fact I traveled 200 miles to arrive at the worst hotel on Earth at 8pm this evening - in Indianapolis. Grey stained sheets and carpet reeking of fag ash. There is only one bulb in the room. I moved it to a light fitting nearer to where I am writing, but first I had to find a fitting that worked. Pretty tired and really need to sleep. Eyes sore and itching, but that may be the fag ash. Had a good ride today though. Rode through the plains of Ohio and Indiana past great fields of ripe maize, and some other crop I couldn’t identify. The cold wind was incredible, often blowing the bikes half way across the lane. But the sunlight was amazing, and the sky huge. We passed hundreds of farms with their grain towers and rusting farm machinery, rode through dozens of towns. Amazingly one was the birthplace of Wilber Wright. We stopped at the museum and took pictures. And I forgot to add that last night, in Columbus, the food I’d had to order from my bike, rather than on foot, from one of those greasy neon chain restaurants, was nicked by some bastard from outside our room while I went back to the shiny happy neon hell hole to get the fizzy, sugary water they’d also sold me. Charming. Mileage 1823.

Am in the charming town of Columbus, Ohio now. Not pleased to be here either. To give you an idea of my mood when I stopped at the motel last night, the first 200 miles where ridden through a tornado. Really. And now I'm in A Knight's Inn Motel (fag ash ground into the carpet) in Columbus all I've seen of New Jersey, Pennsylvania and half of Ohio is the highway. I am not doing that again. German, on the other bike, will have to decide if he wants to rush all the way to Argentina (which seems to be his idea), or do some touring on the bikes, which is what I thought we were doing. There is a tense atmosphere in the motel room as I write. Maurizio is grimly watching cable tv. German is trying to wrestle with the distances involved in crossing the US in the time he has in mind. I've hung up my wet clothes from yesterday and am about to go out and find a drink now I have thawed out. It turned out to be 400 miles of freezing, gusty interstate all the way here - so mood only slightly better. Not keen on heading any further north. South is appealing. Total milage to date 1620.

OK. I'm in a Comfort Inn in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. There is not a good reason for being here. I left Manhattan today heading west to meet the other guys who had spent a few days in Washington. I, however, had the very good plan of spending a couple more days in Manhattan with the lovely Nushka who few over from London for the Weekend. The idea was to meet up today with German and Maurizio on our way to Chicago. A good plan too, only the destination chosen was the apparently grim town of Columbus, Ohio. It was after the others had left from Washington that I realised, thanks to google, that Columbus is 550 miles from New York. A quite crazy distance to travel in one day. It was too late to make another plan so I headed off to see how far I'd get. Stopping to take a couple of last photos of Anish Kapour's big mirror at the Rockefella Center. I met a couple of guys from Argentina there, one of whom has a BMW GSA himself. And who said he might know German's dad. I'll find out.
Started pissing down once I'd got out of the Lincoln Tunnel, and continued pretty much all the way to Harrisburg, which turns out to be as far as I got. When I haven't got 350 plus miles to ride in the morning I'll fill in the news of the first few days of our journey down to New York. German and Maurizio toppeling over at the gas station after just one mile being the start. Total milage 1224