"Baseball, Hot Dogs and a Long-Ass Motorcycle Ride" page 3 (continued)
	Three weeks into April, my purpose now evident, I managed to get the courage to start the trip again. Spring had been springing for nearly a month, so snow was not much of an issue now. My biggest obstacle was overcoming my fear of laying down the bike again, a fear as traumatic as any I’ve known. I decided to leave behind the extra helmet, sleeping bag, and the tent, not to mention the scores of shirts and socks I originally packed. If I was going to lay down the bike again, it wasn’t going to happen because my bike was top-heavy. After making it to Syracuse, nearly an hour’s drive from Rochester, I stopped at a McDonald’s to warm my chilled bones and get some much needed celebration food: hot fries. It was the farthest I had ever ridden this particular bike. I had asked the mechanic who checked my motorcycle before my trip how far he thought the bike could go, and he responded, "To China and back." By the time I pulled into the confines of the Golden Arches, I was ecstatic - and a cautious believer in my bike’s capabilities. I started thinking that maybe the mechanic was right, that maybe I could ride to China, even if all I ever wanted was a cross-country adventure equally long. I called Anna. "I made it, honey!" I said, feeling like I had just completed my entire trip. With my bike’s health less of a question, my concern was whether I myself could endure thousands of motorcycle miles in such a short time. Never had I traveled longer than two hours on a bike at any given time. I quickly learned how difficult it is to maintain even modest comfort on a stock seat for 200 miles a day, especially on a smaller motorcycle like my 750cc Virago. My posterior quickly became one big stewed tomato, and later I joked about writing a book called How Sore Was My Ass. The rest of my body was more fortunate. Though I was exposed to virtually every weather condition possible on the bike and received my share of sunburns, frozen bones, thunderstorm drenchings, and bugs and debris painfully thudding against my legs, I considered myself pretty damn lucky. I managed to escape earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, floods, volcanic eruptions, lightning strikes and most icy roads with generally good weather throughout. It was as if God wanted me to make my trip and had cleared the way for me to do so, give or take a tornado warning. The wind, no stranger to a seasoned motorcyclist, was probably my greatest concern if only because it could blow me entirely off the road or into lanes full of traffic, as it almost did several times. But I drove on, cursing and yelling at the invisible demon every time it tossed me around. The goal of my trip, of course, was to see as much of the country as possible. So I tried to see it all. Why not? Along with the usual sights like the Statue of Liberty and the arch in St. Louis, I also made a point to visit the more unusual spots. For instance, I insisted on driving all the way down to Key West, Florida to get a picture of me and my Virago in front of a marker signifying the Southernmost Point in the United States. I wanted proof that I had driven my little bike that far in case anyone later questioned the magnitude of my travel. I also managed to find the world’s smallest park in Portland, Oregon, a patch of dirt no bigger than a dinner plate, as well as the world’s largest six-pack in Lacrosse, Wisconsin. My list of visits further included a morbid desire to see Mount St. Helens, and a trip up Mt. Washington, New Hampshire, billed as having "the world’s worst weather". (My parked Virago was blown over by one of the many wind gusts atop the mountain. The part about bad weather seemed pretty accurate after that.) Sadly, I never made it the Barbed Wire Museum in Kansas. Aside from seeing specific sights, my most memorable rides were through places with no famous monuments or odd museums: the Rockies in western Montana, the rugged desert in New Mexico and Arizona, and Pacific Coast Highway in California, where I camped overnight on a cliff overlooking the ocean - an experience I will never forget. Had I been in a car, these awesome excursions would have been merely an irritating blur from Point A to Point B. On a motorcycle, I savored each mile.
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