Motorcycle diaries

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This was published 15 years ago

Motorcycle diaries

Cross country ... the author on her Harley.

Cross country ... the author on her Harley.Credit: Susan Bredow

We arrive in America's Deep South on a wing and a prayer. It seems appropriate given we're headed for a part of the world where churches outnumber petrol stations and all conversation topics are safe as long as they're not about Obama, abortion, guns or God.

Four flights from Australia to Tupelo, Mississippi, involved lost luggage, super-security searches, a broken baggage conveyor, missed planes, thunderstorms and an emergency landing in Memphis after a faulty air-conditioning system filled the cabin with smoke. Shaken and stirred, we finally reach the town most famous as the birthplace of Elvis Presley.

We start our journey here, five Australians on Harley-Davidson motorbikes with an American guide and support driver. During the next four days we ride almost 2000 kilometres through Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, home of the Harley.

Riding on these country roads heightens your senses. You see a lot more, smell more, feel more. And the big motorbikes are a great talking point when you roll into small towns. We've chosen our route to take in as much of Middle America as possible in four days. Tupelo to Nashville

As we wait for luggage to catch up, we visit the tiny two-room cottage where Elvis Presley was born in 1935. Today a splay-legged guide sits beside the bed where the birth took place and relates the event as if she had been there.

In 1956, the singer bought his first home and replaced the newspapers on the walls of the Tupelo cottage with pretty rose-patterned wallpaper and the hessian curtains with lace. Remembering what it was like to grow up without anywhere to play, he bought a large tract of land surrounding the cottage and gave the lot to the local council to be preserved as a children's park.

Our missing gear arrives and the rain eases as we begin our ride on the last 350 kilometres of one of the most historically significant roads in the US, the Natchez Trace Parkway. It's a beautiful road following a prehistoric route used by the first Americans. Later it became the way home to Nashville for farmers who brought produce down the Mississippi River and walked back rather than paddle up the fast-flowing stream.

The Trace (from the French for animal track) was redundant after paddlesteamers were introduced in the early 1800s, until the 1930s when a local politician worked to resurrect it as a national heritage route. It took until 2005 to complete the 700-kilometre road through a narrow corridor of pristine forest, home to deer, wild turkeys, armadillo and the odd black bear.

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The experience is like travelling through a long private garden driveway, stunning and deeply soothing. All other roads in the vicinity pass discreetly overhead or underneath. No commercial vehicles are allowed on the Trace and this is strictly policed. In the six or so hours we spend meandering towards Nashville we're pulled over twice, because of the truck following us.

After the second cop stop, the truck leaves our convoy to meet us at the Loveless Cafe at the end of the day's route. The cafe is famous for its biscuits, which are, in fact, delicate scones. Soon after we're seated, a large plate of scones arrives unordered with home-made peach, blackberry and strawberry jams. On the menu is fried chicken, grits (boiled corn meal), turnip greens, shredded barbecue pork and corn cakes - all the tastes of the South served on plates piled high.

Nashville is about 32 kilometres further down the highway and bed for the night is at the Gaylord Opry, a vast hotel with almost 3000 rooms, each overlooking an enclosed central courtyard atrium with waterfalls and palms. They give you a map to get to your room and you use it.

We know Nashville as the heart and soul of country music and, more recently, as the birthplace of Nicole Kidman and country singer Keith Urban's daughter, Sunday Rose. The town is swollen with stretch limos when we arrive, so we join the traffic in a super-long Hummer and ride downtown to Broadway. Here we spend the evening bar hopping, trying to find good live music (unsuccessful), trying to find a decent margarita (also unsuccessful) and trying on cowboy boots. They're selling on a buy-one-pair-get-two-free basis but despite the seemingly good deal, none of us can bring ourselves to leave the shop with any of them. Nashville to Bardstown

There's no doubt we are drought-breakers. A dry spell in this part of the world might last only three weeks, but it's hurricane season and rain follows us.

We don't fully appreciate the peacefulness of the Natchez Trace until we leave Nashville on Interstate 65 and compete with semitrailers for tarmac. We take a break at the Corvette Museum near Bowling Green, Kentucky, where signs warn us against doing burnouts in the carpark and remind us to check our guns at the door. There's privilege parking for Corvettes and the rest of us, Harleys included, line up behind. This is a shrine to the US's first sports car and the first car to do 150mph (about 240kmh) and there's a Corvette dealer nearby, where you can buy a new or used example.

We turn onto the Cumberland Parkway and we're in the middle of rich bluegrass and horse-raising country. We are also in a God zone, judging from all the road signs proclaiming His presence. I feel like a heathen on a Harley.

The gun lobby is powerful in these parts, too. And each county we pass through has a different law relating to alcohol. They're either wet, dry or moist, which is anywhere in between. A moist town may allow wine to be sold in restaurants but have no liquor stores. In other moist places you can buy beer but you'll have to cross a border to buy wine or spirits. This is assuming you drink at all. Many locals don't.

Our next turn is onto the Lincoln Memorial Highway and to the former president's birthplace at Hodgenville where there is a replica of his Washington memorial on the side of a hill.

Further on, the picturesque Makers Mark bourbon distillery at Loretto, Kentucky, is closed for the day when we arrive but a friendly worker opens up for us.

We stay at a historic converted tobacco barn, Rosemark Haven in Bardstown, where the furnishings are all period with plush four-poster beds and claw-foot baths.Bardstown to Champaign

We head out to Highway 56 planning to stop in the Jim Beam distillery but given we have been to Makers Mark, we ride on. I love this ride, mostly through prairie country with vast tracts of flat, treeless, corn-growing land. The differences in wealth are noticeable; we ride through well-to-do towns and others that are very clearly down at heel.

Lunch is at Paoli, Indiana, which plays on its Italian heritage. Regardless, we eat hamburgers at the local bar and play a kind of indoor bocce.

I'm wearing a white leather jacket that is mud splattered after a heavy rain shower on Highway 105. As we ride into Paris, Illinois, we hit the first heavy traffic of our trip. We're heading on to Champaign for the night, which even with that corrupt spelling is not in a dry county. We eat vast steaks at a local restaurant and I busy myself continuing my cross-country quest for a half-decent margarita. We're obviously way too far from Mexico. Champaign to Milwaukee

Here we make our first and last group route decision and it's the wrong one. After the previous day on country roads, the five of us agree we want to see Chicago. So instead of taking a gentle rural route to bypass the big smoke, we head straight towards the metropolis.

We're well north now and although there are only a few more days of summer, this one is a stinker. We sit on hot idling machines with semi-trailers blocking the skyline as we creep across the city. We can't leave our accompanying truck; its driver is the only one of us who knows the way through this tangle. I catch a glimpse of the black Sears Tower and hope the others see it, too.

When we come down to earth again, we hit roadworks and heavy traffic heading into Milwaukee. There are just a few short warm months here to rip up and repair the roads before the snow comes. It seems the whole place is under renovation.

Despite this we feel excited to have made our pilgrimage to the home of all Harleys.


FAST FACTS

Getting there

Qantas has a fare for $2743 from Melbourne and $2643 from Sydney flying Qantas non-stop to Los Angeles and then a partner airline to Tupelo with a change at Memphis. V Australia has a fare to LA for $1620 from Sydney (non-stop) and $1820 from Melbourne (Virgin Blue to Sydney). From July, Delta Airlines will fly from Sydney to LA non-stop from $1269; Melbourne passengers will need to buy a separate fare to Sydney. United Airlines flies non-stop from Sydney to LA (Melbourne passengers transit in Sydney) for $965. Northwest Airlines flies from LA to Tupelo return from $US212 ($322). (Fares are low-season return from Sydney and Melbourne excluding tax.) Australians require approval to enter the US before departing Australia; register online at https://esta.cbp.dhs.gov.

Riding there

Rent a motorbike at harley-davidson.com. There are only five US states that don't have rentals. The website has a ride planner to help organise your trip. Rentals from $US200 a day.

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