YOU CAN STILL GET KICKS ON ROUTE 66
I strapped on an open-face helmet, adjusted my shades, zipped up my leather jacket and pressed the go button on a Harley Road King.
It was a cold spring morning in Chicago, ahead of me was the 2,448 miles of Route 66 to Los Angeles, and it was the best moment of my motorcycling life.
For Route 66 makes your heart sing more than any other road, and there is no finer feeling than getting up every morning, checking out of a historic motel, packing your stuff on a Harley and riding west.
The Main Street of America, in the 1930s’ depression it carried thousands of Okies on overladen jalopies to the promised land of California. In the war, it was jammed with Jeeps and trucks, and when peace returned, the soldiers came back with their families on holiday, Bobby Troup wrote (Get Your Kicks On) Route 66, and Jack D Rittenhouse published the first Route 66 guidebook. In the 50s, Disneyland opened, Jack Kerouac wrote On the Road, and the lure of California grew even stronger.
In the 60s, hippies hitched the road and CBS ran a hugely popular series called Route 66 about two adventurers who travelled its length in a red and white ’57 Corvette.
Then, the freeways came, and in 1984 the last stretch of Route 66 was bypassed near Williams, Arizona.
But you can’t keep a good road closed, and 85 per cent of it is still there, ready and waiting for you, complete with painted deserts, meteor craters, teepee motels, frozen custard stands, Jesse James’ hideout and the Big Texan Steak Ranch, where anyone eating the 72oz steak in an hour gets it free.
So one of the greatest roads is there, ready and waiting for you. Not for the big truckers and road warriors who race from Chicago to LA in three or four days. But for the rest of us, who are in no hurry, who want to stop and smell the roses, the freshly brewed coffee or the pumpkin pie. Who feel, as the 17th Century Japanese poet Matsuo Basho said, that the journey itself is home.
A home where you can be handed that cup of coffee or that slice of pie from the person who brewed and baked them, or shoot the breeze with someone you have never met before and will never meet again, but with whom in that moment you feel entirely content. So do it. You’ll remember it for ever.
Eaglerider (eaglerider.com) has two-week guided rides of Route 66 from $3,904pp, including bike rental, accommodation and pretty much everything except air fare to Chicago; one-week tours of half the route at a time from $2,447; or one-way rentals from $49 a day.