Across America by Motor-cycle

by C. K. Shepherd

I did not waste much time on the road. Fortunately there was a good proportion of concrete road, although the inevitable natural gravel was not by any means conspicuous by its absence. I also passed many stretches of brick road.

This variety is confined in England mainly to city streets, and is associated nearly always with trams. Not so in America. On the main roads of the East I have passed many a ten-mile stretch of splendidly paved highway made solely out of good red brick, and of the correct size and shape and camber of surface that literally made one's tyres hum and sing as each brick was momentarily touched in endless procession. I need hardly say that for every good stretch of brick road there are umpteen bad ones though, just to add a spice of life à la grande route. Here and there one would encounter by no means solitary patches where apparently some enterprising farmer had torn up a few bricks from in front of some one's house to repair his cowshed or to build a new pigsty, or maybe to help put another storey on his house. There would seem to the lay mind such as my own to be a most decided disadvantage in this method of road construction! To put it mildly, it is disheartening when one is enjoying a fifty-mile-an-hour sprint on a straight stretch of road visible almost from horizon to horizon, to be rudely awakened from swift but peaceful contemplation of the beauties of nature, the loveliness of the atmosphere and the joys of motoring by being mercilessly thrown on top of the handlebars with one tremendous thump. At one spot of which I have very vivid recollections, the road took a short dip down and up again. In the bottom of the "valley" thus formed was a young but aspiring cañon where a wayward stream had left its prosaic path to strike out in life on its own across the road. Its presence was unfortunately undiscernible until close acquaintanceship was made.

When I came round I was vaguely conscious of something having happened, but as the engine was still running and the front wheel was still fairly circular, I got up and rode on, but not until I had arrived definitely at the conclusion that had I been doing sixty instead of forty-five I should have jumped across the bit of road that wasn't there and been hardly the wiser of it!

Here it was that I began to scratch crosses on the top tube to keep count of the number of times I was thrown off on the whole trip.

When the top tube got too short I put them on the front down tube.

When that was full I scratched them on the bottom tubes.

After that I trusted to memory. But that was when I got to the "Far West."

I made good time, however, in spite of an occasional set-back, and looked forward to completing three hundred and fifty miles that day. With luck I should reach Cincinnati the next, and then, oh for the joys of a good hot bath, clean clothes, well-cooked food, and last, but not by any means least, good company. And I wasn't forgetting either that I had only about twenty-five dollars in my pocket. With no mishaps I should have enough and to spare for even three or four days' travelling.

It was not yet midday, and the sun was getting very hot indeed. Moreover, I was getting hungry. Although I believe the two-meal-a-day system to be an excellent one, one sure gets a roaring appetite for breakfast at the end of a hundred-mile ride. So if I had not a moral excuse for a little real speed work I at least had a physical one. The road surface now changed from red brick to dazzling white concrete as in the far distance the Alleghany Mountains, that inexpressibly beautiful range that stretches parallel with the Atlantic coastline from Maine to Georgia, loomed gradually higher on the horizon, its varying tints growing deeper and deeper as mile after mile flew by.

There was hardly a soul on the road. Occasionally I would pass a touring car loaded up with human freight and with luggage bags, bandboxes and portmanteaux piled up and strapped (and sometimes I think glued!) to every available mudguard, wing or projection that was large enough to accommodate them and quite a lot that weren't. Then a hay wagon flew by, and then, after a few miles, a solitary farmer on horseback—not at all a common sight in this land of Fords and motor-cars. And after a few more miles a tiny black speck came into view on the horizon. It took a long time to catch up. When I got closer I made it out to be a Buick roadster, its two occupants, a young man and his (apparent) fiancée, evidently enjoying a little spin in the country. And he wasn't crawling either. A touch of my electric horn (oh, a beautiful horn it was!) aroused his soul from its soliloquy and he drew in to the right, waving me on vigorously as he did so. And as I passed him he seemed to quicken a little. I glanced sideways for an instant and spotted a gleam in his eye. So I accepted his unspoken challenge and glanced now and then over my shoulder. He was hanging on well, his six cylinders to my four. A mile was passed and he was still just a little way behind. The road was clear and straight, so I opened out a little more.