Marilyn Across America

Book excerpt: Follow along on a life changing ride on a motorcycle names Marilyn. See what it's really like to spend a month or more on the Trans-America Trail. Read what no one tells you about life on the road. Before any story is told, there must be a reason. Some reasons are simple. The walk to the mail box for example. It's a very short story with a reason and a purpose. This story is longer. It's reasons and purpose more complicated. But in the end, it's as simple as wondering what's in that box. The one just over the next horizon. Three years before I set off on a solo ride across America on a motorcycle named Marilyn, I sat in the basement of a typical suburban house. All of the lights were out. No one was home except myself. Had there been, I would have likely put on a stiff upper lip and pretended to be fine. Except I wasn't. Guttural animal like sounds escaped my body in a painful murmur that surely was not my own. It could not have been because I had never heard that voice before. Waves of primordial intonations rose and fell. There was no escape. There was no place to hide. I learned that when you cry lying on your back that you get tears in your ears. I learned that all of the control that I thought I had was an illusion. I buried myself deeper into a corner trying to fence off whatever was attacking my core. Anyone witnessing this pitiful scene would have surely thought it was some kind of reenacted Hollywood drug induced nightmare. It was not. No alcohol was involved. No drug of any kind. It was worse than either. Worse because there was nothing from which to withdraw. Or was there? What does all of this have to do with riding a motorcycle along the Trans-America Trail. Nothing. And Everything. Read on to connect the metaphorical dots of one rider's inner journey from that dark basement to the shining ocean of the Oregon coastline.