C2C or Let Us Boast: We Did From Coast To Coast (Trans America)

The distant coast

Google has calculated that if you abide by traffic laws and regulations, avoid highways and toll roads, it would take us around 61 hours to ride the 5000 kilometres. Two empty numbers, 5000/61. Digital facts. The moment you add some colour to those numbers, the pale ochre of North America, the turquoise of both oceans and the blue of the slightly curvy roads that connect the cities and the tension slowly begins to rise. This really isn’t a demanding journey; three whole weeks have been allocated for those 5000 km. We’ve covered incomparably larger distances in significantly shorter periods of time. But to connect two coasts of an enormous continent and surrender yourself to an America that we’ve dreamt constantly about; this alone, spices up the journey. Nevertheless, this journey, just like 5000/61, a family photo album or any other event, will simply remain an empty and dull statistic if we don’t manage to transform it into a story.

The flight

A meaningless flight on a huge plane. But I couldn’t care less about anything. We brought a towel with us! Somebody had given us a tip on how to reduce the effects of jet lag. Before you arrive in America, you should, if possible, sleep through the whole flight. This time it wasn’t difficult at all because I had barely managed to get 3 hours of sleep over the course of the previous two days. So when I opened my eyes for the first time, this was on the screen right under my nose:

 

Woo-hoo! I look at Ana. She’s still asleep… Immediately after that:

Five minutes later we were in the airport of concrete, glass and fountains, and in the company of a patient as well as surprisingly cordial immigration officer: “You’ll ride the motorcycles to Los Angeles, you say. How long will the journey take? And where will you be staying today? There are a few hotels with the same name in Orlando, what’s the address? No, feel free to turn on your cell phone and find it, there is no rush…” Then we talked about my work as a lawyer, the schools Marko, Filip and Jakov graduated from; he was uncommonly interested in my trip to Iran, the duration, towns, company… However, when I wanted to take a photo of my new friend as a memento, he snapped and in a completely different tone of voice threatened to confiscate my phone… It became a bit clearer why we had to wait for about an hour to get off the plane and then another hour in a winding line with about a thousand other people, out of whom each and every one of them made a uniformed friend and chatted about general and specific life questions. And without any rush whatsoever we finally got into a taxi approximately 2 hours after landing…

Orlando to St. Augustine

The van that was supposed to take us to the garage was in the hotel courtyard at the scheduled time. The sun, the humidity, the tropics… In the yard, a group of fifteen people or so were discussing loudly whether they should stay and take a splash in some pool because of a tropical storm and heavy rainfall that was forecast or ignore the warnings and move on according to plan. Scots and four South African men were arguing: “It’s only rain, the worst that can happen is that you get wet”, Dave Swallinaw was getting annoyed. “I remember one summer ride in Scotland. It was raining for days, but periodically intermittent bursts of sunshine appeared, flooding Scotland with light for the next ten minutes, until it was overcast by thick clouds brought on by wild storms once again.”

Mechiel Lombard, a two-meter-tall South African giant, sensed that he was running out of arguments against the experienced Scotsman in their rain discussion, so he changed tactics: “Do you know that when the water level rises in the swamp due to rain, alligators and wild boars come on the road. So if you’re planning to hit an alligator with your bike it’d better be a roadkill”.

A few minutes later we were already in a garage where about fifty polished Harleys were being prepared for a new ride.

Ours was also here. Enormous and heavy as a rock. I’m trying to lift it up and push it backwards into the shade, but it won’t budge, almost as if it’s glued to the spot, and I’m covered in sweat. Mechiel approaches me and a few moments later -  I’m in the shade.

Paperwork, riding around in circles in the yard, some purchased equipment later and we’re on the road. Two loudspeakers in the front are holding me at gun point and two large ones in the back are pointing at Ana. I’m cranking up the volume!

The only people missing are Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper.

We’re riding on the east coast of Florida and travelling north. The idea is to avoid getting caught in a traffic jam while we make our way towards the west, where most EagleRiders (a motorcycle group that arranged transportation of the Harleys to California) are heading. It was naïve to think like that because, in the vast expanse of America, a hundred motorcyclists are only a drop in the ocean. In return we’re left alone…

Pelicans are above us, some around us celebrate Trump’s victory, and we’re filled with an unrestrained joy of freedom… 

St. Augustine is the oldest American town in Florida. The Spanish disembarked here 450 years ago, and started a colony. The atmosphere in the small town is genuinely Mediterranean; small streets, cafes, people strolling… Who knows what the town would look like now if the settlers hadn’t killed the Seminole, and that American Indians were our hosts today.

St. Augustine at night: 

St. Augustine to Apalachicola

Instead of the forecast thunder and tropical storm, a gloomy, warm and humid morning dawned. Therefore, the only reason I spent the previous night racking my brains on how to spend a day in that small town and not getting bored out of our mind was gone. Great, let’s get on the Harley and chaaargee! To the West!

OK, the music is amazing; there’s no storm and there are no alligators crawling on the road. However, something is still off:

If someone asked me today how to get from our St. Augustine hotel to Apalachicola, I’d tell him:  You take the first right turn, at the second traffic lights go left and that’s it! 500 km later you will have reached your destination. Completely empty road, vast green forest on both sides, you’re moving, but it feels like you’re standing still. The scenery isn’t changing. Maybe Zeno was right when he said that motion is an illusion. (Zeno’s paradoxes of motion: If a body must move from point A to point B, it must reach the middle point first, the one between point A and B. But before it reaches that point it must reach the point between the new point and point A. Then to the next point which is between the new point and starting point A, etc. Since this line or course can be infinitely divisible, one could conclude that there is no motion between point A and B since parts of the course cannot be found.). That dilemma and many others crossed my mind during that infinite ride, that is, the illusion that we were heading somewhere.

Finally, some change: the Gulf of Mexico, but, regardless, there’s nobody around. It’s like the Zombie apocalypse:

America is, so it seems, a country riddled with one-story houses that were mostly built in a style and with materials taught to us by the Three Little Pigs, or at least the two Bohemians among them. Temporality, speed and efficacy, those are the main characteristics of modern America. Perhaps poverty as well? Brick doesn’t fit into that philosophy.

This immensely large country has 320 million inhabitants, but only around a dozen cities with over a million inhabitants. The rest of the nation is spread out over small towns and the one-story houses we’ve mentioned. Consequently, if liberalism lives in the cities, and conservatism resides in the provinces, one should not be astounded by Donald Trump’s success. And here’s a few more pieces of information: A beer with a 20% tip costs around $6. The average salary in the USA amounts to $44,000 annually, and in Croatia $14,200 (both gross amounts). An American can buy 7,300 beers at the price of $6, while an average Croatian can buy 1,200 beers at an average price of HRK 10,00.  Because of that, under enormous pressure, a country of immense beer prosperity must use its strict immigration policy to carefully select which beer drinker will be allowed to suckle on its beer teat.

Today we continue west. Pensacola, Mobile in Alabama, it’s still not clear. New Orleans is too far away, so we'll go there tomorrow and I've been thinking that in this way I’ll solve the problem of Zeno's paradox by finishing the first half of the journey today and then the other half tomorrow. 

Apalachicola (Florida) to Mobile (Alabama)

Yesterday's storm that made us dread alligators on the roads, unloaded its wet cargo, luckily, on someone else, and left us with, for Florida, a relatively brisk morning of about 14 degrees. Never mind, my Harley cheerfully hopped and we headed west. Its “hopping“ trait is relentless; Harley constantly vibrates and shakes during the ride and at traffic lights. I heard that some tractor drivers have an occupational disorder which makes them often lose consciousness from all the vibrations of the machines they have ridden during their lives. Should I see the doctor while I still have time? Or should I look on the bright side: it would be as if someone in your body turns off a switch and you go away for a while. Any more serious implications to this occupational hazard haven't been recorded so far.

Overseas guests consider the act of pouring gas in the US ingenious. Firstly, the gas station refuses to give you gas if you don't insert your credit card; after that it systematically tells you to take out the one you've inserted and try with another one. Once you've tried to insert all the credit cards you have (even the one in my wallet, which according to its contract, guarantees it will work anywhere, like the towel in the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy and surviving the end of the world!) you leave annoyed by machinery and yet at the same time happier and filled with hope going to the kiosk, to talk to the gas station attendant – a man. For goodness sake, we belong to the same species, we'll understand each other.

Then he comes out and – we repeat the entire procedure, one card after another, including the one to be used in case it's the end of the world. Hm, there's some head-scratching… Just a moment, he goes into the kiosk, the manager is on his way! Then the manager also leaves, and the first guy returns: „We'll have to pay in cash!“ „We“, I think to myself but I cooperate and take out my wallet. “How much gas do you wish to purchase?” Naturally, I have no idea how much gas fits into the electric ray… I follow his advice and leave $10 at the kiosk, and he’ll give back the change, if necessary. And this is where we learned that the price of gas is exactly half the price of gas in Croatia. Chaaaargeeee…

The sun has finally started to shine and – here come the bikers. We have joined a small squadron which drove brazenly in the fast lane. The cars in front of them moved away, and nobody was faster than us. Or nobody wanted to be. People are social beings, they feel better if they belong to a collective: Hell’s Angels, a choir, a political party, family. The non-integrated raise doubts and have it harder in life. Considering the risks, I slowed down because they were riding too fast, and we were really in no hurry. It was cool to feel a bit more superior for half an hour; more dangerous? I don’t know if that’s the right word, but that’s also exciting!  The phenomenon of bikers passing each other is contagiously charming. Therefore, always, seriously, always, wherever you are, bikers say hello to each other. The left hand slides downwards from the handlebars and – a discreet hand wave. Even that makes you feel good; the non-integrated have a chance there since they belong to the same brotherhood, but details cannot be revealed because their encounter lasts for merely a second. The only place in the world where bikers ignore that rule of conduct is The Republic of Slovenia. However, that will be the topic of a separate, special analysis.

We’re riding in Florida along the edge of the Gulf of Mexico. The sea is shallow, just like in Istria or around Zadar, something like that, but completely brown. The waves are small, foamy and angry, lifted by the cold winds of a strong gale. I hope it will be possible to stick to the side roads that take you through small towns, farms and intact nature, so to speak, till the end of the journey. Of course, there are no shortages of highways in the capital of automobile culture. They all have three or four lanes. For example, A10 connects Florida and California. But to embark on it, it would turn this picturesque journey into a ride through an excruciatingly nervous and boring tunnel.

Local elections are being held in one of the municipalities along the way. A certain Mr. Curry is running for mayor. Just like with Trump’s supporters, whose photo, Ana, our excellent director of photography took yesterday, political turmoil takes place in roadside ditches. It is interesting to compare that approach with the super aggressive Croatian mega posters which block the sun and flood the cities. They show the same thing here and at home: the same grinning faces. But at least they’re grinning at us from the ditch. Croatia is the way it is because we are the way we are.

And here we are in Alabama

Verde que te quiero verde! Green, how I want you Green. Clean and rural, such a good replacement for the brown Mediterranean. And off to Mobile to get some sleep. The entrance to the city is guarded by a warship, so one starts to think about some other things. The atmosphere in the city is poetic nonetheless.

We’re off to New Orleans!

From Mobile (AL) to New Orleans (LA)

From Mobile through green Alabama, we’ve entered Mississippi quickly. Ocher again, but there’s poverty in the air. The coastal part of this state was devastated by Hurricane Katrina, so entire communities were wiped out. Passing through Biloxi, one of the cities which was flooded by the tidal wave, we see a Croatian flag on one of houses on the coast! Of course, we pull over and at the local marina, we find out that a large Croatian colony settled in the town in the early 20^th century, so it’s hardly a surprise to catch sight of a Croatian flag.

At the marina, we were welcomed by Kenny Barhanovich, a fit seventy-year-old, who takes tourists deep sea fishing on his motor boat. Sadly, we’re moving on, but I’d prefer to get on the boat and spend a day or two in The Mexican Gulf, hoping for an adventure.

America is a country where everything is simplified. Based on the motto: “Necessity is the mother of invention”, things are arranged like this: complete mobility of the nation and temporality of life have determined that the burial of the deceased will fulfill its purpose even if has taken place on a municipal or private meadow, and if a posy of flowers has been laid on the ground instead of a headstone. There’s no place for ceremonies the way Croatians do them.

If you need God’s temple, there’s nothing easier: a garage, a storage container, a converted barn. It’s as unlimited as the imagination of god’s servants. The large number of churches that house numerous sects are also interesting. How can someone decide between the Zionist, Pentecostal, Methodist, United Methodist Church, First Baptist Church, United Baptist Church, Christ Winner Church and Lutherans? Many honestly and wholeheartedly believe in them and I don’t want to offend anyone but I find it really difficult to grasp the difference between them. And we‘ve seen all of them along the way: 

 

In that world of simplifications where form doesn’t play an important role, instead the only thing that matters is what is emphasized, the streets are named after numbers: First, Second, Third, etc. The complaints of how someone has been neglected or that someone’s importance is overrated are discarded!

We come to Louisiana with our legs extended. Water, water, water. There’s water and swamps everywhere. The road has been completely empty for the past 200 km. But that’s the route (rather than the nervous highway) we chose on purpose.

New Orleans skyscrapers are sticking out in the distance. The entrance to the city still doesn’t look too promising. New Orleans was heavily hit by Hurricane Katrina, which is still the topic of many conversations, and wounds are still being licked by the damage done. By the way, an excellent TV series “Treme” brilliantly depicts the dead city’s atmosphere when it slowly comes back to life.

Like everywhere, suburbs are a forgotten part of the city. The city centre and fancy parts of town were rebuilt a long time ago. Garden District has a nostalgic atmosphere of bygone times. The bad news is that only millionaires can afford that whim. One of the houses that belonged to the rich before The Civil War is now owned by Sandra Bullock. It’s always the same group of people, politicians, lawyers, doctors etc. –  that reside in nearby houses. 

Simultaneously with all these other experiences, we’ve picked up the flu. Only God knows where we caught it. It’s not the best news because we have only covered a quarter of the way. Never mind, off to a pharmacy to get some medicine!

Ooops! Wrong department. What are they actually selling here? A Jewish joke: A man notices a nice desk clock in a shop window. He comes inside and asks the shop assistant about the price. He answers that the clock is not for sale and that they perform circumcisions in that store. Disappointed, the man complains why, then, do they put the clock in the window. The shop assistant asks back: “So what do you think we should put in the window?”

What we call a pharmacy in our homeland is the size of a supermarket. Numerous shelves with everything your heart desires. A hypochondriacs’ paradise. A nightmare for us. You can’t get aspirin without assistance. I gave up searching for it and looked for help when I found a tooth filling repair kit. Are dentists an overrated profession at home?

New Orleans and Louisiana are closely connected with food. Of course, with music as well, but most people know everything about that. But food will be a separate topic, I hope. Regarding music, when the sun sets, it comes from all around.  It is so amazing that conveying that feeling surpasses my abilities.

Hundreds of singers, players, all types of musicians that could, in my opinion, be the finalists of “The Voice” or a similar competition. And finally, the last piece of news to reach us from the magazine rack at the St Charles Avenue’s Pharmacy cash register is not good for Robert Redford fans:

Flu-ridden we leave for Texas.

Motorcycling is not for the weak!

Just a moment, before we depart: Yesterday evening we took a photo of an oil painting from one of the numerous galleries in the French Quarter. We were under the impression that red colour could be very decorative against the blog’s black background so we’re giving it to you as a present!

From New Orleans (NOLA) to Livingstone, Texas 

 A difficult night. Our people in NOLA have taken care that each of us gets a pill containing a secret formula which guarantees you to stay healthy for the next few days. A nightmarish night in an oneiric state. Thoughts swarm and wander. Street players and fear demons merrily take turns. The morning barely managed to drag itself up and at the first sign of light my strength did the same. I felt alive again and jumped with joy when I saw Perry Mason, my hero back in the day, as an uncommonly elegant attorney. Another style was fashionable back then: PM was a gentleman from head to toe. There were no ambulance chasing attorneys or shark attorneys then. Those characteristics belonged to the street. He definitely had a hand in my decision to study law; and the fact that I didn’t pass the Med school entrance exam also helped:

After watching the series, we got ready quickly and jumped on our HD. As we leave the city, we pass by plantation owners’ palaces… NOLA, debauched, putrid, and yet irresistibly seductive!

We hit the empty roads again. Business has no time for these motorcycle treats because it’s in a hurry to get some money. Our mission here is a bit different.

Two or three winding turns down the road and 500 km later we are here in Texas. We have our first encounter with their peculiar attitude towards weapons at the gas station:

From Livingston to San Antonio

Thunder started at sunrise. Then it started to rain heavily. The traffic lights at the crossroads across the street started to rock nervously. I ran away into my bed where I continued to cough undisturbed by the weather. It took a long time until the storm was pushed East by the wind. It continued to blow just for us. Ana has a helmet semi-closed with a visor. The wind is blowing so strong that it gets under the visor and torments her eyes which are constantly watery. Then all the clouds were blown away to Louisiana and the sun lit up the endless Texas prairie. 

Livestock. Thousands of heads, cattle and horses. I can’t look away from the beauty of that pastorale, archetypal harmony. I envy those fat cows. First, they eat peacefully and then they stretch out and lie down on a meadow without moving and think for a long time.

San Antonio has been a complete surprise. Who would’ve hoped that at the edge of the desert one would find such an abundance of water, which is so copious that they connected the centre of the city with a river at a distance of a few kilometres. On both shores “lungo mare” and luxurious buildings. Rio taxi constantly drives passengers. 

And so we go down the small river to the former Spanish mission – a small, half built church. The Alamo Mission is a historic battle site in which a few thousand furious Mexicans stopped in front of the entrance of the fort offering truce, under the condition the Texans put down their arms. The fort was defended by a couple of hundred Texans. The call to turn in their arms was refused by the commander of the fort in the same way Spartan King Leonidas did to Xerxes: “Come and get them” and for a keepsake fired a cannon shell at them.

In that battle, David Crockett, a congressman in the House of Representatives at the time (he was elected on more than one occasion) who had volunteered to fight on the Texan side, was also killed.

His death and its circumstances were depicted in a few movies and books were written about it as well.

Was he as melancholic as Bože Petrov (A Croatian MP) in the parliament or as belligerent as Nenad Stazić (another MP); I didn’t wonder about that as a kid. All I was interested in was how to be like the King of the Wild Frontier or how to get his fur hat, at least. Let’s start from there. The fur hat, a grotesque fur ball with a racoon’s tail (my version of it had a hairy attachment which hung from the back and was made from synthetics of some sort) was brought by mum from Trieste. I wasn’t even bothered by the red plaid pullover over a multicoloured red shirt, nor worn out oversized corduroy pants (which my cousins Dorian and Neven had outgrown) nor my ears which never wanted to be close to my head; Davy Crockett was looking at me in the mirror!

At the time, Žiger, a street ruffian, today we’d say a bully, affectionately called Joja by his flunkeys, controlled Bogišićeva Street. Žiger’s modus operandi was to smack you the moment he saw you.

I mostly stayed away from Bogišićeva Street and in this way slightly prolonged my walk to school. Of course, Joja didn’t keep things in order there only, sometimes he would also get hold of you, if you were unlucky, in Vrbanićeva Street. That winter morning, I proudly put that carnival thing on my head and went to school, full of superiority. The King of the Wild Frontier! I pass Martićeva, Tuškanova, Vrbanićeva Street, the school is already in front of me… I had returned to the reality of a Zagreb morning with the dirty remains of frozen snow on the pavement somewhere around 1967 when Žigler shouted: “Dork, what’s that on your head?” He reached me in two jumps and was already waving the fur hat in my face holding it by the tail. I got a kick in the ass and my magic cape ended up on the school coal storage roof. But it was just one of many humiliations, nothing that kills you. Today I occasionally see him patrol the same area. He staggers, constantly carries a bag, but his voice is still eerily hoarse. That man, if historical circumstances permitted, could have ended up as Alexander the Great. Joja didn’t have a teacher of Aristotle’s calibre but Aristotle hadn’t taught Alexander anything anyway. All that Alexander did is contrary to Aristotle’s teaching: mass murderer, he spread the borders of his empire with fire and sword. And connecting the cultures of distant civilizations definitely wasn’t the main objective of his conquests. Neither Joja nor Alexander ever could’ve been the good angels of UNICEF. They were guys who simply enjoyed violence and domination.

From San Antonio to Lajitas

We left the charming San Antonio and the fantastic Emma Hotel at the now standard 10 o’clock. However, I should mention why we prolonged our stay there for another day and didn’t stick to the schedule. Well, in the late afternoon, while we were still marvelling at the splendour and the extravagant design of our one-night home (a Texan biker we met in New Orleans instructed us to go here) and at what an imaginative architect and money can create from a former brewery,  painful expression on my missus’s face woke me from my daydream. A tooth! Never mind! Run to the supermarket to get the tools… Ana’s horrified look stopped me from following it through, so I conventionally asked the concierge to immediately find us a dentist. Said – done, we made an appointment for tomorrow at noon. 

 

All taken care of! Relieved from the burden of an average Croatian monthly pay check, we’re left with the entire afternoon in San Antonio. We go to mass in the cathedral. I grit my teeth as I pass the sarcophagi at the entrance to the cathedral where lie the remains of heroes such as Alamo Travis, James  Bowie and Davy Crockett who I denied the first time I was tempted.

As we move west, the scenery changes. The succulent grass of the green prairie is slowly replaced by short sinewy bushes. There are no more trees but the washed out green of the vegetation still isn’t in retreat from the stone desert.

For the last few hundred kilometres, there are never-ending ranch fences on both sides of a completely empty road we’re riding on. Some of them follow us for over thirty kilometres and when a sign for another ranch appears, the gate and endless fences show up again. We’re in the Country of a colleague of mine, Judge Roy Bean. Actually, everything around here reminds me of cowboy movies, the westerns. Starting with the names of the towns such as Laredo, which we won’t pass by, but we’ve seen its road sign, and also the Rio Grande, The Lost Tomahawk and Wounded Knee ranches. Sheriffs are here too, of course, and there’s the Judge Bean’s courtroom. Here where experience meets the mythical, we hold ourselves differently. The mere fact that your boots tread the same dust as those before you makes you feel you’re somehow part of the history.

Texas is vast, huge, enormous. We’ve been riding for two whole days and have covered serious mileage. And tomorrow, we’ll of course do the same, so we might reach New Mexico by the end of the day. There are warning signs on the road. Enormous red plates: “Hitch-hikers could be escaping prisoners”. Just you try to pull over and give someone a lift. In a bar along the way, where we pulled over to wet our throats, we were welcomed by this sight:

They don’t call 911 in case of trouble?! A woman appears. She is quickly joined by her sister:

I ask them, basically having trouble believing, “Are they real?” The skinny one doesn’t understand the question and responds with what I mean by if they are real. You don’t mess with Texas!

We leave Calamity Jane and rush off to get to The Big Bend Ranch State Park, which is basically a national park. As till now the sleeping arrangements have been dealt with ad hoc, from occasion to occasion. Yet, in this scarcely inhabited area, where two houses are hundreds of kilometers apart, being nonchalant could get us into trouble. We still have 350 km to cross, I hope, we’ll do that in a nice 4 hour long ride.

Regarding the ride, this is how things are: The Electra alone is a huge heavy monster. It weighs 450 kg, then there’s us on top and the luggage and it amounts to over 600 kg. It’d be an illusion to even think that you could use the front brake only. You must press both brakes, otherwise you won’t be able to stop. Everybody can do that while riding on a flat road, but turning on Electra; that’s a different story. If you haven’t sized up the curve well, there goes Electra, and you and your missus end up on the other side of the road in a second. With a little practice, by the way, we’ve covered 3 800 km and barely 40 km on a highway up to now, so you could say that we have it under control. Although, it still kicks occasionally, like today for instance, when we followed the turn wrong. Comfort: after 500 km of riding, your back and legs start hurting. I mean, even though it seems comfortable, it’s a trick! Unlike riding a BMW GS where you can extend your legs and prop them on the footrest, on a Harley Davidson, they’re curled up at a 90-degree angle as if you were sitting in a short chair – for hours. That makes you slouch a bit while riding and after a 5-hour-long drive you’re in pain. That doesn’t happen with a GS. But, Harley Davidson is a cult, and no rational argument can beat that. And that’s why the cult has its followers. We’ve met a German biker riding a Harley and asked him what he thought. He says: “You know, they have a good engine now because Porsche fixed it three years ago…” Yeah, yeah, along came Porsche and fixed Harley’s bikes in 2013. Before that everything was a piece of shit.

It is easy to ride through the western beauty at a pleasant temperature for a few hours. However, gas stations, as well as any other evidence of human existence are scarce. That’s why we take every chance we get to fill up with gas. However, this precautionary measure doesn’t seem to be enough; the more the fuel gauge needle drops, the more nervous we get, so you reduce the speed and constantly count: if the computer shows that there is enough gas for 90 more kilometres, and your goal is set at 130 km, will you get lucky…

 (Do you remember inspector Callahan in Dirty Harry and his ruminations on human luck):

 

Americans are generally unusually kind and friendly people. If your eyes meet, nobody will miss the chance to wish you, wherever they are, a nice day and a safe ride too. Or at least conclude that today is a beautiful day for a motorcycle ride. They are all like that, both white and coloured. Where we come from strangers will say hello to each other on conventional occasions, as well as in the mountains. Hikers greet each other as systematically as bikers. In America, you’ll be greeted by a stranger in the street, a garbage man on the San Antonio River Walk while leaning on his broom. Yesterday, on a completely empty road, where we hadn’t seen a single car in 100 km, the driver of the first car to pass us, waved at us. Smiles and kindness are incessant. Unlike us Croatians, who suffer from all kinds of fears, particularly xenophobia, this is a grown-up and mature nation, so everyone will pay you compliments, wish you something nice or just greet you without simultaneously being torn in two by dilemmas such as if that meant that they were ingratiating themselves to you or that they were becoming more powerful, if not this, then that… A mental asylum!

We swerved from the general plan by taking this ride. We wanted to pop over to Dallas, even more so because a good friend of ours asked us, since we were in the vicinity, to go and ask around who really killed John F. Kennedy. He reads up on that stuff and can’t make up his mind between a few theories. Basically, it’s all the same to us if we take the more northern route to go west or the one we are taking right now. But in the roadside bar where Calamity Jane keeps everything under control, we met three Arizona bikers (riding BMWs!) who instructed us to go to the ranch we’re going to now, because we wouldn’t regret it. Since this trip is predominantly a road trip, we’ll solve JFK’s assassination some other time.

Dusk was falling when we arrived – using the last drops of fuel.

From Lajitas to El Paso

Today, according to the Arizona bikers’ estimates, a demanding 200 kilometers of winding road which is situated along the Mexican border and, of course, the Rio Grande, lie ahead of us. The river was given its pretentious name by a tired and thirsty Spanish conqueror. It doesn’t deserve it at all; small and shallow, it merrily meanders along a shallow canyon.

With the morning sun on our backs, without a single car on the road and only a random biker here and there, we were on the road to El Paso. We had a few hours and 350 km left to reach it. A mere nothing. These distances, in a country where a thousand kilometres doesn’t impress, really means nothing at all. Many years ago, on a vacation in the wilderness of the Canadian Rocky Mountains, I remember that we felt like having a beer after we’d tied up and fed our horses. That was a piece of cake; after driving for 100 km on a wide dusty macadam road we finally managed to get some beer! The road we’re riding on is a flat line, prairie on both sides, probably a part of a colossal ranch since I haven’t even seen the gate. Well, you can’t say that we’re enjoying ourselves all the time; the scenery hasn’t changed for the past two hours. The sky is visible from horizon to horizon. The blue mountains in the distance are standing in the same place where they were the moment we left. Here and there a vulture is nibbling on a carcass. The only excitement comes in the form of the fear of an empty tank. Counting… For goodness sake, am I supposed to carry buckets with me?

And time is slipping away… Maybe Aristotle was also bored when he dedicated his omniscient mind to contemplating time. He wondered; what is time? What do we measure by time? Body movement? Would there be time if there were no people? Would the visible world exist if there were no people to observe it? And so on. There is no end to this flat line. Excuse me, there was a curve, a mild barely noticeable one… I’m slowing down to 80 km/h. Everything is the same again… And yippee, that is, in slow motion, y-i-i-i-i-p-p-e-e-e-e-e, here we are in the suburbs of El Paso. It has spread out like dough, warehouses, dust, sand… However, people here are employed and they can plan their future. On the other side of the Great River, across the bridge, is the Mexican city of Juarez. Geographically, their relationship is the same as between Croatian and Bosnian border towns of Slavonski Brod and Bosanski Brod. Life is hard there, not many of them can plan their future. In the amazing Mexican film, Cartel Land, which was shown at The Zagrebdox Film Festival I find out that the crime statistics in 2015 were as follows:, 3 murders were committed in El Paso, whereas in the neighbouring Juarez 13,000!

Tomorrow we’ll reach Deming, New Mexico and, I think, the first Indian reservation. Then on to Arizona and more Indians. We’re done with Texas. It took us three full days.

Just a remark for those who’ve joined in late. The red background in the text signals a hidden link which will take to you to where you’re supposed to go. It takes just one click on it and your journey will begin.

From El Paso to Silver City (New Mexico)

Today we’ve roamed around New Mexico. First, we went East to check the White Sands National Monument of New Mexico. It is a completely white desert made of fine sand like talcum powder which formed only a few thousand years ago, because the southern winds that blow here, obviously only since the last millennium, carry mineral deposits which grind against the ground thus becoming smaller and smaller, crushed and…  There’s white sand. It was nice to see it, but my temperament needs something stronger. Yet Ana oohed and aahed! 

Then we went back south, and after that westward. We stayed briefly and rode for an hour on Interstate 10 which connects Florida to California, and managed to squeeze in everything we’d planned for today. That’s how we could’ve chosen to make our journey, of course, but the stories would’ve been completely different. Being on these empty roads in this infinite space is an odd experience. You’re not constantly bursting with joy for being exactly where you are but there’s no dissatisfaction either.

What had to happen here was that one of the immigrants, must’ve been a strict, Jesuit type, named a city “Truth or Consequences”. It sounds more like an inquisitor’s scream to a man who’s being tortured, in other words, a threat, a political plan which will be enforced by the City Council. Now, when you answer the policeman’s question what your place of birth is, and you, looking straight into his eyes, answer Truth or Consequence coldly, will he pull out his gun? When I asked for the nearest gas station, the girl at the store chirped: ”In Consequences”. I don’t know what I would have thought if I hadn’t seen that sign and I hadn’t a clue that that was a small town’s name. It’d be even worse if the answer was: “In Truth”. But the city of Roswell is very close and that should explain some things.

From Silver City to Phoenix (Arizona)

Since we passed through Truth without any Consequences, we stopped at Silver City and went for a cowboys’ dinner at Wrangler’s Bar, slept over in a modest and comfortable Holiday Inn Express Silver City Hotel and started our journey through the Apache and Hopi Indians’ country the next morning.   

Along the way the stormy history of the mountains of Gilla Valley on the New Mexico and Arizona border is told by numerous historical signs. A unique open-air history museum.

Judge McComas and his wife were killed at this spot and his six-year-old son was kidnapped by the Apache in 1883.

At this spot, two sheriff’s assistants were ambushed while pursuing Apaches who had stolen 45 horses from  some early settlers.

This historical sign is noticeably riddled with bullet holes.  Since we haven’t seen a single sign that witnesses the sufferings of the opposite side, this must be the response the Apache from the nearby reservation gave to the history written by winners.

As we travel on the Old West Highway through a scarce semi-desert region, it makes you wonder how it’s possible that this region was the reason behind such a dramatic and tragic history. But, it’s a stupid question, because domination, expansion and conquest are part of the main program of the human species. Historic circumstances made sure the winner that time was the White Man. 

Only when the Apache were completely subdued and moved to reservations, the brutal history of the Wild West took a romantic shape, and people started writing stories and novels and making movies about it.

Geronimo or “One Who Yawns” was born in an Indian camp in the Gila Wilderness. He became the symbol of the Apache resistance due to numerous successful actions he led against settlers and their army. He surrendered three times with his troops and escaped three times from reservations at different locations, not able to accept the limitations of life in captivity. When he surrendered for the last time, he received POW status, and spent the rest of his life farming on a piece of land which was given to him. He died in a military hospital in the early 1900s.

Today Indians live in favelas within reservations. Alcohol and drug abuse are a deep-rooted problem. Before we entered Bypass, through which the main road takes us, at the store, where we stopped to have coffee, we were warned benevolently not to stop at all cost at the beginning of the reservation because that decision could prove to be dangerous. “People disappear there on a daily basis.”, said the shop assistant. She claims that the settlements at the very beginning of the reservation are dangerous, but that we can stop and take photos with no fear deeper in the reservation. Indeed, who would gamble fate over things that don’t deserve it, so the director of photography took a couple of photos as we passed the “dangerous” entrance to the reservation.

The Cultural Centre door which is situated in the “harmless” part was firmly closed, although the working hours sign spoke differently. Due to growing crime rate problems, the federal government passed The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act in 1988 which allows Indians to freely open casinos in the reservation area. The idea was to use the income to improve the living conditions of Native Americans, nowadays the official term to refer to Indians. Since then, many casinos, which deal with huge amounts of money, have been opened. However, the project is connected to numerous contradictions, as always when money is in question. Since it was along the way, we took a peek at one of those casinos:

Later we stopped at the small town of Duncan, where the living conditions, compared to the end of the 19^th century when it was founded, have changed to the extent that the road was paved, electricity was introduced and a gas station was built. 

By the way, a terribly strong south west wind keeps blowing during our entire ride today. Due to the strength of the wind, a red warning has been issued for the Arizona area. The South African bikers who are in the town of Flagstaff north of Phoenix have informed me that they’re giving up on visiting the Grand Canyon due to the strong wind and that they’re staying at the hotel until the storm passes. The wind keeps slapping us left to right, but HD with all its weight is firmly glued to the road so we travel without any major problems. That wouldn’t be possible with a BMW! Only on rare occasions such as when we pass a big semi-trailer truck, the wind accelerates even more due to the weight of the speeding truck. Only then, let’s say, we wobble dangerously. But on that straight line an incoming eighteen-wheeler can be spotted miles ahead so it can’t surprise you.

That’s all folks! Tomorrow, if we’re lucky, we visit the Grand Canyon but in an original way! Stay tuned!

Addition: SHOOT TO KILL

When in Rome, do as the Romans do. Here guns are purchased freely and without limitations. Automatic, semiautomatic, whatever your heart desires. An ice cream parlor for serial killers. A warning in our hosts’ yard:

We went to a guns and ammunition Supermarket  to browse through the store.

Before we buy anything, we’ll try out a couple of assault rifles and something from Smith & Wesson. My Balkan blood, the moment you smelled gunpowder, started rushing, and the freak from The Walking Dead wasn’t convincing enough as a target. If only it blinked…

The freak didn’t stand a chance. It was riddled with bullets from head to toe from a distance of over 20 m.

We went home happy and reassured when we saw with our own eyes that love of guns is cultivated from an early age. 

Dear readers. After an exciting journey, our motorcycle broke down and we had to stay put on a road in the mountains of Northern Arizona not far from the small town of Flagstaff. It snowed here yesterday and it’s eerily cold. We’ve found a bar where we keep warm while we wait for help.

I write this sketch, which isn’t standard protocol, to thank you for your patience and interest that you’ve shown in our stories. Up to this day, this site has been visited 8000 times. This number is extraordinarily high and I really didn’t expect it. Because of that –  I thank you.

Tomorrow, in return, if technical conditions allow and are met you will get a mystical story because today’s experience was exactly that.  The motorcycle breakdown was only a small hiccup. 

SECOND ADDITION: Mother Earth

Anyone who’s interested will find out all about the history of the cleft and all the geographical facts of The Grand Canyon. Not one piece of information provided by Google nor any other source, not even the one you get from the list of World Wonders, will be able to convey the first hand experience. Unfortunately, everybody must do it on their own. National Geographic is of no help here. This crack was kept safe by the Navajo Indian people until others seized it.

In beauty may I walk;
All day long may I walk;
Through the returning seasons may I walk.

Beautifully will I possess again.
Beautifully joyful birds

On the trail marked with pollen may I walk;
With grasshoppers about my feet may I walk;
With dew around my feet may I walk.

With beauty may I walk.

With beauty before me may I walk
With beauty behind me may I walk
With beauty above me may I walk
With beauty all around me, may I walk.

In old age, wandering on a trail of beauty, lively, may I walk.
In old age, wandering on a trail of beauty, living again, may I walk.
It is finished in beauty.
It is finished in beauty. 

(“In Beauty May I Walk”, a Navajo prayer)

This experience has shaken us badly. We weren’t kind to the refugees, the wrong people are leading us now and the wrong ones lead us, things don’t look good… And the cleft that opened up 6 million years ago will tell us something, sooner or later. I don’t think it will be fine. We’ll take action and make changes. We’re moving on.

Long legs, bikini clad girls, blue-eyed surfers, The Pacific, easygoing people. The sun and warmth. We’ll connect the two oceans, California!

From Phoenix to Santa Monica, Los Angeles  

We’re still here, the Missus is still sleeping and I’d prefer to fly. 

  

We’re not going to search for gold but a fever is in the air. Who knows if there was anything besides mere digging in the read soil?

Phoenix is well maintained, clean, without any graffiti, a city which has grown in the desert. It is the home of approximately 4.5 million people. It took us over an hour to cross approximately 70 km of city streets, riding from one side of the city to the western exit. Numerous traffic lights, semi-highways, highways, then again traffic lights, there was no end to this ride, and our journey had yet to start. 

Finally, the exit, the desert and – chaaarge…

The road is empty, not a living soul around, only the odd motorist in the opposite direction. We weren’t alone after all! They were stalking us! How did he manage to camouflage himself so that I didn’t see him? Of course, we rode too fast.

Obviously, the photos were taken after we had already become friends and by then we had spent around half an hour scorching in the sun. He brought the verdict in an envelope and offered a few options: either I pay the fine online and all will be forgotten or I will appear before a judge in Sonoma, Arizona on May 8th and present my case or I’ll take an online course which is 4 hours in length under the name “Defensive driving”. I still haven’t made a decision, I have five days to think about it.

Is it numerous cases of police brutality or naked human fear, it isn’t completely clear, but when the police turn on their flashing light and put on their loud music, everybody stops dead. Even those who are on the other side of the road. And so they stay put until it’s completely clear who is the police’s prey. Then, slowly and carefully, the ones who have nothing to do with the police action, continue their journey. In the amazing documentary “Making a Murderer” it was realistically and vividly shown that the police, if they don’t like you, can change your life.  Unbelievable! We’re still riding through the open-air museum. At this spot, in 1887, five travellers were ambushed and killed by the Apache.

We entered Los Angeles at around 4 in the afternoon. At 6 we got to our hotel! Those two hours were a nightmare which numerous inhabitants of this city go through every day when they go to and return home from work.

Since the official part of the journey ended by connecting two coasts, we’re left with a few local rides. Yesterday we spent a day sailing along Venice Beach and Santa Monica beach. The enormous Marina del Rey is a home to thousands of sailboats and ships. But when you ask yachtsmen, as well as motorboat owners where they go on sailing trips, they answer: Well, you know…”, mostly it all comes down to sailing up and down the coast, along the beaches, and occasionally to Santa Barbara or Malibu. There’s hardly a small island off the coast of California so if you’re not planning to go to Hawaii, the only thing you have left is sailing back and forth like we did yesterday.

We’re off to San Diego, but before that we’ll mill around aimlessly on Venice Beach. I guess we’ll find a sight to continue our report with.

Venice started as a bohemian part of LA, and today it enjoys the reputation of a rich neighborhood because the rich, in their mostly empty lives, are irresistibly attracted to originality which they, if they are given access to it, turn into something exclusive, and that builds their reputation. In Venice you can see super expensive beach houses in the most imaginative torrent of architectural acrobatics on one side and all kinds of freaks and, of course, a large number of homeless people who gather here because it’s relatively warm and it rains rarely.

Homeless people gather on the beach:

Weirdos doing all kinds of things: One gives “shitty” advice for a $1:

Others give their blessings for free:

And here you can get a doctor’s certificate for $40 that you need marijuana for medical reasons, then you use that certificate to buy it in a pharmacy.

We’re off to San Diego!

San Diego is situated on the US-Mexican border. As El Paso is the other side of the same coin as Juarez, so San Diego is to Tijuana. It’s taken us a bit more than 5 hours to get to a city which is 200 km away from LA because we passed through numerous small towns – summer resorts where we stopped to have coffee, juice… Basically the ride from LA to San Diego was along the beach so the cloud of joy we floated on above the world was made by the vastness of the Pacific, surfers, swimmers and a laid-back flexible attitude of American drivers while driving. In some places the traffic jams are the same as when you pass through Omiš in summer. You can’t hear a single horn here, everybody is smiling at each other:

There is another unique thing we’ve established by observing the traffic during this journey – already 6000 km so far. The cleanliness of the cars! On this journey, not even in the cities, we have, literally, not seen one dirty car. They are all shiny, clean and polished. Naturally, the same thing applies to trucks. One must add, regarding trucks, that some of them are really sexy and that I picture myself riding one of those beauties in one of my future lives. Those are, of course, homes which provide considerable comfort. One of the photographed ones even has a satellite dish which like the ones on yachts that can set itself in the optimal position for satellite reception.

San Diego is the principal homeport of the United States Pacific Fleet. Occasionally a military aircraft flies over the city accompanied by an “end of the world” type thunder.  You also have to duck while walking around the city because the airport is practically in the center of the city, so the planes, as they land, fly unusually low touching the roofs. That’s why it’s forbidden to build buildings more than four stories tall. Allegedly, it is the most dangerous airport in the world.

America alongside kind Americans, gorgeous nature, amazing provincial roads and clean cars is home to excellent beers with which we started this journey. Unlike washed out watery Žuja (industrial Croatian beer) and Karlovačko beer (same!), with the exception of the honorable Tomislav beer, excellent beer is drunk here, as well as full-bodied ales and numerous types of craft beer, of course. And this is what we have eaten:

Lobster and shrimp and other finger-licking food on the East Coast at the Red Lobster Restaurant. Excellent!

 

Fantastic soups and fish in Alabama!

Chili in Texas, of course! And something wrapped, but very tasty.

An exclusively tasty breakfast at San Antonio Emma Hotel.

 

And a profuse Mexican pig-out in El Paso:

A Mexican brodetto in two varieties, excellent again, as well as prawns on skewers in Arizona:

A barbecue in California – pork ribs, beef ribs – absolutely irresistible and sliced pork butt – so, so.

Most of the food we’ve eaten was excellent and there was too much of it. 

Now we’re off to look at some ships. And the zoo!

We went to see Midway, an aircraft carrier, which is the number one tourist attraction in San Diego. Walking on the decks, bridge and engine room of the super aircraft carrier is an original experience. It is so large that it couldn’t pass through the Panama Canal. It was retired 15 years ago, and war veterans took on the role of excellent guides. On this monster, at any given time, there were 4500 crew members, marines, pilots…

We also visited the Island of Coronado and had a margarita at the Hotel del Coronado. Fifty years ago, miss Marilyn Monroe probably had a margarita as well when she was shooting “Some Like It Hot” with Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis. The hotel is still spectacularly lavish, but nobody wears a tuxedo anymore:

I thought that we were done with food and that we had tasted all the important flavors of America. But in this glitzy small town there is a steak house in which, when they bring the steak to the table, ask what kind of knife you want: a Japanese, French or American one?! Ana, naturally, knew right away which one to choose! And I told the waiter to give me whichever he thinks would cut through the steak.  Steaks are presented for inspection before you order, like fish is back home: 

And when they brought them cooked to the table, it was a holiday for the palate.

And as a good bye here are a couple of street scenes from Coronado (in the background you can see the San Diego skyline):

And San Diego skyline at sunset:

In the end

Today we have reached the very end of this interesting study tour. We return to Zagreb tomorrow. We’ve crossed 6400 km and connected the coasts of two oceans. We’ve ridden on empty roads through the American wilderness feeling not only like observers but also like active participants of the scene through which we rode. Driving in a car is tiring because watching TV is also tiring. The window and roof of the car interior are just a different frame of a televisual and passive experience. To ride on a motorcycle means to gain the complete experience of active participation. Was there a nicer place? Where was the nicest? Those questions will remain unanswered. Once the goal of the trip becomes the trip itself, then the answer to these questions becomes irrelevant.  Or as Robert Pirsig said in his book “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”: “Sometimes it’s a little better to travel than to arrive”.