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The rest of us were on newer bikes and had no desire to accommodate the type of riding you inevitably end up doing on a 70-year-old motorcycle: Slow, unpredictable, and with way too many gas stops. If it were up to him, he’d be making this journey “Easy Rider”-style: On a 1950s chopper he’d built with his own two hands. We all had our reasons for going on this trip. And yet, at any given moment, there’s nothing I’d rather be doing than picking a destination, turning up the music in my helmet speakers, and hitting the road.Īnd I wasn’t alone. On a motorcycle, though, either one can easily turn into a life-or-death situation. You might run out of gas or get a flat tire-no big deal in a car. On a cross-country trip, you’ll inevitably wish for warmer gear in the cold, and cooler gear in the heat. After a few hundred miles in the saddle, your body discovers new ways of being sore that you didn’t know were possible. You feel every change in temperature, every bump in the road, every wind gust, every straying bug swarm, every mile seated in the same position-and you feel it across your entire body. Riding cross-country on a motorcycle sounds romantic-the wind in your hair, the open road, that very specific American brand of freedom captured so perfectly in “Easy Rider.” But in reality, it can be a pretty miserable experience. Accordingly, we decided to blaze through the hottest parts of the trip-Nevada, Arizona, and southern Utah-as quickly as possible. On a motorcycle, wearing a full-face helmet and protective gear, 108 degrees of dry, unrelenting desert heat can be seriously dangerous.

Rolling into Nevada in late June feels almost biblical: The closer you get to Sin City, the more hellishly hot it gets, as if you’re riding into the Book of Revelation. Somehow, these images underscore the relentless heat of the place. That stretch of freeway is arguably one of the worst in the west: Nothing but heavy traffic, bleak desert towns, and massive, fast-fading billboards framed by a cloudless sky. On our first day, we made our way from San Diego to Las Vegas, Nevada on Interstate 15. | Photo: Sanna Boman Riding motorcycles can be miserable And despite going from Southern California to Canada, we’d be staying far away from the coast and Highway 1. It was an atypical American motorcycle road trip in some aspects.

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In fact, we decided on it after I saw it on TV and instantly fell in love. Admittedly, Banff was a somewhat arbitrary destination. The plan was to start in San Diego, California and work our way northeast, up to Banff National Park in Canada, while avoiding most major cities and highways. The caravan consisted of my boyfriend Paul, my best friend Katie, Katie’s husband Jordan, and me. In late June, after months of careful planning, we finally headed out.

And it wasn’t until earlier this year that I was able to finally take the cross-country motorcycle road trip I’d been dreaming of, in the saddle of my trusty, all-black 2015 Harley-Davidson Dyna. Life got in the way, though, as it often does. Still, the idea that many of the world’s most spectacular landscapes lay so easily within reach-just a few days of driving away-taunted me. Remove the drug money, and you have a pretty good idea of my ideal vacation.Īs a kid growing up in Sweden-far from deserts, red rocks, and quirky roadside attractions-I spent most of my life romanticizing the great American road trip.

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All while riding cross-country with a gas tank full of drug money and not a care in the world. It’s a cliché, of course, but for bikers everywhere it also speaks to a deeper desire the refusal to abide by society’s concept of time, and the quest for the kind of freedom you only find in the saddle of a Harley-Davidson. A moment later, he and Dennis Hopper kick their chopper motorcycles into gear and ride off into the desert, as Steppenwolf’s “Born to Be Wild” starts playing over the intro credits.

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There’s a scene right at the beginning of the 1969 movie “Easy Rider” where Peter Fonda glances at his watch, then tosses it to the ground.

Cross country detours