50 States in 50 Weeks

By Kevin B Parsons

The Great Recession left Kevin Parsons without a company. In spite of feeling disillusioned with American culture, Kevin and his wife Sherri (“Quilter Girl”) embarked on a journey, traveling on a motorcycle with a pop top tent trailer and visiting every state, 50 states in 50 weeks to capture a clearer picture of America. The book follows the highlights and lowlights of the trip, as well as looks at the current society as opposed to the times of the 60's, where his vision for the trip started, with the movie 'Easy Rider.'

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kevin B Parsons
• Release date: Sep 6, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311976284

Kevin B Parsons

Kevin wrote and self-published Ken Johnson and Roxi the Rocker, a children's book available on Amazon.com. He's also been published in Honda Red Rider magazine, Racer X magazine, Southwest Airlines' Spirit magazine, the Las Vegas Review Journal and Cycle News magazine. He also contributed to Seeking God First, an anthology of devotions, and a number of Writers Bloc anthologies. American Motorcyclist magazine published a feature article of his in April of 2012, with a cover shot and six page spread, including photos. Kevin is a member of the Henderson Writers Group and American Christian Fiction Writers. He has also been a member of Toastmasters International since 2006. He blogs twice a week on www.kevinbparsons.blogspot.com, posts on Author Culture (www.authorculture.blogspot.com) and Geezer Guys and Gals (www.geezerguysandgals.blogspot.com), and is a contributing writer to Choices eMagazine. Kevin has owned numerous businesses in the construction, motorcycle, and real estate industries, in Nevada, California, Washington, Oregon and Arizona. He currently lives in Henderson, Nevada with his patient wife Sherri.

Book preview

50 States in 50 Weeks:

‘Easy Rider’ Revisited

By Kevin B Parsons

Copyright 2014 Kevin B Parsons

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to others. If you would like to share this ebook, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this ebook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please return it to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Please note that while this is a true story,

the name of the Repairer of the Bridges Ministry and the pastor are fictitious.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE: The Dream

CHAPTER TWO: Looks Like Bikers

CHAPTER THREE: Casinos in the Forest

CHAPTER FOUR: You Call That Art?

CHAPTER FIVE: Covered Porches

CHAPTER SIX: It Takes Rain to Make Those Trees So Green

CHAPTER SEVEN: The Church of Four

CHAPTER EIGHT: The Smell of Soil and a Demolition Derby

CHAPTER NINE: Making Spam Entertaining

CHAPTER TEN: You Amish? Then Why the Generator?

CHAPTER ELEVEN: Five Bucks? Seriously?

CHAPTER TWELVE: Hurricanes Really Blow

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Barbeque, Oh Yeah

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Missing-Or Not-The Super Bowl

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Maybe the Guy on the Porch Knows Something

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: I Got a Trailer and if You Have Any Troubles

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Living in a Lava Flow

EPILOGUE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

INTRODUCTION

After getting body slammed from the Great Recession and losing my business, I found myself with a commodity I’d lacked for decades: time. Why not jump on a bike and tour the country? It proved to be not as simple as it sounded. With kids, grandkids, and bills to pay, one doesn’t just hop on a bike and ride. In spite of a plethora of reasons not to go, my wife (not a biker chick) and I decided to tour America for a year, visiting every state on a motorcycle with a pop top tent trailer.

During our preparations, I watched the movie, Easy Rider, a cult classic, which got me thinking: what’s different about America from the 60s? What’s better and what’s worse? Touring the country could be just the thing to find what happened to the America, its culture, and the Baby Boomer generation.

Enjoy the ride.

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CHAPTER ONE

The Dream

1969

Ever have something that sticks in your head and it won’t get out? You just can’t forget it. Like a sliver in your hand, or water in your ear… only forever. It’s there, in the back of your mind, an unfulfilled dream. If it’s big and you’re passionate about it, you might remember when it stuck there.

I do.

During high school my buddy Mike Larsen and I saw the movie, Easy Rider, a terrible movie about two guys making a big drug deal and checking out, touring the country through the South. They made some lifestyle choices we didn’t approve of, but forget all that.

They rode.

All through the South they rode a pair of custom Harleys, through some of the prettiest country ever imagined.

To fully appreciate the phenomenon, the movie needs to be put into context. In the sixties, color television had just emerged, and to see a movie in color was spectacular, the beauty leaping off the big screen. Wyatt’s bike and helmet bore a red, white, and blue American flag motif, and he called himself Captain America.

In one scene Billy walked up on a hilltop where Wyatt stood, taking in a fabulous sunset, the colors—fuchsia, purple, pink, and blue—extended from the horizon and blended into one another, an amazing display of beauty as the sun set over the desert mesa. Other shots included their front wheels spinning along the highway, the chrome spokes glistening in the sunlight. The riders looked at one another and smiled, not a care in the world. Steppenwolf’s Born to Be Wild, filled the theatre, and became as iconic as the movie. Looking for adventure, whatever comes our way.

It’s difficult to appreciate their bikes now. They rode beautiful custom Harleys, much nicer than almost any bike around then. These days a custom bike can get lost in the crowd. Between the earthy cinematography, the wild cultural shift, and the beautiful bikes, the movie became a cult biker classic and fundamentally changed motorcycling. There’s no way to estimate how many Harley Davidson motorcycles that movie sold. Unlike George Lucas’ Star Wars that sold hundreds of millions dollars of related junk, Easy Rider got nothing but royalties.

For me, just like millions of other people, it planted the seed. I wanted to ride. To ride. Even at sixteen years of age, I’d already ridden and raced motorcycles for three years, but the idea of Yeah, we’re gonna go and make it happen, stuck in my head like a deep scratch in a custom paint job. It would take something to get it out.

My high school buddy Mike and I dreamed about a trip for the last two years of school. We’d graduate, get a couple of bikes, and just ride. We would be free, too. It would be awesome. We both owned bikes. Mike rode to school every day on a Honda S 125. On cold days his hands wouldn’t warm up until third period. If it snowed he got a ride.

I started racing short tracks and flat tracks at age thirteen, on a super-hot Honda S 90. I’d bored the engine and done numerous mods to make it fast... relatively.

We’d need some big, fire breathing monsters for our trip.

We kidded ourselves, however. We just dreamed. Like buying a lottery ticket, we used the movie to dream about that Big Trip, seeing America the best, most immersive way possible—on a motorcycle. Instead we graduated, married, had kids, lost track of one another, and got responsible. We lived in houses with white picket fences, working sixty hours a week for that gold watch. Everything that Wyatt and Billy abandoned. Speaking of a watch, Wyatt tossed his watch on the ground as they started their adventure. What freedom! No more slavery to time.

The dream still stuck there for me, still undone, the sliver under my skin that just wouldn’t come out, layers of skin keeping it in with business, family, and all those responsibilities. I couldn’t just run off and ride, could I? Can you? Sometimes the positive answer comes in a negative way.

A tectonic life change came in October of 2009 when my business, Parsons Walls, a residential retaining wall company, evaporated because of the recession and the huge body slam Las Vegas, our hometown, took from the downturn. What didn’t stop was the continuous barrage of specious construction defect lawsuits, something common in Nevada, the ‘business friendly’ state. After thirty-six years of getting up every day and making something happen, the reason to get up disappeared. Our company operated in California, Nevada, and Arizona, the three states hit worst by the building bust. Only the California branch survived.

On November 1, 2009, when I woke up the thought that crashed into my conscious mind was, You’re no longer a contractor. Depression washed over me and hung about for months… years. My relatives and I built this company from nothing to a multimillion dollar enterprise. In a short amount of time we watched our wealth evaporate, wondering when the bleeding would stop.

I spent a couple of years unwinding the business—selling off equipment and finishing contracts. A former employee, who now worked as a local policeman, stopped by as I pressure washed a piece of equipment to take to auction. He looked sharp with his pants creased and shoes shined. After he left I looked at the grease and grime embedded in my coveralls and pondered how things had changed.

The business closed permanently and then... what? Being a recovering workaholic (my wife rolls her eyes at the word, ‘recovering’), I needed a purpose, a goal, something to shoot for. It hurt. I’d worked since I was thirteen-years-old.

We entrepreneurs are egotistical, and my company confirmed it with the name Parsons plastered on truck doors, letterhead, and office walls. As I wound down and sold off assets, the name disappeared one sign at a time. I cleaned it off the office door myself with a razor blade and depression settled in like an old man in a recliner. I felt rudderless, my best laid plans fluttering to the ground like the pieces of white vinyl.

Fortunately, we had saved and invested well, and while we didn’t need to work, our lifestyle changed dramatically. But I still needed something to do. People asked me if I was retired, and I couldn’t figure out how to reply. I didn’t want to be retired. I didn’t want to spend my days in the adults’ only compound, walking the dog and manicuring my ten square feet of putting green grass. The idea of a ride still hung in the back, waiting to be fulfilled.

So one morning, lying in bed with Quilter Girl, we were just talking and… dreaming, really. We talked about everything and anything. I screwed up my courage and asked the question. I tried to sound casual, you know, not desperate, or like forty-two years of unfulfilled dreams hung there. I just asked like it was a passing thought.

Passing thought, right.

How about we take a bike trip around the country? We could do fifty states in fifty days.

Pause here a minute. Highlight Quilter Girl.

This was Sherri, my wife of thirty-eight years and friend of forty-two. She’s great. I mean, I’m biased and all, but we get along like best friends. We are best friends, lovers, partners, the works. But she is… she’s a quilter, and her biggest risk is poking her finger with a sewing needle. Her idea of a fun day is staying at home and quilting. Not your stereotypical ‘biker babe.’

Okay. Hit ‘play’.

She said, That’s crazy. No way am I doing that. Fifty states in fifty days? Fifty states in fifty weeks, maybe.

Now she was talking crazy. Fifty states in fifty weeks? That’s a… a year.

She never ceases to amaze me. Was she nuts? I mean, a bike trip. Not an RV trip, or car trip, or even a train trip. A ‘we are out in the rain and it’s so cold I can’t feel past my wrists’ bike trip. Oh, sure it’s not a piece of crap Harley like Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda rode in the movie. Just me and a bedroll. Right. Perhaps a large tool box to keep the thing running. It’s a Honda Gold Wing, you know, the Moto Bago, an ‘everything but the kitchen sink’ bike.

That bike.

Yep. But still, it’s a bike. A year on that thing, and you get the Iron Butt Award.

She knows, too. We’ve ridden in rain. And hailstorms, triple digit heat, blowing wind, snow, even lightning. The works.

But she said yes.

So, forty two years later, we did it again. We dreamed. Maybe we could take that trip now. Being honest, even if we just dreamed about it could be okay. In some respects, it’s even better. Because you’re lying in bed, dreaming together. You can feel past your wrists. It’s what sells lottery tickets.

So even if we just dream, it’s a lot of fun.

Who am I kidding? It’s been forty-two years already. What if we never did it?

Perish the thought.

Of course, the dream is much different now than at sixteen. We can forget that whatever comes my way crap. We will plan this. Fifty states in fifty weeks. This is way, way beyond head out on the highway, looking for adventure. Much bigger than I ever imagined. We can really tour, check out America and see what this culture is all about, be it better, worse, or the same as George complained about in the movie. And yet, even with our exhaustive planning, we would end up dealing with ‘whatever comes our way’ in the form of wildfires, snow, rain, wind, and a hurricane.

Even though the radio may be playing, we’ll be talking on a wireless intercom, or we may even be riding down the road with heated suits, we can feel our wrists just fine. We are looking for adventure, whatever comes our way. Just older and smarter. Well, maybe not a lot smarter. We will be, after all, still on a bike.

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CHAPTER TWO

Looks Like Bikers

The morning of the launch, we threw (more like crammed) the remaining things into the bike and trailer and left, locking the door of our empty house behind us. No checking oil level, no tire pressure checks—we just warmed up the bike and headed to the pavilion at a local park that we had reserved for our going-away party. We were supposed to leave for a relaxing year of riding, no actual schedule, but arrived at the party completely frazzled. Everyone mingled, checking out the American motif buntings and matching American flag vinyl wrap on the bike and trailer, set up next to the picnic tables armed with barbecue fixings.

Too soon it was time to go, so we made some comments, kissed our relatives, and rode out with a half dozen friends who accompanied us to St. George, Utah, three hours away, for a final meal together. The Last Supper, right.

We were a little scared, a little optimistic, and wondered what adventures and challenges lay ahead. What were we looking for? Freedom, like Wyatt and Billy in Easy Rider? Aren’t we all looking for freedom… ‘the home of the brave, the land of the free’? Escape? Yes. I was tired of the rudderlessness, the bad news every night as the Great Recession trudged on, while the government threw money at it to no avail. Adventure? Yes, just like the movie, we looked for adventure, whatever comes our way.

Yet as we rode on with anticipation, another question remained unasked: Are we crazy? Many friends thought so, and the future held… what? Beautiful riding and awesome vistas, for sure, but what else? Rain and wind, breakdowns, lost, alone, crashes, hurricanes? Yes to all.

After enjoying our meal at Cracker Barrel, we said farewell to the small group, and left with Jeff and Kathie for a night in Cedar City. We set up camp at a KOA whose host boasted about its Best Bathroom Award, and no wonder it won, as it featured tile floors and showers, granite countertops, soft lighting, and piped-in music. We appreciated the award much more than the campground host ever could. When camping in a pop-top tent trailer, the quality of the bathroom becomes quite important.

The next day we said goodbye to Jeff and Kathie and started on our own, riding through the high desert of Utah. What a strange and wonderful feeling, commencing a mega journey on day one. After two years of planning and all the hoopla, we were finally alone, and would continue in the same fashion for a year. How long is a year? Could we really do this? We’d never ridden more than a few weeks. Would we give up and go home? Did we plan it right, or would the weather slam us, winter or summer? Where exactly were we going? While we’d designed a schedule of states, we didn’t plan each one, as it proved to be too daunting. Did we forget something? Leave anything undone? Yes and yes, but we were on the way, and we would deal with loose ends as they came.

Good weather welcomed us in Utah; late April bringing sunshine and warm weather as we headed to Richland. We planned to snake north to Salt Lake City and turn south through Park City, then visit Moab.

Surprise! Hundreds of bikes rolled into Richland where Kyle Petty and friends stopped on their Victory Junction fundraising ride. We met a few people interested in our journey, but most focused on Kyle and their run. What a great man, Kyle Petty, who took his NASCAR fame (and his father’s and grandfather’s) and built Victory Junction, a camp for kids struggling with cancer. Every year he stops in towns across the country for photos and autographs in support of his charity.

Interesting, bikers everywhere around America look like biker trash but most play dress up and have jobs, families and responsibilities, the opposite of Wyatt and Billy, who got their fortune drug dealing and took off with no plan, no goal, no future, really. Thousands of bikers across America ride to raise money for causes. Makes the Easy Rider boys look narcissistic, selfish and pathetic.

Our first contact with a ‘biker gang’ and what a great one.

~

Salt Lake City was the state’s capital and featured the Mormon Temple. We toured the grounds and watched as group after group lined up for their wedding in the temple, a big deal. As they ran them through I couldn’t help but notice the similarities between Salt Lake City and Las Vegas. Both crank out the weddings, though one uses religious leaders and the other features Elvis.

A Mormon man wearing a neat suit chatted with us, whose agenda soon became apparent. He spent his days proselytizing, most likely a hired gun for the church. I thrust and parried with him, a bit of Bible jousting, and he left for easier pickings.

I always wondered why the Mormon church buildings are just not quite as magnificent as other huge buildings of note—like our Capitols, for instance. A tour guide informed us that Brigham Young believed the sandstone would eventually turn to granite. Oops.

SLC also provided an aircraft museum, one of dozens of museums we’d encounter on the journey. I never anticipated learning so much about history and industry over the course of the Adventure.

Next we headed east and south for Park City, where we experienced one of many close calls. We were cruising along the highway (two lanes each direction, much to our disdain—we strode to take the roads less traveled) in the outside lane. Just as a pickup towing a landscape trailer came alongside, one of his trailer tires blew, sounding like a gunshot. Sections of tire shot our way, but fell to the pavement just behind us. If that tire blew a hundred feet farther ahead, or three seconds later...

The number one activity for people on vacation is to shop, and Park City looked to be the place to do it. Known as a ski town, they nonetheless lined up cute stores and boutiques, packed together like the cold weather gear in our saddlebags, vying for buyers’ attentions.

During the boom I asked myself, How much crap do I need? It seemed like buying became a matter of course. After work I would stop by the bike shop and grab something. Quilter Girl embraced the philosophy, ‘She who dies with the most fabric, wins,’ and purchased accordingly.

The bike shop and quilt stores became more like a bar, a place to buy more stuff to fill the ‘need to buy something’ gene. No, it wasn’t a gene. It was developed through decades of advertising and marketing. Somehow it evolved into a need. Gotta stop and get something. Talk racing or quilts and riding with friends. The Park City shops fed the same ‘need,’ people able to buy ski equipment or anything else, for that matter—to fill the need they created.

But how much crap do we need?

We ambled through Park City during off season, the streets empty. The place must rock in the winter, and while the ski runs looked enticing, I knew this place catered to people willing to spend a lot more money than me. Without the snow bunnies, Park City felt a bit sad but hopeful. We headed south.

Being aimless, we decided to investigate possible places to live, along with perhaps finding a job, a company, or a goal—something to shoot for. Moab looked like a great town to live. This town committed itself to adventure. On a Sunday afternoon I decided to rent a mountain bike.

Quilter Girl brought along Ethyl, her ‘featherweight’ sewing machine. Built in the fifties or sixties, the thing is one hundred percent steel, so clearly featherweight refers to its smaller size and relatively lighter weight compared to the sewing machines of the age. It reminded me of the ‘compact’ cars of the sixties, huge in comparison to our minis today. Someone should make one out of titanium or carbon fiber. She would take it out and sew on a picnic table. She set a goal to sew a quilt of our journey consisting of a hundred squares, with two squares representing each of the fifty states.

Quilter Girl chose red fabric for Utah, a great choice. The slickrock hills around Moab towered over the city, huge red sentinels cut against the bright blue sky. Mountain biking proved to be for the stalwart. Nothing flat there. As directed, I rode out of town for two miles of climbing and found the riding area. By the time I arrived, I’d drunk over half my water. I checked a parking area for a faucet; no luck.

The strenuous ride uphill yielded rewards, with miles of trails. Off in the distance, silhouetted against the blue sky trundled a caravan of Jeeps. After catching my breath and wiping off sweat, I set off following painted arrows on the rock to indicate the trail. What a treat. Most of the ride took place on slickrock with views as good as or better than Billy and Wyatt’s, the hills a combination of brown, beige, amber, and red. When I ran out of water I headed back to town. The city teemed with kayakers, ATVs, Jeeps, and vans with white water rafts on top. At restaurants people ate outside and discussed their adventures. I pedaled through town, enjoying the sun, the sights, and the spirit of adventure. This was one of the few days on the adventure that I got any exercise, one of the prices I paid for the tour.

I dropped off the bike and walked back to the campground where Sherri sewed in the sunshine. Moab looked like a great place to stay. And stay.

A local told me that Walmart made two attempts to build there, yet both times the locals prevailed against them. Since Moab kept them out, they only have little expensive shops to purchase goods, or one must drive an hour and forty-five minutes to Grand Junction, Colorado, for those things they can’t live without.

Until now, having only ridden for up to two weeks at a time, we couldn’t comprehend how long and far we would ride. It felt like we could just turn back home any day. We were only one half of one percent of the way through the Adventure; a long and vigorous load lay ahead. We had no clue about the daunting ride ahead, but we had ridden the beginning segments of 50 states in 50 weeks, and that’s what mattered. Plenty of excitement lay ahead.

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CHAPTER THREE

Casinos in a Snowstorm

What’s with Colorado? Often people would see the bike, ask about our ride, and then ask the most common question of the trip: How many states have you done?

Two.

Then they would laugh. Somehow they saw humor in it. I believe many of them doubted our ability to finish the run. But you can’t get to fifty without visiting state two.

Colorado boasts of the Rocky Mountains, towering into and blocking out the sky. Huge, magnificent mountains, craggy and rough, that run right down the middle, splitting the state in half. The views are incredible. But they come with a price.

From Moab to Mesa Verde the weather turned sketchy; clouds building with a threat of rain. The ride up to the mesa was a biker’s dream, with a two-lane winding road through rocks and scrub that flattened on top with high views to the horizon. On impulse, we purchased a National Parks annual pass and a passport, where the user can stamp every national park and monument visited. This changed our ride, as we looked for those wherever we rode. The National Parks provide history and geology, beauty, and wilderness. We stumbled onto a great method to learn more and enjoy this great country.

Mesa Verde featured pueblos made from natural rock, built by natives in the 1200s. They built walls and retaining walls to provide shelter underneath the massive rocks that jutted over their domiciles. I decided to visit Balcony House, though Quilter Girl passed on it, as one must climb a thirty-two foot pole ladder to the pueblo, and exit through a narrow slot and hole, built to reduce enemy visits to one person at a time. I marveled that our society, obsessed with safety, would allow obese and out-of-shape tourists up a crude pole ladder with no rails.

The locals in the thirteenth century spent a lot of time and energy building the walls, retaining walls, and kivas… dug into the floor of the caves seating perhaps two dozen people. Historians speculate that the kivas were for gathering places and sacred events.

No one knows why the natives abandoned the pueblos.

~

Colorado featured so much that we put some miles on each day, touring the rustic Western towns. Durango greeted us with parking meters everywhere, trendy high-end shops and prices to match. It became our icon of slick, superficial, phony cities. We could take the old train to Silverton for eighty-four bucks. Forget it. We planned to ride there anyway. A western town with four sushi bars? Durango became the epitome of phony baloney, fake towns that disguised their appetite for tourist money behind slick imitation ambiance. We kept our stay short.

Silverton felt