Route 66

“If I do get stopped by the police”, I said to the motorcycle rental company’s representative handing me the Harley's documents, “Do I say, ‘haven’t you got anything better to do,’ like I would in England”? He looked at me over the top of his glasses. A lady tapping away at a computer behind the counter we stood at, laughed. It was, I admit, a pretty naff thing to come out with. The truth is I don't think I would say such a thing to any police officer, not now or at any time. Maybe I just wanted to suggest something that was pleasing to imagine.

Within days we were riding through ‘big country’, where, by the look of it, you could build anything you wanted, anywhere you liked. Isolated buildings appeared out of nowhere, then disappeared just as quickly, with no apparent connection to the land or locality. Some were new, bland, and with no obvious use, some were ugly, some run down, and some run down but simply beautiful. These were the abandoned motels that time and just about everything - apart from travellers on Route 66 – had forgotten. Rows of doors of different colours, some dislodged, some upright, but all with paint now flaking, stood amongst the crumbling, once whitewashed walls of these old buildings. Only a few decades before they would have stood proud and welcoming, with tall roadside signs shining brightly though the night.

Our motorcycle thumped along doing what I wanted it to do – be American. But America had changed since my last visit. Cars had shrunk, in the same way ours back home had grown, so that now there seemed little difference in their size. And just like ours, they'd homogenised, so that no matter who the manufacturer, the same curvy, edgeless shape dominated. Trucks still had bonnets, but even they had softened. Gone were the enormous square grills, flat panels and split windscreens. The wild west had obviously been tamed, and it seemed the ‘hard’ rigs were now only to be found in the Australian outback. Big, functional and individual had become efficient, globalised, and normalised.

Well, almost. Somewhere along the Mother Road, we passed alongside a railway for several miles. Every couple of hundred metres or so a road crossed at ninety degrees to both our path and that of the track. So, every couple of hundred metres or so there was a stop line for us and to our right, a crossing for the track. As we rode along, changing down and slowing for each stop line, the crossings began to sound their bells. A train was approaching from behind, and for each crossing it was sounding its whistle. The clanging of the bells, the long, melodious note of the train's whistle, and the Harley's revving v-twin engine, made wonderful music - American music that went way back. The train eventually overtook us - two miles of wagons loaded with 40’ ship containers stacked two-high.