The biggest challenge so far lies just ahead in 2008. A group of us will embark on an exploration of the American continent, or at least a goodly portion of it from May to July. Our plan is to tackle a route of serious distance and amazing landscapes proving our mettle, or lack of judgement. Accommodations will range from civil to...less so. Roadside motels and camping...alot of camping. Though having Native American blood in my veins I find myself a poor representative when it comes to the ways of the land, and a literal babe-in-the-woods on all things outdoors. This ought to be good.

The trek begins, for some of my friends, from Atlanta, then to Oklahoma City where they'll link with me, continuing through the desert southwest--riding through Monument Valley and its other-wordly landscape where some of the great, and not-so-great, western movies were filmed. Next up through the Canyonlands of Utah and then it's on to the famed Bonneville Salt Flats for a rendezvous with the motorsports-historic blazing white salt plains. We'll ride to the area around cataclysmic Mount St. Helens, kick some...ash, and then move on to Seattle. Bikes will be serviced and shod with new tires at the Ride West BMW dealership after which we'll migrate north of the border to Prince Rupert, British Columbia. Boarding a ferry there for a multi-day trip up the straits, we'll make the ferry home-away-from-home until we hit the Alaska shoreline at Haines. We hope to pay our motorcycle-traveling dues at one of the northernmost townships of that monsterous state (it's larger than Texas, Montana, and California together), the oil worker town of Deadhorse. We all see Alaska as one of the last true bastions of American adventuring and can hardly wait to immerse ourselves in it. We'll explore Canada, rolling south back into the heartland of the U.S. and will ultimately wind up in Key West, Florida. From there, all will return to Atlanta before I travel home solo to Oklahoma.

Our impending moto-odyssey will cover some 12,000-14,000 miles and will devour the better part of 8 weeks...such a hazy distance from my first stuttering attempts to ride again in that parking lot seemingly a million years ago.

The rider line-up will be comprised of great friends from Atlanta I made while their client. Our "wild bunch" will include a few film production industry riders, members of film crews I had the fortune to work with while producing top-rate advertising TV imagery for the "man". After my being cast from the corporate tower, these friends stayed true and caring and most of all, supportive through that weird transition between forced introspection, re-assessment of priorities and finally figuring out what I wanted to be when I grow up.... someone with a license to...live.

Departure date: May 22nd, 2008.