by Gary Inman

Day 9: Salt Lake City, UT to Sparks, NV
Day 10: Sparks, NC, to Santa Cruz, CA

We’re out of Salt Lake City at the crack of dawn. Every day is a 650km now. The route passes the Great Salt Lake and directly east till we skirt Bonneville Salt Flats. I’ve been to this historic, evocative place twice before, when the cars and bikes are here to have their necks wrung, so I don’t need to turn off to investigate it today. Rather than continue on the boring Interstate for the rest of the day, I turn off at Wendover, the nearest town to the Salt Flats and head on a loop down Highway 50. This road was given the title ‘America’s Loneliest Road’ a few years ago. I don’t know if it was intentional, but it was great marketing for the towns along it, because, it seems, motorcyclists immediately wanted to tour the lonesome route. So, on this Saturday morning, it was busy with all kinds of bikes. And hot. Hotter than hell. Lone cyclists torture themselves along it this morning. And a couple on a tandem, with legs the colour of roast beef. The towns are spread as much as 160km (100 miles) apart on this route, and it runs through a high altitude desert. It’s not easy riding a motorcycle along it, I can’t imagine wanted to pedal a cycle through it. After a night in a two-bit casino town, I leave for the coast and a stunning ride up the Interstate 80, surely America’s most beautiful motorway. It climbs into the pine-covered mountains of Donner Memorial Park, where a group of 19th Centurty pioneers, travelling from Missouri to California were trapped by the snow (if you fancy some grim reading, google ‘Donner party’).

When the road begins to dip to the coast, a Sunday drive of hot rods and kustoms share the freeway.

We continue done to Marin county and exculsive Sausalito directly to the north of the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco. I’ve ridden from Atlantic to Pacific. The first half of the trip is over. Or it will be after 60 miles of the Pacific Coast Highway. Now it’s time to start heading east.

Gary is riding from New York to California and back to New York with www.nicksanders.com

by Gary Inman

British journalist and friend of Dainese, Gary Inman, is on a three-week, 12,000km road trip in the USA. He is writing an exclusive blog for Dainese.

The Plan
To ride a brand new Yamaha Super Tenere from New York to San Francisco and back to New York, in 21 days. I’d been invited by the deranged, English moto-adventurer, Nick Sanders to join a group of riders he was leading on the adventure. Sanders does not sell this trip as a holiday. There are several 500-plus mile (800km) days, but that’s what you have to do if you want to see huge sections of the States in just three weeks.

Day 1
Even before the trip starts problems arise. The motorcycle I’m supposed to be riding, borrowed from one of Sanders’ sponsors, Yamaha UK, can’t be imported into the US, because it doesn’t have my name on the documents. But Sanders, who once rode around the world in 19 days, is used to solving problems. I’ll ride his Super Tenere, he’ll rent another Yamaha.
Then there are issues getting bikes cleared through customs. Twelve bikes have been shipped in a container. Sanders is constantly on the phone to ensure they’ll clear before the weekend. Despite the trip looking like it could crumble before it starts the English adventurer stays supremely calm while he calls his shipping agent in Texas and the customs office in New Jersey.
His experience helps sort the situation, and on a sweltering Friday afternoon, a dozen English and Irish riders and pillions stand in a car park as a container is delivered and dropped, not too gently, on the ground.
The bikes are unstrapped. I take ‘my’ Yamaha. It has 92,000km (57,000 miles) on the clock, a bald rear tyre, stickers old all over its battered bodywork and panniers and no front brakes.
It’s decided Nick will ride it, with me as pillion, to Queens, New York to collect his rental bike. Queens is about 15 miles away, but I can’t work the new satnav. It takes us three, excruciating hours. But we make it.
Now the ride can really start…