It's the adventure. It's the food. It's the people. It's the music. Oh, and it's madness to plan a motorcycle trip of this magnitude (New Jersey to Louisiana and back) in February. It could be 60 degrees and sunny one day, and 15 degrees with twelve inches of snow the next. So you keep the plan simple. Pack light. Pack utilitarian. Travel alone ala Michael Parks (Then Came Bronson). Travel alone, because anyone that thinks this would be a good idea is probably too crazy to ride with.

What CAN you fit on an '08 Sportster? Start by turning your Tom Tom GPS into an expensive model by adding a baggy and rubber band. Throw a change of clothes in the duffle along with your camera, ipod, micro laptop, spare collapsible duffles and bungies, and then strap your fiddle (in a hard shell case, in a garbage bag, then in an insulated soft shell case) to the back rest. Yes, just the essentials. Make sure the laptop has WiFi. so you can pull into the parking lot of an expensive hotel, get on their network, and find where the cheap hotels are.

I left on a Thursday night, with the goal of knocking off 160 miles, spending the night at my parents, and avoiding the morning commuter corridor. Wearing my heated clothing and rain pants to block the cold, the 'three hour trip' turned into five, having to deal with 20 degree temps and 40 mph headwinds. The toll guy at the Delaware Memorial Bridge took my money and said the obvious. "You're the only bike I've seen tonight". I didn't notice until I got to my parents, that my rain pants had completely shredded in the wind. The next morning, the sun was shining bright and clear, but it was even colder and windier. It was a grueling ride to the Shenandoah Valley after a couple wrong turns through downtown Washington and Arlington Cemetery, but I had focus. About what I have no idea. Destination Chattanooga. No time to stop and smell the roses. Long, long stretches of highway. You start judging distances by how many songs you can sing or write in your head. It was 10 p.m. when I checked into the motel, exhausted, wind worn, and wet from the drizzle that started once the sun went down. I had been on the bike too long. Off the highway, I had to deal with stop signs and traffic lights. My legs were wobbly and it was all I could do to keep from dumping the bike coming to the stops. I remembered what Jake the Junkman told me as little kid - ya gonna be dumb ya gotta be tough.

Saturday. Chattanooga to Lafayette. Finally a great day to ride. Pockets of civilization are farther apart, so you stop for gas more often - just in case. The breeze is warm, the roads are dry, and I'm now in the land of Community Coffee. Who could ask for more? I pass a sign for Aberrant Alabama and smile, wondering if they need a new mayor. Baton Rogue, the Mississippi River, and somewhere along the way, a time zone change gives me an extra hour. Looks like I can make Lafayette at a reasonable hour, maybe by eight. The last stretch is the long elevated road through the Affachalia swamp and basin. The sun has gone down, so of course, that means the rains have started. It's mile after mile of poor visibility, little shoulder, no street lights, and no overpasses to hide under. My waterproof boots start filling up with water. I begin to wonder if I'm going to end up sharing vegetation with the nutria, or my fingers with the alligators.

But I make it to the motel intact, for the most part, and on schedule. And, almost as a reward for making it through the first leg, the rains have stopped. So I dry off and head to Mulates in Breaux Bridge, where Jason Frey is on the bandstand and creole shrimp over red beans and rice is on my plate. Everybody dances, and everybody dances well. There were times along the way I wondered why I was doing this. Now I remember.

There's something about Church Point that draws me to it. Maybe it reminds me of the New England towns I grew up in. Physically, there's not much to it, but it has the feeling towns had before WalMart, before Home Depot, and before shopping malls. And it's parade day. Everybody's out. It seems there are more horses than people, and just barely more people than chickens.

I meet Alvin the goat, and let him do something I don't do for just anybody. I let him sit on the Harley with me.

There's so much music and so little time. By far, my favorite venue is the Blue Moon in Lafayette. Between the Blue Moon and several other places, I managed to see Horace Trahan, Balfa Toujours, Steve Riley, young accordion ace Briggs Brown, the Frank Family Band, and a slew of others.

Sadly missing from this trip were Lost Bayou Ramblers and the Pine Leaf Boys. Having Friday and Saturday as travel days cuts into a lot of things that fall under the 'must do' agenda. It's a trade off, resolved only by traveling earlier.

Monday is Mammou day. I'm having a difficult time juggling the places I want to go and the people I want to see, and I can't get a network on my cell. As I try, I watch my battery drain. A gentleman sitting with a beer at the mouth of his garage offers use of his cell phone... and a beer. Turns out to be Bobby Dupree, a gracious man into real estate, a couple businesses, and has his own local TV show. His building butts up against the police station, and I'm introduced to Mammou detective Kaylob Simien, cousin to Terrance Simien, winner of the Cajun category for the 2008 Grammys. I also notice the razor wired prison yard, where several guys in orange jump suits are dressing chickens for a gumbo. Even prisoners get to celebrate Mardi Gras. Well, there's no school in parts of Vermont for the opening day of fishing season, so, why not?

Mardi Gras at last! Eunice knows how to throw a party. The parade is huge, the crowds are huge, and the stages pour music out all day long. There's a sense of urgency because this is it.

Tomorrow, it's all over. There's a sign on the door of a shop that reads: Please remove mask before entering. Tomorrow, all masks are off. Throw me something, Mister! It's been an exhausting few days, and it will stay that way for a whie. St. Patrick's Day has become St. Patrick's month in New Jersey, and the performance schedule for my Irish band, The Pale Boys, begins hot and heavy as soon as I get back home. I've dubbed this my Crawfish To Sodabread tour. I'll sleep in April. Maybe.

Ash Wednesday, and it's time to head back. I bungee up the extra duffle full the beads and the rub boards from Key of Z., and a huge bag of gratons. The plan is three days back, knowing full well I'm tired and should travel accordingly. One hundred fifty miles in, I stop for gas, and I see it. A hook on a bungee had broken causing the duffle to hang at an angle. It had rubbed against the back tire, wearing a hole, and bread crumbing its contents along the highway. I lost my camera, my ipod, the cables and themostadt for the heated clothes, my favorite denim jacket, a digital recorder, the power supply to the lap top, and my bag of gratons.. I backtracked as best I could, but to no avail, and I'm burning precious daylight. I make more stops than I would have liked, but managed to pick up new rain pants at a WalMart, but kids, don't even try to find thermals in Alabama. At least not once the trees have started to bud. Finding Harley stores are simple. There seems to be billboards and directions for every one of them along the highway. But this is the South. No one stocks heated clothes and accessories. I make it to Chattanooga without further incident, and pretty much on schedule. But now, I need to adjust my plans, as it's going to get colder as I travel North, and I'm now traveling old school, wearing all I have with me. As long as the weather holds, keep going. I managed to make Washington as the sun set. and as it fell over the horizon, so did the temperature. I'm so close, so I push on, stopping often, drinking coffee, and waiting for the shivers to go away before getting back on the bike. This trip suddenly turned hardcore. Suddenly became an endurance contest. I knew the next day would be heavy rains, so push as far as I can. Under those conditions, thoughts become more and more surreal. How far can I go? When does the body say enough is enough? How do I know when my attention span is exhausted, my focus veers off course? It was seventeen hours straight from Chattanooga to my front door. I made it.

I shut the bike off and walked in my door at 1:40 in the morning. At that same time, unrelated to my trip, and in a town ten miles away, my daughter's husband crashed his motorcycle and died a couple hours later. It can drive one to insanity contemplating the randomness of the universe versus cause and effect within a natural order to things. It wasn't long ago, we were convinced the sun revolved around the earth, based on the knowledge of the time. A line drawing can give the illusion of three dimensions, but it is still an illusion. Finding rhyme and reason for coincidence is flawed from the start. You search for answers, but the paradox is, all you do is find more questions. So what do you do? You just do. You get off your ass and ride. You keep looking. Tomorrow, we all take off our masks.



Thanks to Bobby Dupree as well as Bridget and her family for sharing their hospitality and some of these photos