IT’S holiday time. If you’re like me, you chuck in the extra sweater just in case, then a pair of trousers because they go so well with the colour, then that sweet new dress in case there’s a smart restaurant . . .
So it goes, the suitcase gets heavier, and it’s all in the name of choice. But not when the holiday will require you to sit on the back (or front) of a motorcycle, travelling one of America’s great routes. I’ve done three of these trips, travelling pillion for many thousands of miles. Forget choice. There are the day clothes, a change for the evening — and not much else.
A Harley-Davidson saddlebag measures roughly the equivalent of the cabin baggage that was until recently allowed on a charter flight. Which is to say, not very much. This concentrates the mind and does wonders for the soul — the ultimate exercise in reduction. Leather jacket, jeans (or leather trousers) and boots are the exterior look, but on those American highways the weather can change quickly. At one point, on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State, looking north to Canada, I was wearing a camisole, silk long-sleeved vest and long-johns, long-sleeved T-shirt, fine cotton cardigan, cashmere polo- neck and denim jacket — all under the leather.
Into the saddlebag you stuff a large plastic supermarket bag containing: four pairs of pants, two bras, two T-shirts, two vest-tops, a pair of smart jeans, a sarong (doubles as a skirt), the cardigan, long-sleeved T . . .
That’s it. No room for shopping, no chance of choice.
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I will never forget that glorious feeling of being unencumbered. Stripped down, you move fast, and it’s the movement that matters, on the road.