Cheesy Rider: A Wisconsinite Discovers America by Matthew Bey Dedicated to my cousin Mandy Thanks go to all the people I met on the road and in Austin. Both those I included in the journal and those whom I omitted. A special thanks to all those who did me a good turn and gave me a kind word when I needed it most. Preface My name is Matthew Bey, but please call me Ingvar. Even my mother calls me Ingvar. This book is the detailed account of the approximately 10 months I spent on the road in 1998 and 1999. In that time, I left Wisconsin, everything familiar, and most everything I owned, to ride my motorcycle around the country. The trip was a long time in coming. Like most everyone else my age, I was in the throes of a quarter-life crisis. By the time we reached twenty four, my generation had either completely missed career success, or we had found it and despondently asked, “Is this all there is?” I had missed success, and by my own criteria, made a horrible mess of my own life. After coasting through college and achieving almost nothing of note, I spent a year working a night-shift in a gourmet bread bakery. I lived in the most dismal apartment I could find in Madison, and I dated a woman who seemed to suffer bi-polar mood disorder. I had failed my own life, and I blamed only my own laziness and cowardice. The trip was a sort of practical suicide. I wanted to sever my connections to friends and family, destroy everything that I had been. Of course I didn’t quite succeed in doing so; the bonds of friendship and family are considerably stronger than the distance between Wisconsin and Austin, but I gave it my best shot. My self-hate made a lot of progress in destroying what I had been. I left the bulk of this book as I wrote it; a day-by-day journal filled with the musings and uncertainties of a young man going through personal upheaval. From the perspective of who I am now, the voice seems naive and clumsy. But it should have relevance for the curious reader. Before the Road Monday, August 3, 1998 After karate practice, I stopped at a cafe to write in my journal and celebrate wearing my first black belt. The instructor loaned me an old one because he had left my permanent black belt back at his house. When he told me that I passed the test, I couldn't quite wipe the smirk off my face. It had been far too long in coming. Shodan had taken on a quality of elusiveness, the black belt at the end of the rainbow. With my spotty attendance record and history of changing to a different martial art every year, I thought I might never achieve this rank. But I did, and I could take satisfaction in knowing that, just this once, I didn't do something entirely half-assed. I tend to compare the black belt with my college degree. Like the black belt, it took me too long to get my Bachelor’s of Science degree, a whole five years, but when I did I had two majors to show for it, one in Philosophy and one in Communication Arts, the University of Wisconsin’s equivalent of a film degree. I like to think of myself as a film person, but I haven’t had the money to do any serious film work since I started saving for the big trip. What really shames me is that, after graduating, I spent an entire year in Madison, Wisconsin, doing scut work at a bakery while all my friends moved to the big city and began actual careers. I may be slow at leaving town, but give me enough time and I might just get it right. Just after my sensei told me I got a black belt, I told him I would be leaving the club. In two weeks, I would leave town, possibly forever. My University of Wisconsin certified daily planner was penciled black for the next two weeks. After that I had nothing. Ever. If nothing drastic happened before noon on August 14, then I would have greater freedom than at any point in my life. There would be no plans, no obligations, no unfulfilled expectations. No lease payments. No debts. No job. Many people go through their entire life without being this free of agenda. I don’t blame them, it is an extremely frightening state of mind. I am 24 years old, and it is time that I took some pretty big risks with my destiny. Motorcycle repairs will be greater than anticipated. My ex-roommate Adam sold me a bike with the exhaust broken clean in half. It had to be replaced but tomorrow it's due back from the shop. They haven't called about any further cataclysms that I need to deal with, so I presume I'm on schedule. The guy in charge of the shop didn't bat an eye at my plan to take the bike out to the west coast and maybe beyond. He didn't like the state of the muffler, but long distance trips on motorcycles are likely a common enough occurrence. He did reassure me that if he were to take a cross-country trip himself with a motorcycle of that era, he would use that very same model. “That era” means 1980. My bike is 18 years old, rapidly approaching the age of antiquity, but in good repair for the most part. She is a huge old beast, big and black, and filled with power. If you didn’t look at her too hard you might mistake her for an old touring Harley, rather than the Yamaha XS1100 that she is. She may be fraying about the edges, but I’m behind her all the way. I might not have used a motorcycle at all for this trip. Until a few months ago, I knew nothing about bikes, but my old roommate Adam went through some financial straits and offered to sell her. Luckily she’s big enough to be comfortable over long distances. Now that it's coming down to the wire, everything is changing. My friend and chief crony, Adam, has already left for Zurich. Sitting with him in his empty apartment the other day, I felt the poignancy that always accompanies sitting in apartments which are otherwise filled with memories. Normally I help in the emptying process, so a sense of satisfaction evens out the sentiment. I feel confident that Adam and I will meet again. We both have E-mail accounts through the Web, so as long as we don’t stay in Syria or Afghanistan we can keep in touch. My little German friend Antje is in town again. She's deeply in love with her boyfriend back home, but she keeps me entertained now that Adam is gone. My bald friend Dave is enmeshed in school and full-time work, and my only other crony, Noel, has found himself an 18-year-old waif, so naturally he has no time for the rest of the world. They're not much of a social network, but they're all I have, and in a week and a half I won't even have that. I gave notice at work, and my boss professed to understand where I was coming from. He would be sorry to see me go, he would be certain to give me a glowing reference should I need it, yadda yadda, etc. The manager Tom suggested that I work my way across the country via the 54 Breadsmith franchise bakeries. A compelling and terrifying idea. I filed it under "last choice scenario." I missed the midget wrestling event at the Dane County Fair. A day later I went with Noel and wasted large sums of money on greasy food and bumper cars. Sadly there were no midgets, but I did see a farm girl with a prosthetic leg who could run at a fast lope . And I saw an alpaca. Thursday, August 20, 1998 I don't remember much about moving out of my apartment. Moving day tends to devolve into a blur of last minute scurrying and bustling, which never seems to get everything done. I made the classic mistake of scheduling my last day of work too close to my last day in the apartment. I never remember that working 10 hours a day in a bakery leaves precious little time for sleep, let alone packing and cleaning. Nevertheless, I managed to put most of my belongings out on the curb for the rest of Madison to pick through, and the majority of the crud accumulated from a yearlong lease got scraped away with half an hour to spare. If one turns a blind eye to the several dozen boxes I have stored in my father's basement, everything I now own can be strapped to the back of my motorcycle. I am living the American dream. I am free and unencumbered. For the past year, I have been preparing for this. In his novel Generation X, Douglas Coupland describes the preparation as an “Anti-Sabbatical,” spending a period, usually a year as in my case, doing something you don't like to get the money to do what you really like, in my case a highway-level motorcycle tour of North America.