Cities, desert, one motorcycle. One name.

Massachusetts · where the yes begins

Boston

The yes at the altar, and the doubt that follows at once.

Before the Puritans there is the Shawmut peninsula, land of the Massachusett. In 1630 John Winthrop and the Puritans name it Boston, after the English town many of them came from. Beacon Hill takes its name from a wooden beacon, 1635: a signal to warn the countryside of danger.

The Revolution starts here: tea in the harbor, Paul Revere, Bunker Hill. Then Harvard, red brick, the Common. Ray gets married here. A yes. And already the coffee at Tatte, Beacon Hill under the wheels, a name overheard: Amy.

What to drink, there

Samuel Adams Boston Lager

Boston, Massachusetts. Amber, malty, no fuss. A city lager, from the bar, before he climbs on the bike.

The place is real. Open it on Maps.

Pennsylvania · the Amish

Lancaster

Empty roads, barns, an engine that does not ask why.

Lancaster County is the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch Country. Dutch does not mean Holland: it means Deutsch. In the 1700s Germans and Swiss arrive, welcomed into William Penn’s “holy experiment”: land for those who wanted to pray in peace.

The Amish, Anabaptists born of the Reformation, split from the Mennonites with Jakob Ammann. In Lancaster, in the 1720s, they found the oldest and now the largest Amish settlement in America. A plain life: no household grid, buggies, dark clothes, Pennsylvania German in church, English with strangers. Baptism is for adults. The community, not the individual, decides how much of the world to let in.

This is not folklore. It is a choice held for three centuries: humility, land, distance from noise. Ray rides through. The contrast is the point: he flees at full speed, they stay.

What to drink, there

Yuengling Traditional Lager

Pottsville, Pennsylvania. America’s oldest brewery, 1829. Amber, for the road. In this German land beer is bread, not a label.

Appalachia · a nation, a removal

Cherokee Forest

Woods, bends, pieces of memory among the pines.

Before the national forest there is the Cherokee people: villages in the valleys, seven clans, a matrilineal society, a syllabary invented by Sequoyah, a newspaper, a constitution. Then gold in Georgia, Andrew Jackson, the Treaty of New Echota signed by a few. In 1838 nearly fourteen thousand people are driven west. More than four thousand die. It is called the Trail of Tears.

Those who remain in North Carolina become the Eastern Band. In the twentieth century the federal government buys back cut woods and, in the 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps opens roads and trails. Today the Cherokee National Forest is that green scar. Ray rides through: bends, pines, pieces of memory that are not his and still look like him.

What to drink, there

Highland Gaelic Ale

Asheville, North Carolina. A mountain amber, malt and a thread of peat. The Blue Ridge make it that way: dark as the pines, to drink after the curves.

Everglades · the river of grass

The swamps

Before the Keys, water that does not end.

Before Key West, Florida is not a beach: it is a very wide, very shallow river, sawgrass and cypress, alligators, herons. The Everglades. Land of the Seminole and the Miccosukee, who withdraw here when the army pushes from the north. It is not a lake. It is water walking toward the bay.

In 1947 they become a national park, also thanks to Marjory Stoneman Douglas. They remain fragile: canals, sugar, rising salt. Ray skirts them south. The engine and the silence of the water: two tempos that do not speak.

What to drink, there

Una white ale della Florida

Sud della Florida. Pale, citrus, to drink cold in the humidity. A stout makes no sense here: the water is already dark enough.

Florida · the end of land

Key West

Then you turn back, over the same spans.

The southernmost island of the contiguous United States. The Conchs, the wrecks, the Cuban cigars. For a century they live off shipwrecks: first to the timber in the sea keeps the cargo. Then Flagler brings the train over the water; the 1935 hurricane tears it away. The Overseas Highway, 1938, is that road of spans Ray has to undo on the way back.

Ernest Hemingway buys a house here in 1931, stays eight years, writes, fishes, drinks at Sloppy Joe’s. Then the town feels too full of tourists. End of the land, and already you turn back.

What to drink, there

Sunset Amber Ale

Key West. An amber from the end of the land. Hemingway drank other things, but on a bike a Keys lager in the shade is enough, before turning back.

The place is real. Open it on Maps.

Louisiana · magic, mystery

New Orleans

Magic, mystery.

Founded by the French, passed to Spain, sold with Louisiana. Creole, Catholic, African, Haitian. Congo Square: for a few hours the enslaved could play drums. From there, jazz, and the rest.

New Orleans voodoo is not the tourist sign. It is born of West African religions, mixed with Haiti and Catholicism: saints and loa, masses and gris-gris. Marie Laveau (1801–1881), a free woman of color, hairdresser, midwife, Catholic every morning in the cathedral, is the “queen” the city has never stopped naming. Futures were read, people were healed, a community was held together. The tomb in St. Louis Cemetery is still full of crosses marked in lipstick.

Seers, cards, herb shops: mystery here is a trade and a faith. Ray passes through. Humidity, a name that will not leave him.

What to drink, there

Abita Amber

Abita Springs, Louisiana. From the other shore of the lake. Amber, malt-sweet, for the neighborhood. Here beer sits with jazz the way bourbon sits with a wake.

The place is real. Open it on Maps.

Texas · the post in the desert

Fort Davis

The real desert. Here emptiness has a sound.

On 23 October 1854 General Persifor F. Smith raises a fort in the Davis Mountains, to guard the San Antonio–El Paso road: stagecoaches, mail, those emigrating west. He names it Fort Davis, after the then Secretary of War Jefferson Davis — the same man who would soon be president of the Confederacy.

In the Civil War the post empties. In 1867 the Buffalo Soldiers return: 9th Cavalry, then African American infantry. They do the real work: wells, bricks, endless patrols against Apache and Comanche, protecting travelers. They stay until about 1885. The fort closes in 1891. Today it is a National Historic Site: one of the best-preserved posts of the West.

For Ray it is the real desert. Not a postcard: an emptiness with a sound. From here he cuts toward New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada.

What to drink, there

Shiner Bock

Shiner, Texas. A German bock born in 1909 in a Czech town in Texas. Dark, for the desert. The emptiness asks for it that way.

The place is real. Open it on Maps.

Oregon · rain, bridges

Portland

The last stretch before her.

Where the Willamette meets the Columbia. Lewis and Clark pass through. Then timber, bridges, rain that does not ask permission. Ray takes it north: not far now. Seattle is the end.

What to drink, there

Deschutes Black Butte Porter

Bend, Oregon. A mountain porter, chocolate and coffee. Oregon rain wants it dark. Bend sits on the road, before the bridges.

Washington · end of the line

Seattle

A bar, a name, Amy.

Duwamish and Suquamish, then settlers, then Klondike gold in 1897: Seattle outfits the prospectors and keeps Alaska as a home port. In 1962 the Century 21 Exposition leaves the Space Needle: a sketch on a napkin, a flying saucer over the bay, a city looking at space.

For Ray it is not the tower. It is a bar, a name heard at the start, and the woman to return to. End of the line.

What to drink, there

Rainier Lager

Seattle, Washington. The mountain on the label. A pale, old-school lager. End of the line: a bar, this, and a name.