Across the border and into the USA
Added on Wednesday, May 19th, 2010 by Carole Nash Editor
Across the border and into the USA
The border crossing into the USA was simple and grief-free. Officialdom in the United States of America is both rigidly by the book and yet surprisingly simple. No paperwork is required to enter your bike into America and once your passport is scanned and you’ve filled in your visa waiver, you’re in! The guys at the Port of Entry in Douglas are smartly turned out and the office is pristine with all the equipment you would require to run an office efficiently. It was reassuring to see things working properly instead of the usual south of the border scattergun approach to getting stuff done, and yet…I missed the Mexican way. I missed the smiles and culture of South America and the innate sense of history that 250 years of existence cannot in all reasonableness give. Perhaps pertinent only to the industry servicing the needs of travellers on the Interstate system, but there, Americans have an automated personality, which undermines any possibility of individuality. Waitresses and hotel receptionists have a prescribed uniformity in the way they greet and converse. Responses follow a pattern of speech that appears to disregard any sense of self.
By now I had carried Rob Oliphant’s KTM since Tegucigalpa in Guatemala. He seemed very happy to cross into the USA and whilst I understood that, the States gave me a more complex diagram in my head. I loved America, I admired it’s industriousness and respected a nation that could build skyscrapers and get men to the moon in the time it took many countries to deteriorate socially and economically. Yet I knew I would tire of the food and facile stock phrases. I would struggle to get through the pleasantries of no one knowing who we were and where we had come from. Most Americans we would meet would not know the location of say Argentina or Bolivia. There was a genuine interest but how could that interest be best served when we were both talking about different things? They say that 13% of people in the USA do not know where Canada is and that 30% do not own a passport. It’s a curious thought to think that of all the clever and rich people who invent and build out here, the vast majority manning the gas pumps and hotel lobbies cannot conceive why we should wish to ride the length of the Americas simply because we can.
At the Tucson KTM dealer, Rob took his bike off the back-up truck and with the full assurances of the staff that he would be looked after; we said our goodbyes, expecting him either to join up in Calgary or New York. As part of the concept of riding from the bottom of the Americas to Alaska, his journey had temporarily ended in Central America.
Likewise Martin Lonergan and Richard Cumberland had left us in Southern Mexico and were heading directly to New York. Financier Clive Moffatt had also gone and as we progressed north, more riders decided instead to peel off and head east. At Las Vegas, mechanic Roy went home, as did Brian’s pillion Suzanne, and further north Pat and Eileen Bullimore turned tail for the east coast. They had been to Alaska before so they, Graeme Willett and John Baggaley left us in Salt Lake City.
Surprisingly Barry Smith and Peter Revell left us a day later at Great Falls leaving the small roll call of Jonny Johanson, Nigel Miller, Jason Mardell, Tim Hughston, Brian Clarke, Steve James and Nadine to finish off the job. Nick Robbins had also left us in Salt Lake in order to ride to Hyder a day ahead and 25 kms before Hyder, Brian’s Tenere turned into a ghost and he had to be towed into Alaska by a KTM.
