This essay was originally published in the September 1992 issue of Rider. (Illustration by Roland Roy)

Sometimes you don?t know where you are, the name of the town or even the state. The place is located by days and miles. It is remembered by highway proximity. And by what kind of terrors gripped you there.

For me, that April night fell on day four. I had already passed through New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia and North Carolina, finally stopping in Tennessee. Yes, that?s as far as I must have gotten. Near U.S. Highway 81. Days Inn.

After a little practice, divesting a motorcycle of all its luggage for the night and carrying it into a motel ? three trips, including the tool pack with its 10 tons of lock, spare cables, liter of oil, roll of tape, tire tube, rain gear ? doesn?t get any more fun. But such a trip, all alone, is about repetition as much as it?s about welcoming the blessedly new. I?ve always stayed at Days Inns or Knights Inns, make of that symmetry whatever you will, because a woman searching for lodgings after dark by herself is looking only for predictability and the guaranteed anonymity these places make it their business to provide.
After three days of telling myself different, the truth was coming through like green oxide on bogus silver: this wasn?t such a gas. My vacation, my proud declaration, my little adventure, was oppressing me as nothing before. I hadn?t suddenly become loquacious the minute I hit the road, the sort who meets locals at...