Riding BMW?s R 18 Transcontinental on this Pennsylvania motorcycle ride was a world away from the first bike I owned, a Kawasaki Ninja 750 (below). My choice to ride for a living worried and impressed my father in equal measure. (Photos by the author)

I?ve ridden Pennsylvania many times, and always in the presence of ghosts. Back in the early 1700s, my father?s family came from England to settle in the Keystone State. It wasn?t an easy life. The men in the family fought in the Revolutionary War and then the Civil War. And before my dad was born, his own father, a marine, fought in France during World War I. 

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Like so many veterans, my grandfather returned broken, and after a long struggle he died by his own hand. Just a few years later, on my father?s 16th birthday, his mother was taken by cancer.
My father and I with my first bike: a Kawasaki Ninja 750

More than once, I?d rolled up to the modest brick duplex where my father spent his early years. I?d hoped to see him there as a child, happy, before the hardening of loss left him so guarded. I?d ridden by his elementary school and a playground he?d talked about in old age. To me, it only felt somber. More like a visit to one of the state?s famous battlefields than a child?s happy place.

A tidy Amish farm.

There was one spot I had yet to try, an area called the Allegheny Plateau where my father had spent time camping as a boy, specifically...