BMW?s K 1600 B is a high-tech, high-performance bagger that carves like a sport tourer and is the perfect mount for a cross-country run. Photos by Kevin Wing and Greg Drevenstedt.

Though California has been my adopted home going on 15 years now, I?m a Southern boy. Born in Nashville. Lived in Charleston, Tampa, Atlanta and New Orleans. Taught manners and how to cook by three generations of steel magnolias. Learned a firm handshake from my father. And developed an abiding love of sweet tea, skillet cornbread and pulled-pork barbecue that borders on the religious.

Returning to the South often feels like a homecoming. Familiar, safe, humid. A few years ago, I found myself in Asheville, North Carolina, for the launch of BMW?s K 1600 B, a black bagger with the sort of edgy, go-fast profile and 160-horsepower in-line six one doesn?t normally associate with a feet-forward riding position. The folks at BMW planned the event to coincide with the solar eclipse that cut a 70-mile-wide ?path of totality? across the United States, from Oregon to South Carolina, on Monday, August 17, 2017.
No journey through the Appalachians is complete without a ride on the Blue Ridge Parkway. 

After the launch, with an electronic key fob in my pocket and a duffel bag Rok-strapped to the pillion seat, I embarked on my first ? and so far only ? cross-country trip by motorcycle. Riding across our great nation is like a pilgrimage, a journey both outward and inward that makes life richer a...