Seeing your own country through the eyes of a foreigner can be startling. Some things that you know and understand leave the non-native totally baffled. Other things that you take for granted and ignore excite the visitor's interest enormously. And the native reading about these impressions frequently finds himself or herself taking another look and opening their eyes, perhaps for the first time.
Tim Watson is a Brit, and his There & Back Again To See How Far It Is tells the tale of his journeys of discovery into America on a Harley-Davidson Street Bob. Watson has lived all over the world, including in the U.S., but his experience of this country was limited to a few of the major cities and blasting along between cities in a car on the interstate. Deciding he had had enough of the corporate world, he quit his high-level job in the auto industry and bought a motorcycle, with plans to see the real United States of small towns and back roads.
His American wife, Anne, herself an accomplished motorcyclist, went along as his photographer (he was planning a book) and guardian.
Guardian?
It's hard to judge the actual truth of the matter, because Watson's brand of story-telling runs heavily toward exaggeration, but to hear him tell it, he's the sort of person who can forget where he lives and, presumably, would walk off without his head if it weren't attached. He was also a novice motorcyclist in the beginning and rode the first bike he purchased all the way home without stopping because he didn't know how to stop. Presumably he did stop at home.
The couple took two long rides from their home in Southern California. The first was a loop through Arizona into New Mexico and back. The second was a run through Nevada and Utah into Wyoming and then back across Idaho and Oregon and south through California along the coast.
Watson was variously enthralled by a variety of kitschy museums along the road, awestruck by the vastness and beauty of the American West, and scared to death of trucks behind him and the sometimes rough roads they followed. The gear they took with them was totally inadequate, not even including rain suits, so some of their rides can only be called foolish at best. Idiotic would be a term someone less generous might use.
Along the way, Watson made a point to speak with the people he encountered, hoping to understand what life is like in the hinterlands and why people live in some of the places they do. In that sense, the book is more like John Steinbeck's Travels With Charley than Alexis de Toqueville's Democracy In America, but in fact the chief subject of the book is Watson himself. He doesn't relate what he sees and learns so much as he describes his reactions to what he sees and learns.
And, of course, much of the book tells of his failings as a motorcyclist. He develops a worsening burn on his leg where it presses against the heat shield of the exhaust. His hands and arms go numb from keeping a death grip on his handlebars because riding scares him so much. He crosses high mountain peaks in cold, windy conditions with nothing more than a leather jacket, and rides through rainstorms without rain gear.
Mostly, though, There & Back Again To See How Far It Is is a story of optimism. Watson writes, in his conclusion:
My impression was that small town America was alive but not exactly kicking. The US, like the rest of the world, stands at a crossroads thanks in part to the economic meltdown that had started in 2007. As yet there was no end in sight. There was still, though, a true spirit of hope in this nation. I'd constantly been reminded of how proud Americans are of their country, noting the huge number of Stars and Stripes flags that I'd seen flying everywhere from a shack in the desert to the mansions in the Los Angeles hills. The American Dream is still there, but perhaps at the moment just a little harder for people to realise.
There & Back Again To See How Far It Is will make you shake your head at the author's bone-headed stunts, but it may also help you see this country just a little differently.
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