The wind began to howl. Our tent began to fly... This is a chronicle of protest, philosophy, and the long, uneven road through a fractured America. In the summer of 1972, with the Vietnam War raging and trust in American institutions unraveling, I climbed onto a motorcycle and rode 9,847 miles in search of something -- justice, understanding, or at the very least, a decent conversation. What I found was a nation in the throes of a slow-motion identity crisis.

War has a way of distinguishing between things that matter and things that don't, and this is not a tale of easy answers. It's the record of a self-taught rebel with a library card, a full tank of gas, and the uneasy sense that the American Dream was being quietly sold for scrap. It's about the teenage diaspora that fled small-town conformity in search of something larger -- and the conservative backlash that came roaring in behind us.

Whenever I tell what happened during our two months on the road, I wave my arms about and laugh and tell a colorful tale. People laugh along when I describe popping a frantic wheelie to avoid a herd of bison, how my friend Tom and I landed in a Wisconsin jail, or how we joined a search party for a missing girl in Connecticut. We rode every kind of dirt road, paved road, metal bridge, and freeway, and hammered our way across an entire continent of sunshine, rain, snow, hail, wind, and mud.

Most people have an experience at some point in their lives when they go beyond their normal abilities to achieve some-thing improbable. It's interesting what happens next. Do they learn from it, or just think of it as an exciting part of their history? I was willing to go to prison for five years to prove a point. Sometimes that's what it takes to change the trajectory of ignorance, hubris, magic thinking, and fear.

For readers of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, The Big Sort, and Man's Search for Meaning, this is a sharp, reflective, and darkly funny portrait of a country at war with itself -- and of the young people who tried to shake it awake. It's the tale of a motorcycle trip, and everything that journey taught me -- a homemade education in ethics, economics, and the character of a nation.

Fasten your seat belt. It's a bumpy ride.

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• Politics & Social SciencesSocial SciencesSociology
• Biography & True AccountsLeaders & Notable People

• Publication Date: August 16, 2024
• Text-to-Speech: Disabled
• Lending: Disabled
• Print Length: 534 Pages
• File Size: 59 KB