3 Guys - 3 Harley's - 3 Weeks - One Hell Of A Road Trip!

The following pages are a brief account of the trials and tribulations encountered by three guys from England as we underwent a 6,400 mile road trip across the USA and Canada.

Myself, my Brother and a friend rented three Harley-Davidson motorcycles and rode through 23 states (some of them more than once!), 2 countries and four time-zones. During the 21 day adventure we visited the Atlantic & the Pacific, the Great Lakes and the Gulf Coast and damn near everything in between! We endured weather ranging from 50°F/10°C to 123°F/50°C and floods to parched deserts. We even rode through hail, snow and tornados! One day we were at the lowest elevation in the USA and within 48 hours almost the highest.

Four Corners Monument:

Flag of England.

Nevada-Colorado-New Mexico-Arizona

Prologue

St. George's Cross

Hi, my name is Simon Morris and it had been a dream of mine to ride a motorcycle across America for as long as I could remember. In 2007, whilst watching an episode of 'The Long Way Round' with Ewan McGregor & Charlie Borman, I decided it was now-or-never!

I telephoned my Brother Steven, who was also a keen motorcyclist, and put it to him that we should do a Trans-American bike ride. Not surprisingly he didn't take much persuading and it was then that the dream started to become reality.

We set about contacting several motorcycling friends who we thought would like to be part of this adventure and although at first we had many people showing interest, there was only one other person who would 'walk-the-walk'. This person was our mutual friend, Scott Cheetham.

We got together and discussed what exactly we all wanted to get from this trip and which parts of America we each wanted to visit. With these criteria in mind we marked all the points of interest on a map and with the help of Henry Cole's 'World's Greatest Motorcycle Rides' DVDs we joined up all the dots and the route from Washington to Los Angeles was born.

Simon at Hicksville, Ohio

The route looked to be approximately 5,500-7,500 miles depending on how many times we got side-tracked or lost and which route planning software I used :) This meant we would have to cover between 265-360 miles every day for 21 days in whatever weather Mother Nature would throw at us! Most people thought we were mad and looking back they were probably right.

Steve & Scott at journeys start - Manassas, Virginia

I found a company called Eagle Rider who would do one-way bike hire in the US and through email found out they had a UK partner by the name of HC Travel. I contacted HC Travel and they proved to be very helpful and were obviously enthusiastic about motorcycle touring.

HC Travel did all the bookings and reservations and even though we searched the internet extensively, they still managed to get our flights and bike hire cheaper than we could. We also purchased our holiday insurance through HC Travel as most holiday insurance did not cover us for riding such large capacity machines for such long distances.

It was at this point that I decided to combine the trip with raising money for my chosen charity the Marfan Association UK.

This road trip helped to raise money for the Marfan Association UK

Harley Davidson - UK

Harley Davidson - USA

Download the factsheet here.

The following pages are an attempt to record our thoughts, feelings and hopes, both before, during and after the trip.

Enjoy!

ENTER

All the pictures and text contained within this website are copyright Simon Morris, Steven Morris & Scott Cheetham and may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior express permission of copyright holder. The website owner is not responsible for any content found by following links to pages external to this website. E&OE. ©2009.

HC Travel, Marfan Association, Harley-Davidson & Eagle Rider logos are reproduced with owners permission.