About Chrome Horse Chronicles

The Chrome Horse Chronicles tell the story of how the reluctant realization of a dream to ride a motorcycle from Houston, Texas to the Grand Canyon turned into an annual rendezvous with the road that has stretched over 43,000 miles of North America.  It reminds us that adventures are built by individual moments that give life to the music, eyes to the history, and depth to the legends that are woven into our lives.  It is one man's story of how he found many of those moments on highways both distant and familiar.   

At heart this is a book of possibilities.  The National Parks and Treasures that are visited in its pages are accessible for a little gas money and a lot of desire.  The rock cathedrals of southern Utah and the glacial beauty of the Icefields Parkway are not secreted in the far latitudes, they're up the road.  So is the grandeur of the Cascades, the quiet dignity of July 4th at Cooperstown and the sad emptiness of Wounded Knee.  Possibilities also have faces and voices; they are a farm couple on a motel porch in Medora, ND, a newly retired Navy Chief Petty Officer on the Cape Hatteras ferry, a Christian Motorcyclist on the way to Fairbanks, Ak, and a homeless man on roller skates in Bakersfield, Ca.       

The reader is not asked to suspend belief; rather he is invited to ride along on a journey that he can envision himself taking.  The story serves as a gentle reminder that we can reclaim some of the sense of adventure we were born with by simply remembering how to play.  The reader, like the author, may be led to realize that we don't have to learn something new, as much as we need to remember something old.  

It is impossible to describe visits to 40 National Parks in a book and deny that it is about beauty.  Still, there is no beauty without deep appreciation.  The descriptions of events like a perfect afternoon's crossing of Glacier National Park, a quiet night spent in a cabin on the remote Nova Scotia coast, and a ride up Mississippi's Blues Highway on a steamy delta morning convey a profound respect for the universe in which such things exist.    

The book is about time, but it is more than a simple chronology of the 111 days over 6 summers that the journey consumed.  The narratives of visits to places as disparate as the cramped Sun Studio building in Memphis and the cavernous Hearst Castle on California's Pacific Coast can transport the reader's spirit to bygone times.  A stop on an empty Nebraska afternoon to stare along the black ribbon of highway that ripples across soft green hills imparts an intimate feeling of forever, while the description of a cold, wet ride along Alaska's Glenn Highway invokes the shiver of a single moment.    

The entire book is held together by the endless North American road.  It is a destination unto itself that can take us home, and to places that once were.  It can take us past people that wave from their front porches, introduce us to Emergency Room nurses that put temporary tattoos on our arms, and show us pockets of snow in summer deserts.  The author, in a style that is deeply personal, openly passionate, and at times blatantly irreverent, shares the gifts of his experiences in a manner that encourages the reader to close the cover, close his eyes, and consider the possibilities.