The Road To Alice's Restaurant

It was a year ago in July -- one July 4th week one year ago when Tony and I went on the Easy Rider 2006 trip. We traveled nearly 4,000 miles through five states last summer with the Seattle Men's Chorus western states tour, and we've been itching for another big motorcycle road trip. We've been planning this one for about 5 months now -- ever since we got invited to the wedding of a cousin that Tony has never met (more on that to come) near where Tony's father Jack grew up outside Corning, New York. Since neither of us has ever been through that part of the country at all, we figured, what the hell, lets rent Harley's and tour the Northeast for a few weeks! So that's what we'll be doing.

But first, I should probably explain the title of this year's adventure. "The Road To Alice's Restaurant" is not about Alice, or a Restaurant, it's not even the name of a restaurant. It's just the name of Arlo Guthrie's song, and that's why we call this year's post, "The Road to Alice's Restaurant." HUH??? I hear you thinking to yourself -- or maybe outloud. You see, Tony and I are both big fans of folk singer Arlo Guthrie, and anyone who knows him knows his 18 minute song "Alice's Restaurant" from 1967, which takes place in and around Stockbridge, Massachusetts. And as it turns out, Stockbridge is on a nice motorcycle road in far western Massachusetts. So we figured, especially since he'll be in concert and releasing his latest CD, that we'd swing by and say hello. The concert will be in the church featured in the song where Alice (remember Alice?) used to live with her husband Ray and Fasha the dog.... but I digress. By the way, Arlo also has another hit song called the Motorcycle Song, in which he sings, "I don't want a pickle, I just want to ride on my motor-sicle"...(in order to get it to rhyme)...but I'm getting way far afield...

It was either call it "The Road to Alice's Restaurant" or "The Road to Rhode Island" from the TV cartoon Family Guy, and the episode where Brian and Stewie hop a freight train bound for home in Rhode Island, and launch into a broadway show tunes along the way. They sing lines like "We're off on the road to Rhode Island, having the time of our lives... We are quite a pair of partners, just like Thelma and Louise"... and at that point, folk music won out over Broadway show tunes, and the graphic of Brian and Stewie, when Tony said that since I resembled Stewie, I would get to be him on this trip. I think not.

So enough of the name -- here's the rough, and I stress, ROUGH itinerary. The purpose of this trip is to explore, to go down roads that look fun, in state's we've never been in, and explore things with no agenda and no set time and place to be for the most part. My motto is "there is no wrong turn as long as it leads to more pavement." In fact we only have TWO places outside of returning the bikes on July 15th that we HAVE to be. The wedding on July 7th, and meeting friends in Provincetown, MA on July 9th. That's it. We pick up the bikes at Barb's Harley-Davidson in Camden, NJ just outside of Philadelphia on the 5th, and have to return them on the 15th to the same location. The wedding is in Mansfield, PA, just below the NY state line about the middle of the state, and Provincetown is at the end of Cape Cod in MA -- another of the "End of the Road", this time US-6. Between Mansfield and Provincetown is Stockbridge, MA where the incidents that inspired Alice's Restaurant took place, and hence the inspiration for the title to this blog. (The lyrics to Alice can be found at http://www.arlo.net under the tab "lyrics", just in case the references today, and down the road, become confusing -- you might want to read it, there will be a test later...)

We will have the laptop, and will endeavor, like last year, to publish a post every day, (and as Arlo says, with full orchestration, five part harmony, and all kinds of other phenomena, along with lots of 8x10 color glossy pictures with circles and arrows explaining what each one is) and hope you'll enjoy going along for the ride. Thanks to our riding buddy Ray Flores for the picture of Tony and I at the top of the page.

In Seattle -- for a few more days..going over a pile of AAA maps and Harley Ride Atlases...
Gary and Tony