How I got my kicks: A first-person account of the AMA Raising Route 66 tour

Photo by Michael S. Mogel

By Michael S. Mogel

Route 66. The trip of a lifetime. Where the cars still have style, and the bikes are all cool.

I did the AMA Raising Route 66 tour on a 2005 Harley-Davidson Road King: 8,000 miles in 28 days, including the trip from my home in Massachusetts to the start of the tour in Chicago and back.

If you’re looking for the most challenging motorcycle road, Route 66 is not it. What it is, though, is a whole other world. It’s a road trip through time.

The key to Route 66 is that when it was built, it linked together everything from main roads through towns to old wagon routes. Since then, the old route never really went away. It only changed, and it’s still changing.

The AMA tour started in Chicago in May, in rain and wind. Fortunately, conditions improved as we headed southwest toward, in the words of the song, St. Louie, Joplin, Missouri, Oklahoma City, and all the rest.

The tour was a highlight reel of experiences. At Scotty’s Cafe in Hamel, Illinois, we met the mayor, who gave us Route 66 keychains. At Joe & Aggie’s in Holbrook, Arizona, we met Steve, the third generation owner of the oldest cafe on Route 66 still operated by the same family. We met bikers from Sweden, Germany, Brazil, the UK and Ireland, all on rented Harleys, headed toward Los Angeles.

It has been suggested that Route 66 is a spiritual ride. I say this trip is high adventure, the American way. It includes everything from God’s wonder—the Grand Canyon—to manmade spectacle in the form of Hoover Dam.

The Petrified Forest and the Painted Desert are also part of the experience in the Southwest, along with Santa Fe sunsets that never quit.

Sometimes, just following the old route is a challenge, as it loops off the more modern roads that bypass it today. When the historic road runs out, the trip becomes a scavenger hunt.

At one stop, I even got my own edition of a modern Route 66 icon. Anyone who has traveled Route 66 since 1995 has surely seen Kenneth Turmel’s map of the road, studded with postmarks and autographs.

The map was produced in a limited edition of 2,448 prints, one for each mile of Route 66, and it’s sold everywhere from Chicago to Los Angeles.

I spotted one at the Victorville, California, Route 66 Museum, where the curator noted he had copy No. 1,951 at home.

“That’s the one I want!” I said. “I was born in 1951.”

“Well, that was the year I hitchhiked Route 66 as a teenager,” he replied.

Oh, well. I now have number 875.

No other road in the history of America has affected the lives and dreams of so many people. The lure of Route 66 gets in your blood. The road epitomized the desire to travel. And the best way to experience it, at least for me, was to hit the lonely two-lane and enjoy it along with the sound of a Harley-Davidson.

The trip ended on the Santa Monica pier in California—about as far from the Chicago rain as I could get.

In between, I sure got my kicks.