At around 5pm on Sunday May 18, we found ourselves in the parking lot of a Harley Davidson dealership in Virginia, about 80 miles southwest of Roanoke. There were four people, three motorcycles, an unimaginable amount of dirt, and we had just tracked mud all over the floor of the dealership. Alex and Sean rode away two-up on Alex’s motorcycle, and Jordan and I were left to figure out dinner.
You may be wondering how we got there, why I knew that we were 80 miles southwest of Roanoke, and what happened after.
Hang tight, we’ll get there.
Friday May 15, 5:00 am
We pulled out of the driveway at the crack of dawn with three motorcycles in the trailer, one in the truck bed, four sets of off-road motorcycle luggage, and a party-sized bag of Nerds clusters. Our destination: a random commuter lot in Elmira, New York, six hours away. Did we know for certain that we would be allowed to park two trucks and a trailer there for ten nights? Absolutely not.
The random commuter lot in Elmira, New York is near the northern terminus of the Mid-Atlantic Backcountry Discovery Route (MA BDR), a route designed by the nonprofit Backcountry Discovery Routes (BDR) for motorcycle adventure touring, a niche sport also known as ADV. The route begins in Damascus, Virginia and heads north through Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania on roads that are a mix of pavement, gravel, dirt roads, class IV/unmaintained roads, and trail.
BDR has routes all over the United States, and many of them link together. Along all the routes, there are recommended stops, camping, food, and stores, and the routes are broken up into sections that are intended to be about a day each. The gps files are available for anyone to use (donations recommended!); the nonprofit does host and plan some group trips, but most people do them with their own groups on their own time. We chose the MABDR for a two reasons: first, it’s nearby, with no need to fly or rent motorcycles (although that doesn’t mean the logistics are easy, as you will see). Second, it’s is moderate in terms of skill level; two members of our group (including me!) were relatively new to adventure touring.
Here is an overview of our plan: drive to Elmira and park the vehicles. Unload the motorcycles, load up luggage, and drive 600 miles south on I-81 over two days, stopping at a hotel in the middle. Stay overnight again in Damascus, collect our other friend that was going to be on the trip with us who would meet us in Damascus, then turn around and head north again on the BDR route, driving 1,100 miles over eight days. We hoped to have some fun riding our motorcycles, and see parts of the east coast that we hadn’t seen before. We definitely did that, and I learned a whole lot more too. Here are some of my takeaways; I’ll leave it to you to figure out which part of the trip taught each lesson.
- Rural Pennsylvania is the remotest place I’ve ever seen on the East Coast
- If you ride into a rut, just stay in it
- If you want predictability, book a hotel, not an Airbnb
Around lunchtime, we found a nice town to stop for lunch. I do not remember the name, but there was a little food truck festival happening. At this point in the trip, nerves were running the show for me. I only learned to ride motorcycles in the fall of 2023; January 2024 was when I started to ride around town alone. My first-ever dirt road was in late spring of 2024, and my first trail ride was in the summer of 2024. Which means at the time of this 10-day mostly off-road motorcycle trip, I had been riding motorcycles for a total of a year and a half, and riding off-road for about a year. Suffice it to say, I managed to eat lunch, but barely.
We made it to the random commuter lot, which actually turned out to be enormous. We managed to pay online for 10 nights of parking, and we crossed our fingers that our cars would still be there when we arrived back at that spot, 1700 miles later. The parking lot was roasting, I was being consumed by nerves, and not looking forward to 600 miles of highway on a 300cc motorcycle with no windshield. Even though I was nervous, I was quite relieved when we actually started moving.
I don’t remember many details from the first day of our trip; what I do remember is fragments of highway misery. My motorcycle was the smallest and least powerful in the whole group, so I struggled to maintain 75mph on the highway. The worst was passing 18-wheelers; the best way to do it is to pass on an uphill, because they slow down, but my motorcycle couldn’t really do more than 70 going uphill so I kept getting left behind. My neck hurt from the wind blowing it around and my wrist hurt from holding the throttle; I was riding laying on the gas tank to get out of the wind, but my mirror kept coming loose and banging into the side of my helmet. Because of the wind, my helmet was moving my earplugs around so my ears were getting bruised, and I had sunburn in a bracelet pattern between my sleeves and gloves. Alex and I hardly ever use our coms to talk to each other, but I remember connecting to Alex’s Sena com unit at one point when I couldn’t take another second of highway and shrieking into his helmet, “I NEED A BREAK!!!!”. I had made a few playlists to get me through the ride, but even All Time Low wasn’t doing it for me at this point.
As we were approaching our hotel, it started to rain, but I wasn’t even mad because at that point we had gotten off the highway, which had made me very happy. My energy was restored by not hearing wind howling in my ears, not getting my head blown around, not being passed by 18 wheelers going 90mph, and getting to stop and put my legs down and change my body position at red lights.
The hotel kindly let us park our bikes on the sidewalk underneath their awning to keep them dry overnight, so we all drove our bikes up over the curb (Alex spotted me, although afterward I wished I had given it a try by myself). The hotel had a restaurant right next door, so that’s of course where we went for dinner.
Saturday May 17
