By Brent LeBlanc, Founder of MyMotorcycleShop.com
In May 2025, I rolled my motorcycle onto the Bainbridge Island ferry and pointed it toward the Atlantic Ocean. The goal was to dip my boot in the Puget Sound, ride to Hilton Head, South Carolina, dip the same boot in the Atlantic, and ride home, trying not to take the same road twice. Just me, the bike, and the open road, all the way to the Atlantic and back home.
I’d dreamed about riding across this country since I was young. At some point, the idea stopped being a thought and started feeling like a decision waiting to be made.
The First Miles
The west greeted me with weather. Rain over Snoqualmie Pass, hail in the Oregon high country, and a stretch through Utah where the rain finally turned to snow up HWY 6 through Soldier Pass. It tested my gear and my patience, and it made the other side sweeter. Dropping out of the mountains from Price to Moab was one of the best rides of my life: pine forests giving way to towering red rock, long flat stretches framed by canyon walls, the kind of ride where you don’t count the miles because you’re too busy looking around in disbelief.
Colorado’s Highway 83 might be the best motorcycle road nobody talks about. Massive valleys opened in every direction, and at one point I shut off the engine and just sat in complete silence. No wind, no traffic, just me and the mountains, and a group of mountain goats watching from a meadow.
Along the way, people kept showing up right when it mattered. Friends in Boise who wouldn’t hear of me getting a hotel. Diner staff in a small Utah town who took one look at a frozen rider and just started bringing coffee. Strangers in every state asking about the trip, wanting to follow along. There’s something about a long ride that opens people up.
Finding a Shop
Here’s the story I tell most often, and the reason it lives on this site.
By Oklahoma, my chain was due for replacement, and on a Saturday afternoon it finally let go on the freeway outside Oklahoma City. What followed was an afternoon-long tour of the local motorcycle scene, with a soundtrack of weather alerts. Severe thunderstorm watches, then warnings, kept buzzing on my phone as a system built over Oklahoma, and every stop meant checking the radar to see how much time I had left.
One dealership couldn’t fit me in or find the parts necessary. Another shop’s lead tech was gone, just gone, yet I was referred to someone special that could help. Then came Carl, in overalls and a trucker hat, greeting me like an old friend. He inspected the chain, confirmed the diagnosis, and explained he had “no hands” today. (“I mean, I got hands. But not for this. Not today.”) He sent me to see a man named Mouse (and I know it sounds like they are not actual motorcycle shops, but rest assured they were). Once I got to the shop to see “Mouse,” it’s strange because nobody there had heard of Carl or Mouse, but five mechanics did gather around the bike and deliver an impromptu masterclass on chain maintenance. All the while, the alerts kept stacking up on my screen.
Four shops deep, storms closing in, I finally rolled into one where the manager just smiled and said, “No problem. Let’s get it on the lift.” Thirty minutes later I was back on the road, forty dollars lighter. “Beer money,” they said. I spent those thirty minutes swapping stories with the mechanics, and I laughed inside my helmet for twenty miles afterward, staying just ahead of the weather into Arkansas.
That day is why this website exists the way it does. When you’re 1,500 miles from home, finding the right shop isn’t a convenience. It’s the whole trip. And when you find one, you remember it.
East to the Atlantic
The East rewarded every mile. The Pig Trail through the Arkansas Ozarks flows like a river through hills wrapped in green, with wild turkeys on the shoulder and hawks floating in the rising heat. Graceland in Memphis turned out to be less mansion, more of an amazing time capsule. And then a few stolen days with my wife in Nashville, the best rest stop of the trip.
From there, the Tail of the Dragon: 318 curves in 11 miles. Banked, tight, endless. By the halfway point my arms burned and I was grinning like an idiot inside my helmet. At Deals Gap, hundreds of riders stood trading stories in front of the Tree of Shame. Cruisers, sport bikes, tourers, everyone sharing the same rhythm.
That evening I crossed into South Carolina, and the next morning I pulled off my boot, rolled up my jeans, and stepped into the Atlantic. The same foot that had touched the Pacific eleven days earlier. Three and a half thousand miles of America between them.
The ride home was quieter. The Badlands glowing like a living painting, Devils Tower rising off the horizon, a tire change in Billings that turned out to be the only real mechanical stop of the return. When the ferry pulled back into Bainbridge under a bright blue sky, my wife and our puppy were waiting at the end of the drive, right where I’d seen them last.
Looking Back
I took the bike I had in the garage, a café style with no windshield, but it’s what I had. I saw my fair share of questions about luggage and what I brought with me. Based on the questions at each stop, it’s apparently not that common to take a café bike on a 7,000-mile crossing. But it carried me the whole way, proving that heart and passion matter.
What stays with me isn’t the weather or the miles. It’s the small things: the smell of rain on the highway, the hum of the engine on an empty stretch of road, and the kindness of people who had no reason to stop but did anyway. Somewhere between the oceans, I learned that adventure isn’t about distance or destinations. It’s about presence, showing up for yourself, one mile at a time.
Ride your own ride. And know where the good shops are. They’re part of what makes the journey.
Planning your own long-distance ride? Use MyMotorcycleShop.com to find trusted motorcycle shops along your route, because somewhere out there, a shop like Iron Horse is waiting to get you back on the road.