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What I really wanna do, being all myself.
I swung a leg over the saddle in Hell's Kitchen The Valley just as the sun bled orange into the River. The Electra Glide, stripped of its grandpa screen and wearing a flat drag bar, idled with a cammed lope that echoed off the old stone bridge. I had 500 kilometers of darkness ahead, a long weekend at the Dutch coast, then Paris for a week, then Lisbon—and eventually, the long road home. The bike was loaded like a pack mule: two hard panniers swollen with clothes, a roll-bag strapped across the pillion where a passenger might sit, and a tank bag with water, snacks, and a paper map I’d never unfold. The stereo hole had been blanked with a brushed aluminium plate; in its place I’d stuck a small analog compass. It wobbled gently as I thumbed the starter.
The A3 westbound opened up as night fell. With the windshield cut down to my sternum, the wind hit me square in the chest, lifting just enough weight off my wrists to make the flat bar feel natural. I leaned into it, one hand resting on my thigh, the other barely holding the throttle. The bike tracked like a rail. At 140 km/h the engine sat in a fat, lazy torque curve—Stage 1 breathing had given it enough lung to hold 160 if I asked, but tonight I was in no hurry. The air was cool, smelling of cut grass and diesel. Headlights from trucks swept across the fairing, and I settled into a rhythm: breathe, scan mirrors, relax the grip.
Somewhere past Frankfurt, the autobahn emptied entirely. I rolled the throttle open just to feel it. The wide 150 front tire, spooned onto a custom 18-inch rim, gave the front end a gyroscopic certainty that a stock Glide never possessed. It didn’t flinch at rain grooves or sudden gusts. I thought of the Niken fork that had once lived in my imagination, and smiled. This was better—simpler, lighter, and entirely legal. At 160 the engine purred, the cut-down screen left my helmet in clean air, and the forward controls let me stretch my long legs until my heels hung off the boards. I felt like a locomotive pilot on a night freight, alone with the stars.
I rolled into Zandvoort just as the eastern sky began to pale. The B&B was a narrow brick house three streets from the beach, run by a retired couple who offered me a lockable garden shed for the Glide and a breakfast of fresh bread, Gouda, and a boiled egg. I slept until noon, then walked to the train station. Zandvoort aan Zee is tiny; the train to Amsterdam takes thirty minutes. Amsterdam is no place for a bagger—trams, bicycles, claustrophobic canalside streets. I left the bike cocooned in the garden, watched a herring gull perched on the top case, and took the train. For three days I wandered the Rijksmuseum, drank coffee in Jordaan, and never once worried about parking tickets.
The next leg, Zandvoort to Paris, was a daytime sprint through Belgium. I crossed into France at dusk, and once again, night became my cocoon. The Périphérique is a beast even at 2 a.m., but my B&B sat in Boulogne-Billancourt, a calm suburb with a locked courtyard parking spot. Madame, the owner, left a key under the mat and a breakfast tray of croissants and confiture outside my door each morning. I rode the Métro into the city every day, surfacing at Saint-Germain or the Marais like a tunnelling animal. The bike stayed safe, its luggage now half-empty, serving as a stationary wardrobe.
A week later, I strapped everything down tight and aimed the front wheel southwest. This was the marathon: nearly 1,700 kilometers to Lisbon, and I intended to chew most of it at night. The A10 south of Paris unfurled into the black Loire Valley, and I became a creature of the dark again. The forward controls let me stretch until my knees almost locked, the flat bar and forward lean turning into an aerodynamic slouch that held my spine perfectly at 130 km/h. I’d stop for fuel every 250 kilometers, drink an espresso from a thermos, and press on. The wide front tire absorbed expansion joints, the heavy bike shrugging off crosswinds on the flatlands near Bordeaux.
Past the Spanish border, the landscape changed. The Basque Country rolled under a half-moon, and the temperature rose. I crossed into Portugal near dawn, the highway swooping through eucalyptus forests that smelled of cough drops. I had booked a small hotel in Lisbon’s Graça neighbourhood for a week, a place with a steep cobblestone ramp leading to a locked garage under the building. The owner, Senhor Rui, helped me wheel the big Harley down the ramp, his eyes shining at the sight of an American motorcycle in his quiet street. "Leave her here. The tram 28 is all you need," he said, pressing a breakfast voucher into my hand.
And so I did. For seven days I rode trams, not the Glide. Lisbon is a city of hills and tiny lanes; the bike would have been a liability. I ate pastéis de nata until my fingers were sticky, listened to fado in Alfama, and watched the sun drop into the Atlantic from Miradouro da Graça. Every evening I checked on the motorcycle, its black paint cool in the garage, patient as a sleeping horse.
The ride home was the final test. Three days, two nights, over 2,000 kilometres back to The Vally. I departed Lisbon before dawn, the Tagus River a silver ribbon on my left. The bike felt like home now. The riding position, which once felt radical, had become my natural shape. At 150 km/h across the Spanish plateau, I could ride one-handed for hours, the wind lifting my torso just enough to make my spine weightless. The engine never missed a beat, its new tune sipping fuel at a steady 6 litres per 100 km. The luggage held all the trinkets I’d collected: a bottle of port, a Dutch tin of stroopwafels, a French tea towel I’d bought on impulse.
The final night, somewhere east of Lyon, it rained. Heavy, cold, insistent rain that the cut-down screen did nothing to stop. I hunkered lower, the wide front tyre scything through standing water without a twitch. The B-road I’d chosen as a shortcut turned into a winding, reflective ribbon through the Jura foothills. I rolled off the throttle, leaned the big bike gently into each curve, and felt that massive contact patch hold on like a loyal dog. There was no drama, no slip. Just the steady, unshakeable confidence of a long-distance machine that had been built for exactly this.
I pulled back into Hell's Kitchen The Vally at 4 a.m., the stone bridge glistening from a recent shower. I parked the Glide by the river, the engine ticking as it cooled, the baggage still strapped on. A grand tour, a wild vision, and a series of small hotels with good breakfasts—that was all it had taken to turn a custom motorcycle into a time machine, a capsule that stretched weeks into moments. The bike needed nothing but a wash and an oil change. I needed nothing but a bed. And the next morning, over coffee and a roll in my own kitchen, I started planning the next one.
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