Home page

Text size

E-mail this page

SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
About a year ago, Ken Pearman and two of his friends started planning an ambitious trip. On June 24, the motorcycle enthusiast returned to Yellowknife from a 6,400-km adventure in which he faced scorching heat, torrential downpour and hairpin turns that claim lives on a daily basis.

Ken Pearman pauses in Key West, Florida, on his way north for a 6,400 km motorcycle trip across the southern United States. - photo courtesy of Ken Pearman

Figuring out where to start turned out to be easy: they reached a consensus on Key West, Florida, because it's the southern-most point in the continental United States.

Initially, they were going to ship their bikes from Victoria, B.C. but they realized that if they went 70 km east they could shave $1,000 off the cost.

"We got to Miami for less than $900 each," he said. "We rode our bikes to Bellingham, Washington at the end of April, put them on a truck and they were waiting for us in Key West on May 9."

Planning the route wasn't really a priority as much as it was enjoying the scenery. They mapped out a few must-see locations – Graceland and the Grand Canyon for example – and slept whenever they came across a motel at night. After riding through Georgia and South Carolina, they reached The Dragon, an infamous stretch of highway a mere 17 km long with some 318 curves.

Located near the North Carolina-Tennessee border, the road is so dangerous that helipads are located at both ends of the highway, making it easier to airlift injured motorists to neighboring hospitals.

"That was one of the highlights for me," Pearman said. "Semi-trailers are banned from it so you mostly see high performance cars like Porsches and Ferraris."

Driving his BMW 1200 touring bike through Tornado Alley, they hit the tail end of a massive storm that forced them to stop while the downpour abated. Through the Texas Panhandle, a region encompassing the northernmost 26 counties of the state, they rode by a surreal landscape.

"Windmills, as far as the eye could see," Pearman said. "There must have been 15,000 of them on a 30-mile stretch."

The sweltering heat in New Mexico and Arizona actually melted part of his GPS-holder and grips. Wearing shorts and a T-shirt made it slightly more bearable but it wasn't always smooth-sailing.

"When we crossed through Salt Lake City, which is enormous, it was bumper to bumper traffic on a six-lane highway, in 44 C heat," he said.

"It was pretty stressful trying to keep three bikes together."

In Phoenix Pearman found out that work back at his office was piling up so he flew back momentarily. After taking care of that, he returned to Phoenix and completed the trip to Victoria by himself.

"It's the really challenging roads that I like," he said.

Pearman has been riding since he was 12; his first bike was a Honda 50. In the winter he races ATVs, dirt bikes and snowmobiles on ice and he helps organize a racing circuit with races taking place in Yellowknife and Hay River.

He brought a particularly strange ornament back from the Everglades -- a stuffed baby crocodile's head.

"We duct-taped them to our windshields at first, but they fell off," he said. "After that I secured mine to my saddle bag and it stayed on throughout the rest of the trip. We got some pretty weird looks though."

We welcome your opinions. Click here to e-mail a letter to the editor.