A Motorcyclist’s Open Road Leads to Inward Journeys

DETOURS: LIFE, DEATH AND DIVORCE ON THE ROAD TO STURGIS, By Richard La Plante, Forge, $24.95

The Sturgis in the title is Sturgis, S.D., the largest gathering of roaming and roaring motorcycles and motorcyclists in America.

The author, La Plante, is a writer-biker in his early 50s, recently returned from a long spell (and failed first marriage) in England, his open-road cravings tempered by consideration for his new (and growing) stateside family, his journey a mostly solo adventure of 2,400 miles or so.

The result is an offbeat, perplexing book, full of sustained soul-searching, unpunished speed-limit violations, the occasional raw, true moment and much loving description of custom bikes.

He is, by his own account, a vain, competitive, athletic guy who seems bent on understanding himself better, how his first marriage crumbled, the death of his father, the challenge of making room in a grown-up life for the plain glee of riding loud and fast.

His happiest moments are “me and the silver bike, joined at the hip, with time dissolving all around us. Feeling, for the first time, that I’d found the center of the universe.”

And his tenure in England keeps turning up entertainingly in his vocabulary (“bin liners” for “trash bags,” “macadam” for “blacktop,” “marquee” for “tent”--not exactly cycle gang argot).

La Plante is so interested in the interior journey, however, that I found myself wishing I’d hitched a ride with a more superficial biker, one who worked the crowd a little more and gave me a clearer view of who does what when several thousand bikers gather for several days, perhaps a few more paragraphs to flesh out passing characters like:

Sandy, who had, since her husband’s death (on a motorcycle) in April, been on the road, all by herself, rally to rally, camping out and living rough. She had built houses for a living, and I remember her handshake to be dry and strong. She was honest, independent and without self-pity. When I asked her why she was riding, she answered simply, “to think things through.”

More of Sandy, please, and less of the author as he floats among Sturgis sales ops, trying to peddle copies of “Hog Fever,” his first bike book. Also, while I’m making requests, a more vigilant copy editor would have noticed that singer Marty Robbins’ name is spelled two ways, both wrong, within nine pages.

*

CHEAP HOTELS, By Daisann McLane, Taschen, $20

Back when I was a full-time travel writer and staying in hotels for a living, I swear, I daydreamed this book. But my dream book was not as handsomely designed, and my dream text had fewer details, and I was never really sure whether a civilian would be at all interested.

But McLane, who has written the Frugal Traveler column for the New York Times these last four years, and her editors have done well here. In essence, they’ve converted a file cabinet full of snapshots and several frayed notebooks into a charming, quirky volume fortified with practical information. (Another thing my daydreamed book didn’t include: English text in blue ink, alongside German text in red and French in black. Tres global.)

You can cluck over the snapshots of dire bedspreads (Park Brompton Inn, Chicago) and delightful views (Aroko Bungalows, Rarotonga, the Cook Islands) and pore over the prices McLane paid at scores of hostelries worldwide (from $4 nightly in Madras, India, to $185 at California’s White Sulphur Springs Resort and Spa), or read the essays, which muse on the lodging life.

Writes McLane: “Hotel rooms, even the most pleasant ones, contain within their walls a hint of melancholy.... Each night, the room’s allure fades ever so slightly, as you discover and explore the even more intriguing world outside its limits. And then, finally, you say goodbye, pack up and leave it to someone else.”

*

ARIZONA, MAUI, HAWAII, THE BIG ISLAND, Various authors, Lonely Planet, $14.99-$16.99 each

Three decades ago they began with a thin guide to traveling on a shoestring in Asia. Now the empire that Lonely Planet founders Tony and Maureen Wheeler have built covers more territory than those British colonists of centuries past ever did. Our good fortune is that, in recent years, the thirst for expansion has driven the Australia-based LP people to look beyond their original targets--the difficult countries that other guidebook publishers didn’t much bother with--and give us plain old California tourist favorites as well.

In the last few years the company has hit Las Vegas and San Diego. And this year, for the first time, Lonely Planet offers an entire guidebook on Arizona, another on Maui and another on Hawaii’s Big Island. In coming months a Pacific Mexico volume will follow. (LP has covered Hawaii and Mexico before but never with this narrowed focus.)

To certain travel snobs, this may look like a retreat from backpack traveler ideals.

To those of us who seldom get more than a week away, these books are a welcome addition to the literature. They bear many of the usual LP hallmarks: The Big Island guide, for instance, features frank explanations of the Hawaii sovereignty movement and the fall of tourism revenues after Sept. 11, 2001.

However, perhaps inevitably, the series’ old penchant for penny-pinching (and downright scorn for luxury) has evolved to allow for more discussion of the upscale options, such as the grand hotels outside Phoenix or in Maui’s highly manicured Wailea resort area.

*

Calendar writer Christopher Reynolds’ book column appears twice a month.