Biker blazes ‘vagabond’
By Burl Burlingame
trail across America
Star-BulletinGET up. Get out. Go. Go. Go. That's what Mark Gilchrist did. He was gone. Engine motor running. Head out on the highway. It's a nomadic edition of the American dream, the planned wander, rolling through the country with no direction home, like a rolling stone, here today and gone to Maui, every day a new adventure and every night a new encounter.
For the past 18 months, Gilchrist has visited all 50 states, winding up finally in Hawaii. It's a safari through Gilchrist's midlife and the middling lives of average Americans. Gilchrist keeps an elaborate encounter journal on the website http://www.trueamerica.com, writing stories about the people he's met en route. He calls the effort "A Portrait of America at the Turn of the Millennium."
Except for Hawaii, all of his traveling has been astride a Harley-Davidson FLHPI Police Special motorcycle, no barrier between him and the environment as he rockets through the nation's landscapes, a wisp of humanity caught in the breeze of circumstance.
Gilchrist has "filed" at least two stories from every state he's visited. His work may become a book after the journey ends on Jan. 1. It might not. What's important has been the spiritually transforming journey.
His trek is largely inspired by unassuming reporter Ernie Pyle, killed by machine-gun fire on Ie Shima in the closing days of World War II.
Gilchrist looked down at Pyle's quiet headstone at Punchbowl National Memorial Cemetery last week. "Look," he said. "The headstones on each side of Pyle's grave are all Unknowns. It would be great to be buried near somebody like Ernie Pyle."
Gilchrist looked up. "In Ketchum, Idaho, I noticed you could still buy plots near Ernest Hemingway's grave for only $1,000."
Gilchrist became a Pyle devotee upon reading the reporter's collected "vagabond journals," stories filed while wandering across America in the late '30s. Pyle was a kind of street-beat sociologist, documenting the average lives of average people with the care of a scientist and the skill of an artisan. He took that talent into the battlefield when war broke out, and later Charles Kuralt used Pyle as his model for his "On the Road" TV-news reports.Gilchrist, a deskbound marketer of Caribbean products, fancied being free and footloose.
"But I did nothing about it," he said. "It was very discouraging to read Pyle's writing -- so pure, no pretense, no attempt to embellish -- and be stuck where I was, with a house, job and ties to the community. Like everyone."
And then things happened. Gilchrist had been the long-term caretaker of a house, and suddenly that came to an end. He faced eviction, "no immediate family, a job I didn't like, a life I didn't want. I picked up a Pyle book, looked at it and said, 'Now is the time.' "
Although losing the house forced a life change upon Gilchrist, he had the goal of the journey to plan for. "I had a huge estate sale. It's interesting, putting a dollar value on everything you own. I would look at a piece of furniture, and think, that's one month's payment on the bike, or, that's three tanks of gas.
"In this way, I pretty much covered all my expenses. I've been doing this on the cheap, about $20 to $25 a day for 18 months. I towed a little camper, slept on private property if I got permission."
Hawaii is the most expensive stop, even though he's staying at the Kaneohe YWCA camp grounds. And Hawaii's the only state in which Gilchrist is steering a car, not a motorcycle. "Renting a motorcycle is a hundred dollars a day! A car is a fraction of that."
The motorcycle was a twist on Pyle's open-topped touring car, and World War II jeep, a way of immersing oneself in the environment, despite the hardships of weather.
"I chose a big, solid Harley police bike, though, not a gimmick, like seeing the country from a lawnmower or on a pogo stick. The whole point of this journey was to be the writing. And the subjects were to be regular people -- no politicians, no celebrities.
"One surprise -- cross your fingers -- is how incredibly safe it's been. I've never been robbed. Never been threatened. Never even been yelled at. Everyone's been real nice and friendly and helpful. Hawaii is the same so far, a microcosm of what America is all about, people settling together.
"I've had a few accidents, but none were that serious -- each time I was able to ride the bike to a Harley shop for repairs. I've been lucky in weather too -- a few storms, twisters in Mississippi, a hailstorm in Texas. Nothing major."
What about a book? Work prospects?
Gilchrist scratched his head. "Maybe," he said. "On the web site I can basically do what I want, but a book seems to need conflict and danger, and frankly, that didn't happen. Maybe a small publisher will be interested. As for what I'm going to be doing after Jan. 1, I don't know."
Gilchrist's Internet provider is AT&T, reachable from anywhere in the country, and he uploads material to the TrueAmerica web site from Kinko's locations. "It seems that no matter where I go, there's a Kinko's. They're everywhere!"
Why was it so easy for Gilchrist to sever ties with his own community? An answer may be in that he was a military brat, a "Navy junior" who lived a nomadic lifestyle as a child.
"Military brats have the ability to just pack up and go, and often the desire to go even if they stay," mused Gilchrist. "Here I am in my late 30s, and I haven't found a place to settle down."
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