The New York-based writer and editor Nathan King has traveled around the West every summer for the past five years, but last July was his first time making the trip on a motorcycle. It was also the first time he’d been on the road solo, with only his camera to keep him company. After the journey, he felt the same he always did upon returning home: America expands and gets stranger with each passing year, and he can’t get enough of it.
Despite the warnings of everyone I know and love, I found myself in Las Vegas last summer at a dealership that rents Harley-Davidsons, itching to get on the road and slightly worried for my life. The building is situated on the debonair-sounding Dean Martin Drive, but it’s utterly charmless and made the great pilgrimage of individualism I was about to embark upon feel fairly routine.