Tomorrow, I will embark on a cross-country motorcycle trip from Seattle, WA, to Brooklyn, NY. Here, I will document my journey, the preparations that went into it, and any memorable encounters and discoveries I will make.

The plan—though untypical for me there isn’t much of one—is to ride down the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) from Seattle to Los Angeles, via Portland, San Francisco, and Santa Cruz.

Subsequently, weather permitting, I’d like to explore the Southwest including Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado. One of my few fixed checkpoints is June 3 in Houston, TX, for a wedding of Shaniece’s friends. On the way from Colorado to Texas, I’d like to stop by in Oklahoma where I spent a year as a high school exchange student with AFS from 2003–2004 and haven’t had a chance to visit since.

After the wedding, I invited my dad to join me for part of my trip so we can spend some quality father-son time. We’ve had little of that given that he lives in Switzerland and I’ve been living in the US for the past seven years. Hopefully that’ll be a good follow-up to some of our roadtrips to Poland when I was a little boy. One of my most vivid memories from that time was us listening to Cher at full blast and eating hamburger se sýrem (cheeseburger) from a Czech McDonald’s. We talked about visiting New Orleans and Graceland in Memphis, but the plan becomes blurry at this point.

There are many options for how to get back to NYC, e.g. via the Appalachian Mountains, along the Gulf Coast, or down to Key West and then back up. I’ll play it by ear and you’ll be the first hear about if you follow along.

For me, this journey is about taking a break from my professional life as a software engineer for the past 7 years, to discover the gems of this beautiful country, and to connect with people, whether from my past or to meet new faces.

Please join me on this adventure! You can reach me via daniel@gasienica.ch or @gasi if you have any suggestions for places to visit or live along the route and would like to meet up and/or have a couch/shower to offer.