I passed a car today. That is amazing? Well, yes, on a BMW R 1200 RT it is. It can probably go so fast my cheeks would puff up and my face turn inside out. It is amazing because I am discovering law-abiding America. Three days on the road, and I haven’t come across anyone speeding. The closest you come to it is people overtaking in the ‘fast’ lane so slowly you wonder why they’re doing it. You could discuss the weather while they’re going past. I’ve come a long way in three days, a long way from when I chose a moment when no one was looking to rock the giant (okay, for me it is) R 1200 RT off it’s centre stand, and moved quickly to steady it. Shit, it’s heavy! One thing’s certain: as long as I have R12, the centre stand won’t used. Who got it up there, in the first place? Anyway, when the ‘manne’ that matter look up, I’m standing there, man, ever so cool. With the saddle in its lowest position, at least my feet are on the ground. Can’t look cool on tippy toe. In my head I am telling myself, this is going to take some getting used. It’s a sumo compared with my Suzy 500 lightweight, a 100kg difference in fact. And I am heading into the 5pm Friday afternoon New Jersey traffic with this? Am I crazy? These girlie moments pass quickly, though, ’cause people are watching. It’s a strange animal. I press the starter (which I can’t find because it’s in the ‘wrong’ place, everything is in the ‘wrong’ place) and it jerks from side to side – like a harnessed mule. I’m find there’s something endearing about ‘kicking’ it into life. Like prodding a bad tempered dog – childish, irresistible and so predictable.

We’re off. I’m following Beemer’s Oleg Satanovsky, who is guiding me back to my motel. At least I don’t have try to find my way and can get used to everything being in the wrong place and driving on the ‘wrong’ (that is the right) side of the load. Keep right, I keep telling myself. In motion, RT is not that difficult to control. And, oh, man, it’s got ‘grunt’ as my friend Greg would say (weighty Greg needs ‘grunt’). It’s really lekker. I’m starting to enjoy this. I spend the next hour and half (I don’t enjoy this) trying to find a cellphone (mobile here) shop to sell me a pay as you go package. I battle turning it, pulling it out of parking bays. I can’t get my feet on and off the ground in sync with the clutch and brakes. I’m half wallking, half falling. Making a right arse of myself on SuperBike. I’m ‘finished’ by the time I get back to the motel. It’s not that early the next morning when I ‘wake the mule’, packed and ready (if not exactly roaring to go). Easy run out of New Jersey, roads are well marked, I avoid the freeways and head north to Route 6, Pennsylvania’s Grand Army of the Republic highway, one of the early routes to cross the US. It’s quiet, the surface is good. The bike is steady. I’m thinking it’s rather like being on a tractor – a techno-age tractor, mind you, more John Deere than Bulldog Lance (Google that one, honey). It’s got trendous pull, it’s got grunt, it’s got growl. I’m getting daring in the corners – but I’m goin’ real slow. So slow I sometimes think if I lean too much, I’m going to fall over. Everyone is goin’ real slow. No one breaking the speed limit, everyone travelling along at the same pace. Even the Mad Max clones with their knotted ‘doeks’ on their heads are goin’ slow. No crazy, looney South Africans not giving a damn about anyone else. Which brings you to some of the ‘gimmicks’. The RT has a speed control (remember the Valiants’ boasting about that in sixties?) and a windsreen that moves up and down (Valiants’ didn’t boast about that). You need this? Actually, you don’t. But, three days behind me, they’re both great features. This first might not do so well in South Africa, because no one travels at a steady speed, but here in America, a speed control works. ‘You can safely travel at five to 10 miles per hour over the limit,’ Oleg said. ‘Don’t go beyond that.’ He’s right. 55MPH: I set the speed control at just over 60 plus, or at what the car in front of me is doing. The car stays in front, the car behind stays behind. 35MPH: the car in front slows down, I set the speed control, the car behind me slows down, and there we go. It is like a dance. It is harmony. Cars, SUVs, trucks, lorries, bikes. No stragglers, no sprinters. Most Americans are amazed when I point this out. ‘You gotta be jokin’. People are crazy out there.’ Crazy? Go to South Africa for crazy. The hairiest part of the trip has been on Interstates 80, 79 and 71, heading west and south from Pennsylvania to Columbus in Ohio. But what makes it hairy is not the speed but the huge number of juggernauts. In places on three lane highways, they can be two lanes deep and the turbulence they set up could equal a hurricane. If I was on anything lighter than the RT, I’d have been rucked and plucked and thrown right off the planet. And you have to say this for the RT, it is rock steady. The other hairy part about the freeways is that they are so boring (okay, that is the disadvantage to everyone travelling at the same speed), and I was yawning and yawning and yawning with my mouth so wide open that my eyes were shut when I hit a lump of rubber the size of a rear quarter of beef. I ‘skrikked wakker’ so fast, I just caught it out of the corner of my eye, my brain screaming you gonna lose it … I don’t know what Beemer’s designers bargained on the bike hitting and how they engineered it, but the RT gave it a nod – and rode on. Phew! The shifting windscreen. Nifty thing that. Not only for rain (and it has rained), but for wind noise. When those geniuses at AGV produced my helmet, they threw in wind noise for free. Surround sound. You don’t (or I didn’t) think about wind noise and helmets, do you? Well some are fitted with wind noise. And I found that raising the shield a little, lowering it a little, it does marvels. And, while the shield sets up some turbulence of it’s own, you don’t feel like a block of ice in a martini shaker. So, yes, early days yet. We have a long way to go yet, but one thing is for certain. You’ll find us on the back rounds (where there’s no cellphone reception – bye, bye friends, bye bye Bluetooth) – and I won’t be using the centre stand. And like a marriage, we’ll get used to one another, there will be little remarkable and less to write about. For which you might well be grateful.