Who says a middle-aged New Jersey accountant with grown children can’t devote almost two months of his busy life to a great cross-country adventure, braving the elements on his Harley with his wife holding on tight behind him?
Mike Rescinio spent most of September and October doing just that and, though there were occasional tribulations, he looks back with fondness on each one of those 9,700 miles. It is, in Mike’s words, “Our Great Adventure.”
The so-called Great American Road Trip, whether by car or motorcycle, is something a growing number of Americans are doing for weeks or months of their lives. The reasons vary from a spiritual awakening to just getting in touch with America. And, yes, it is an opportunity to have a lot of fun.
For Rescinio, a New Jersey accountant, and his wife Sue, it was something planned for well over a year as their youngest was preparing to head off to college, leaving them in an empty nest.
“Our lives here in New Jersey move at a very rapid pace, and I am grateful that I took the time to slow down and enjoy the people we met and the places we saw,” says Rescinio, a founding partner of the accounting firm, Lawson, Rescinio, Schibell & Associates, Certified Public Accountants in Oakhurst, NJ, approaching its third decade of serving Monmouth County and beyond.
Their adventure began on Sept. 8, 2015, at 8:45 a.m. when they pulled away from their home in Oceanport, NJ, on their 2012 Harley Davidson Road Glide Custom and put a serious dent into their road trip by covering 545 miles to Sandusky, Ohio, that first day. Serious, that is, if barely five percent of the total distance qualifies as such, knowing the miles on many days, especially off the interstates and so-called beaten path, would be significantly fewer.
Oh, but the things Mike and Sue would experience and see over their 46 days of exploring, which included, among other things:
—getting close and personal with places like Chicago; the corn-laden plains of Nebraska; Seattle; the Grand Tetons; Death Valley; the Grand Canyon; Yellowstone; Crater Lake; Colorado Springs; Lake Tahoe; Yosemite; redwoods and the California coast; Nashville, Las Vegas, Memphis and New Orleans.
—encountering a buffalo herd, 150 strong, that followed them across a bridge near Yellowstone; flash floods and washed out roads in Death Valley, of all places; temperatures topping 90 in New Orleans and freezing conditions in Montana; the unexpected sight of many homeless in California; reuniting with son, Chris, for a couple of days in Colorado Springs; doing things tourists do at museums, breweries, and landmarks like the Space Needle, Bourbon Street and the former motel, now a museum, where Martin Luther Kind was assassinated.
“You get to feel the elements and see so much more on a bike rather than being stuck behind the glass of a car,” said Rescinio. And, yes, Mike and Sue are already looking forward to doing it again— and “soon.”