I strapped on an open face helmet, adjusted my shades, zipped up my leather jacket and pressed the go button on a Harley Road King.
It was a cold spring morning in Chicago, ahead of me was the 2,448 miles of Route 66 to Los Angeles, and it was the best moment of my motorcycling life.
For Route 66 makes your heart sing more than any other road, and there is no finer feeling than getting up every morning, checking out of a historic motel, packing your stuff on a Harley and riding west.
The road was started in 1926, after an indefatigable Oklahoman called Cy Avery pointed out to the US government that of the three million miles of highway in America, only about 36,000 were suitable for cars, and all of those were in the east.
Washington appointed Avery head of the Associated Highways Association of America, and he set to planning a new route from Chicago to Los Angeles.
In the Thrties depression, years of drought turned the Midwest into a dust bowl, sending Okies west on overladen jalopies to the promised land of California. About the only person who did well out of it was John Steinbeck, whose Grapes of Wrath about the exodus won the Pulitzer prize in 1940.
Then came the war, and Route 66 became a convoy road, filled with olive green jeeps and trucks heading west on manoeuvres.
When peacetime returned, the soldiers came back, this time with their families on holiday, in third-hand Fords bought with demob pay.
Bobby Troup wrote Get Your Kicks on Route 66, and Jack D. Rittenhouse published the first Route 66 guidebook.
In the Fifties, Disneyland opened, Jack Kerouac wrote On the Road, and the lure of California grew even stronger.
In the Sixties, hippies hitched the Route and CBS ran a hugely popular series called Route 66, funnily enough, about two adventurers who travelled its length in a red and white ’57 Corvette.
But the interstates kept coming, and in 1984 the last stretch of Route 66 was bypassed near Williams, Arizona.
But you can’t keep a good road closed, and 85 per cent of it is still there, complete with painted deserts, meteor craters, teepee motels, frozen custard stands, Jesse James’ hideout and the Big Texan Steak Ranch, where anyone eating the 72oz steak in an hour gets it free.
So Route 66 is ready and waiting for you. Not for the big truckers and road warriors who race from Chicago to LA in three or four days.
But for the rest of us, who are in no hurry, who want to stop and smell the roses, the freshly brewed coffee or the pumpkin pie.
Who feel, as the 17 Century Japanese poet Matsuo Basho said, that the journey itself is home.
A home where you can be handed that cup of coffee or that slice of pie from the person who brewed and baked them, or shoot the breeze with someone you have never met before and will never meet again, but with whom in that moment you feel entirely content.
For really useful and entertaining background reading before you go, there are several books on the road, but my favourites are Route 66: The Mother Road by Michael Wallis, for inspiring stories and interviews with great personalities, and Route 66 by Tom Snyder, a mile-by-mile guide to motels, diners, gas stations, garages and characters.
So do it. You’ll remember it for ever.
The Facts
EagleRider (eaglerider.com) has two-week guided rides of Route 66 from $3,904 (£2,864) per person, including bike rental, accommodation and pretty much everything except air fare to Chicago, one-week tours of half the route at a time from $2,447 (£1,795), or one-way rentals from $49 (£36) a day.
Get £30 off your insurance here: MotorcycleDirect.co.uk
