Not so Sweet Carolina

For a variety of reasons, I now find myself the proud half-owner of a 2024 Harley-Davidson 975 Nightster. It’s one of the new breed of Hogs: liquid-cooled, fuel-injected, 21st-century engine management and plush suspension from Japanese specialists, Showa. But it’s still true to its heritage with handsome, cast engine casings and the tank finished in an oh-so-deep, Burgundy Red gloss paint, it looks a mile deep.

It might feel a bit lighter and more contemporary than its forbears, but—critically—this one was put together by Milwaukee’s finest, whereas the majority of the same model destined for other markets are built in India. While the Indian versions are no doubt identical, the brand values and identity of Harley are, and have always been, complex.

If Darwinism applied in the motorcycling world, Harley should be extinct. But things are rarely that simple when passion is involved, and few brands in the biking world stoke passion the way Harley does, particularly here in the USA where I’m setting off on a nine-day tour.

Starting in Norfolk, Virginia, riding down the east coast to Charleston in South Carolina before turning inland towards the treasures of the Smoky Mountains. Then, my intention is tackling the entirety of the Blue Ridge Parkway, finishing with the continuation of this route, the Skyline Drive, ending close to Washington DC.

Emerald Isle is 199 miles from Norfolk on the fastest route, but you can easily make that 308 miles by seeking out the intercostal islands that guard the entrance to Albermarle Sound. I’d wanted to come as I spotted that the town of Kitty Hawk is here where, as every schoolboy used to know, the first powered flight took place in 1903. This, a mere 122 years before I ambled onto a BA something or other at Heathrow four days earlier along with 300 or so others to be transported in under six and a half hours to New York in considerable comfort and complete safety.

While I may delude myself that I understand the Science of Flight, I still consider it pretty close to magic that aeroplanes work at all and with so few mishaps, despite many airline and airport operators colluding to make flying such a deeply unpleasant experience.

There is a monument to the Wright Brothers’ achievement and a museum at the nearby and much more evocatively named Kill Devil Hills, where the flight actually took place. But despite the website saying it’s open seven days a week, there is a federal government shutdown at the moment, so it isn’t. Regardless, Route 264, the Albermarle Historic Highway, is deserted and well suited to an unfaired cruiser with a natural, comfortable velocity of 60 mph or so.

I know of— and wanted to see—Emerald Isle simply because David Sedaris made me. Sedaris is a brilliant writer: searingly honest about his relationships with friends and family—alive and dead—but gentle, self-deprecating humour is never far from the surface. He lives—with his husband Hugh—on Emerald Isle some of the time and I was interested to see for myself what I assumed was a fashionable, artistic, slightly shabby beachside community replete with good places to eat and drink.

Any seaside town, in mid-November, will inevitably feel tired and old as the year draws to a close, and Emerald Isle is no different. There were few places to stay when I booked, and I was only one of three guests at the scrofulous motel, just off the pier. The other two— oldish-looking blokes, without a woman in either of their lives, I suspect—were getting stuck into a 12-pack of Budweiser when I showed up.

Striking out for a walk down at sunset, access to the beach is extremely limited with private walkways between the homes, each with forbidding notices of what legal mayhem anyone who is neither a guest nor an owner will suffer should they stray down them.

So denied a path with an ocean view, I walk Ocean Drive. On the side facing the sea, the houses are generally expansive and expensive-looking. On the other side, it’s the opposite. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anywhere where the contrast between two sides of the same street is so marked.

The only open bar is The Growler and has a Northern England Working Men’s Club vibe to it. All Formica tables and hard chairs that looked like they could be hosed down if needed. The beer is—inevitably for the US these days—hyperlocal, excellent, and avuncularly served.

“Where’s the best place for dinner?” I ask, and the barman directs me to Katheryn’s Martini Lounge & Bistro, but with a stern word about the martinis.

“Don’t have more than one,” he warns. “The record is nine, and it didn’t end well.”

Thirty minutes later, and sipping a ludicrously poured (no measures featured in the making of this drink…) 007 Martini, made a luminous ochre by the vermouth they use along with both gin and vodka, I ask this new barman if the record was true.

“Oh yes,” he says. “I know as I am that person,” before adding that it only went wrong when he went next door for a beer afterwards and promptly collapsed.

Back at the scuzzy motel, the beer bottles and pizza boxes are mounting up. I don’t sleep as the car park is floodlit and silvers the edge of the blackout blind of my room while the neighbours drink, smoke, and argue, in a tongue I cannot decipher, well into the night. I’m woken at regular intervals as they go out for a smoke, punctuated by wheezing, bronchitic coughing fits. The next morning, I count three 12-packs of Budweiser, four large takeaway pizza boxes, and the threshold of their room is a sea of dog-ends.

I go in search of the Emerald Isle I had in my mind’s eye and the one lovingly curated by David Sedaris but didn’t really find it. At the northern end of Ocean Drive, the houses become even larger and grander and all attractively painted in an array of pastel colours. But with no parking allowed here and access to the beach even more severely restricted, I cut my losses and find the freeway south.