Kennedy: Former TVA employee travels to the four corners of America

TVA retiree Wayne Rains has traveled to the four corners of the United States on his motorcycle.
TVA retiree Wayne Rains has traveled to the four corners of the United States on his motorcycle.

When I was in college in the late 1970s, a writer named Peter Jenkins published a nonfiction book called "A Walk Across America" about his solitary trek from New York to Oregon. It was a point of pride in my hometown in Maury County, Tenn., that Jenkins chose to live there after he put down his walking stick.

Through the book, Jenkins told stories about meeting ordinary Americans. He marveled at their hospitality and optimism, which contrasts sharply with the grumpy, cynical stereotype painted by those who would have us believe there is something stale -- if not sour -- about the American experience.

A couple of decades later, William Least Heat-Moon, another travel writer, wrote "Blue Highways," which explored small-town America from the perspective of a back-road traveler. Among the small towns in the book is New Hope, Tenn.

The cultural and geographic vastness of America, it seems, is a phenomenon best explained by slow-lane travelers. Those lucky enough to see it firsthand -- at their own pace and without the sterilizing effects of airports and interstate highways -- seem to share a conclusion. At its core, America is populated by some of the happiest, most friendly people in the world.

For years, Wayne Rains, a former TVA employee, daydreamed about retiring and purchasing a motorcycle to explore every corner of the United States. The fact that he had reached his mid-60s without ever riding a motorcycle was just a speed bump.

"When I was a younger man, I never got around to it," Rains says. "Then, when I was 64, I said, 'That's it. I'm going to do it.'"

After he retired from TVA, Rains took a two-day continuing education course at Chattanooga State Community College on how to ride a motorcycle and immediately bought himself a little 250 CC Honda to practice on.

"I used to go up and down Mountain Creek Road," says Rains, 70. "Then I got adventurous one day and rode all the way to Dayton (Tenn.) and turned around in the Lowes' parking lot."

Two motorcycle upgrades and about 60,000 miles of cross-country trips later, Rains is a seasoned road warrior who is about 90 percent of the way to riding all the "lower 48" states. He'll mark off at least three more this summer, putting him just two states short of his goal. Meanwhile, Alaska sits out there as Rains' elusive white whale -- the state to tackle when everything else is marked off his list and he feels confident enough to set out for a month or more on his 1300 CC Honda Sabre.

Rains has mastered the art of economical travel. He covers about 300 miles a day on his journeys, camping about 75 percent of the time and eating lots of franks and beans. He says his wife, Faye, has no desire to go with him on his frequent journeys, but she encourages his hobby.

Rains recalls, "I was out in Oregon a couple of years ago and I was talking to a young deputy sheriff. He said, 'There's no way my wife would ever let me do what you're doing.' And I told him, 'Wait until you've been married 40 years.'"

Rains took his first big trip tracing the Mississippi River from Minnesota to Louisiana and back. He also tackled the Natchez Trace, which begins in Middle Tennessee, as one of his first rides. His longest journey was a 7,000-mile loop to California and the Pacific Northwest and back, which helped him bag one of his most prized accomplishments, visiting all four geographic corners of the United States -- Key West, Fla.; Blaine, Wash.; San Ysidro, Calif.; and Madawask, Maine.

On his trips, he takes time to stop and talk to folks. On a visit to the Times Free Press newsroom, he spread out pictures of some of the people he's met in his travels: marine researchers in Florida, a dance hall girl out West, welcome center ladies in Maine.

"I've never met a grouchy person on the road," he says.

Let that sink in. Just walking around, I've probably bumped into three grumpy people today alone.

Could it be that the act of traveling has a mind-cleansing energy attached that filters out the negative and accentuates the positive?

Rains thinks so.

"I call my motorcycle the 'Freedom Machine,'" Rains says. "Once I get on the motorcycle and start down the road, it immediately clears my head."

Contact Mark Kennedy at mkennedy@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6645. Follow him on Twitter @TFPCOLUMNIST. Subscribe to his Facebook updates at www.facebook.com/mkennedycolumnist.

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