The riders traveled far away from big urban cities in order to putt to and through small and middle sized towns. As the years passed and the miles ridden soared, more and more of these places appeared to be shattered or shadows of their former selves.

These towns were places where the promise of American free enterprise flowered for over a century. Wages may have been modest, but workers and their families enjoyed perks that went beyond company pensions, picnics, and softball to include a lifestyle of increasing comfort, boundless hope and steadfast optimism about the future. Hard work would always have its rewards.

These were the towns whose young men underwrote the human cost of two world wars and who then returned home to become the industrial foundation of the American Century. Theirs was a quiet heroism of an older age.

The small town decay that the riders found was across all regions, economic bases and races. Former economic mainstays like mineral extraction, lumbering, railroads, factories, manufacturers or agribusiness had disappeared along with jobs, tax bases, middle classes, and schools. Towns lucky enough to have survived did so with low paying service economy jobs and businesses.

Ruins in these once proud and thriving cities of craftsmen, thing makers, and shop keepers included places of worship, culture, business, and entertainment – all shuttered and decaying after serial attempts to repurpose them during past several decades of private and public economic revival/survival efforts.

Many had parks and cemeteries allowed to go to seed, standalone schools shuttered, taverns and bowling alleys all closed.

People who had lived there before the decay set in had thought themselves twice lucky – born in America and born in these small towns. Those that were still there no longer believed the latter and were slowly losing faith in the former.

Townfolk comity had been erased and replaced by a grimier and grimmer outlook and prospects. It was a devastatingly sad portrait that had taken the bikers years to recognize and then piece together.

When it went bad, it did not happen all at once but slowly, imperceptibly at first. The creative destruction of capitalism and globalism slowly blew these all-American towns all up and away. When their mainstay businesses died and jobs left, they were replaced with companies which had no connection to the real people, places and histories of the town. Federal, state and local redevelopment aid programs came and went, but these towns continued to be hollowed out.

The final indignity came when the remaining people were swept up by the serial drug epidemics from crack in the 80s to meth during the 90s to opioids now during the past three decades. All of this conspired to infect the inhabitants with a sense of rootlessness. They were losing their sense of place and their trust in one another. Fear and anger replaced trust and neighborliness. Kids played indoors now, instead of playing outside as their parents had before the great decay gained traction.

What the riders had observed were people and places which had lost their societal protectors — employers, banks, shops, governments, churches, civic groups. They had been their partners in building and thriving in the American frontier.

So for anyone wondering why swing-state America voted against the establishment in 2016, the riders had unknowingly ridden past the answer.

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