We were screaming west down the I-76 on the way to Colorado when the sky went dark. We'd heard from truckers all afternoon that a storm was brewing, but hours of relatively clear sky had left us hopeful that we'd somehow avoided it.

It wasn't long before the first bolts of lightning struck ground, first in the near horizon and soon after in the open, dusty fields all around us. When mad gusts blew us to the shoulder of the highway, we knew we had to get the hell to the next truck stop — fast.

We took shelter with dozens of truckers and other shellshocked motorists, all worried that the escalating wind was a sign of a tornado. And it was then I finally accepted the wisdom of John Steinbeck's famous line: "... We do not take a trip, a trip takes us."

At that point, we'd been on the road for more than two weeks and had logged nearly 5,000 miles — from Los Angeles to New York and back — on our rented Harleys. Ahead would be more storms, more brain-frying heat, and one highway-closing mudslide to endure before we were done.

Yet what some saw as a vain exercise in hubris and machismo my buddy Gary and I considered a long-overdue exploration of "The Other 48," an America that, culturally and politically, sometimes seems more than an ocean removed from our lives in Hawai'i.

Before our trip, I had seen more of the rest of the world than of my own country. And given the last two presidential elections, occasions that left me stunned at the gulf between my personal beliefs and that of the voting majority, I wasn't sure I wanted to change that.

But as Gary and I learned as we zoomed through 16 states in 19 days, the value we Americans place in finding common ground — especially in the transient realm of the interstate — can be redemptive.

Our roster of here-today friends included a kickboxing parolee from Texas, a guy in Nebraska traveling all night to deliver a baby grand piano to his son, and a woman in Illinois who had gotten into her car one morning and heard the voice of the big guy telling her to spread the gospel.

And as we snarled through 120-degree afternoons in the Southwest, horizontal rain and hail in Mississippi, and a shower of sparks from exploding truck tires in Indiana, we took comfort in the passing waves of fellow riders, the "you-gotta-see ..." recommendations of locals, and the rest-stop chit-chat of long-haul truckers.

It wasn't the trip we planned, and we were hardly the rugged figures we held in our imaginations (we shot for Butch and Sundance but settled for Lenny and Squiggy). But as Jon Dee Graham once sang ...

I had some big ideas

Made some fancy plans ...

but those were only plans

and this is real life

and it's a big sweet life.

Reach Michael Tsai at mtsai@honoluluadvertiser.com.