Petty on circuitous route via motorcycle to race sites (cont'd)

"Just the way the schedule worked out, the way my appearance schedule and everything worked, it was great," Petty said, his voice sparkling as if he were a small boy on Christmas morning. "I [figured] I could go from Daytona to California, and then California to [Las] Vegas -- and then Vegas down to Phoenix.

"If I'm lucky, it will work out that I can go from Phoenix back to Atlanta -- so I'm riding to the first four races, no matter what."

Ride Across America

Kyle Petty had led the way in 13 motorcycle rides to benefit the Victory Junction Gang Camp and other charities.

• Victory Junction Gang Camp

If that itinerary doesn't seem to match the Sprint Cup schedule magnet on your refrigerator, be advised that Petty had an appearance at a charity golf tournament in Phoenix on Thursday before Sunday's UAW-Dodge 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

After that, he has to bike back to Phoenix for two days of Sprint Cup testing at Phoenix International Raceway on Monday and Tuesday, one of NASCAR's six designated tests this season. Then, it'll be on to Atlanta.

The way Petty sees it, none of it is a problem. California's race ran into Monday afternoon? No problem. By Tuesday evening, Petty was in Phoenix. As far as balancing the demands of his race team and the camp, which just last week announced it would break ground this summer on its second location, in Wyandotte County, Kan., again, there is no problem for Petty.

"In this day and time, especially with a Blackberry, you're never away from the office -- I don't care what anybody tells you," Petty said. "Every time we'd stop, you'd spend five minutes gassing your bike up and going to the bathroom.

"And then you'd spend the next 15 or 20 minutes e-mailing everybody or making all the phone calls that you needed to be making. And Kenny and I were both the same way on that."

If behaving like a couple of text-messaging teens seems incongruous for two old-school racers like Petty and Schrader, guess again.

"Every time we'd stop, we'd spend 20 minutes calling everybody," Petty said. "We were just touching base, making sure everything was good with the race team, that everything was where Pattie wanted it to be at camp -- so we kind of kept up with that."

But the Easy Rider motif still dominated.

"Planning-wise, we'd just ride and whenever we wanted to stop for lunch, we'd stop; and wherever we found a hotel to spend the night, we'd just pull in -- no reservations, no nothing, because it wasn't like we'd planned ahead," Petty said. "We'd get up in the morning, and I'd ask [Schrader] how far he wanted to ride. He just said, 'I'm following you,' so we went until it got cold or we got tired."

Petty said the four days of riding included a high of more than 800 miles on Tuesday and a low of about 500 getting into Fontana on the fourth day. The others, ballpark, were between 700 and 800 miles.

They had a goal and a purpose -- and a need to be there in time for the opening of Sprint Cup practice, which was scheduled at midday Friday -- but otherwise their flow was a delight, Petty said.

"We didn't have a rhyme or a reason and sometimes we'd change our route, just to go see something," Petty said. "We went down to Big Bend [Ranch] State Park [near Presidio, Texas] just to ride along the Rio Grande and go through the lower part of Texas and down along the Mexican border."

Petty said the 250-odd miles they rode "out of their way" to do that bit of sight-seeing was a small price to pay for the payback.

"The highlight for me was riding with Kenny," Petty said, no question at all in his voice. "Because I love to ride motorcycles, but riding with somebody who likes to ride and really enjoys it was really the highlight.

"We went through New Orleans and just kind of rode up and down the streets -- we rode down Bourbon Street -- rode around and saw the sights of New Orleans and what [Hurricane] Katrina had done to the outlying area. That was the first time I'd been to the outlying areas since Katrina and it's still pretty devastating down there, to see the damage that was done.

"Being in Marathon, Texas, which is a small place out in West Texas, but it's just a nice, nice place; and going down to Big Bend State Park, that was pretty cool. And I tell you what -- the highlight's always the end and getting to California and riding into the racetrack and parking at the bus. (Continued)