Nashua, New Hampshire Shamrock Tour®

About the ride

I dream of New England. In my mind’s eye, I see picturesque little towns, fall foliage, wooded hills, and mile after mile of quiet country roads. But there are layers to New England. There are stories beyond the stereotypes, characters beyond the clichés. This is a story about those layers, about the people who crossed oceans and continents searching for new lives in the New World.

Route & stops

• Nashua, NH: Home base for a week in late September. Just over the Massachusetts state line, the city offers convenient services and a historical downtown and is perfectly situated for exploring the area.
• Portsmouth, NH: Features an international variety of restaurants and cafes with outdoor dining options plus dedicated motorcycle parking spots.
• Haverhill, MA: Dar Rafiki's, a small Moroccan bakery in the corner of a nondescript 7-11 strip mall. The young woman behind the counter came here a year ago for school and work from Casablanca. The display case is filled with all manner of cakes and desserts.
• Gloucester, MA: The Fishermen's Memorial depicting a sailor at the helm of a ship, looking steely-eyed toward an invisible storm, and the Fishermen's Wives Memorial with a young woman with a baby on her hip and a toddler at her side gazing over the same waters with worry and concern. Since colonial times, thousands of sailors lost their lives out there ("They that go down to the sea in ships" is carved on the statue's pedestal).

Observations

• The impending autumn had begun to paint the quiet backroads of New England with color, making the already picturesque surroundings even more so.
• The names on the plaques are solidly British at first: Baker, Williams, Gardner. But by the middle of the 19th century, there is a huge influx of Irish, Scottish, French/French Canadian, and Scandinavian names: O'Neil, O'Brien, McCloud, McKinnon, Laroque, Arsenault, Fredrickson, Gunderson. At the turn of the 20th century, more and more names from other countries appear: Acavo, Santos, Hessian, Cortina, Vogler, Orlando. The names on these plaques reflect the waves of immigration that landed on Gloucester's shores over the centuries.
• America is rooted in immigration, from the Pilgrims escaping religious persecution in England to my own family seeking a better life.
• Boston is filled with stories of Irish immigrants, the Italian North End, and others. But the closer you get, the worse the traffic becomes. Even out here, a marathon away, I get snarled.