Editor's Note: The following is the first of a three-part series chronicling Kyle Petty as he rides a motorcycle to the first four races of the season, with two scheduled trips to Phoenix in between. Part 1 details his trip from Daytona to Fontana with good friend Ken Schrader.

Kyle Petty always has a lot on his plate, and even more on his mind.

But for his latest "tickler project" -- a proposed book detailing a motorcycle trip between every track on the Sprint Cup circuit -- Petty's already put a huge dent in the thousands of miles that such a project would involve.

Like, how about a shot at more than 7,000 miles in just three weeks?

"This is the deal," Petty said last week from Fontana, Calif. "What I want to do is -- and I've said this 10 million times -- but I want to ride [a motorcycle] to every racetrack. Just ride as much as I could."

The current odyssey began when Petty and fellow NASCAR veteran Ken Schrader rode from Daytona International Speedway, cross-country to Fontana. Despite the miserable weather NASCAR encountered at the Auto Club Speedway, less than one day of their four on the road west was blotted by rain.

"It's been good -- I enjoyed it," Petty said about 20 hours after arriving in California. "It's the first time I've ridden a Harley in a while, because I've been riding Victory motorcycles, but Kenny and I had a good trip."

California was a rough weekend on the racing side, for both men. When qualifying was rained out, Schrader's No. 49 BAM Racing Dodge team was a victim of the rule book's qualifying parameters and he was a non-starter. But he hung out and was still in Fontana on Sunday.

Petty had mechanical issues in the Auto Club 500 and ended up finishing 38th. So for him, hitting the road again was a salve for those bruised feelings, with neither the book, nor his every waking minute consumed with racing.

"What I've really been thinking about doing is basically riding to the racetrack and just writing down stuff -- just halfway writing a book, you know what I mean?" Petty said. "To be honest with you, I'm halfway writing a book about just riding a motorcycle to the racetrack and meeting race fans and riding with guys like Kenny Schrader.

"I'm not writing about anything that goes on around the racetrack, because that's not my forte -- it's not what I do. I just want to do like a journal of what I experience."

Before the season began Petty, the owner/driver of Petty Enterprises' No. 45 Dodge, had a fund-raising commitment for the Victory Junction Gang Camp for chronically and critically ill children that he and wife, Pattie, operate in Randleman, N.C.

That kept him from riding his bone-stock, 500-miles-from-new Harley-Davidson Classic to Daytona Beach for Speedweeks.

But from there, a sizeable chunk of the book's first piece is in progress for Petty and his sidekick for at least part of that first section, fellow motorcycle aficionado Schrader.

"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.

"It was funny -- we knew we had to be [in Fontana] by lunchtime [Friday, Feb. 22] to practice, and we wanted to be [in California on Thursday], so we eased in [to Fontana] about 3 o'clock [Thursday]. As far as I was concerned, we had a full day left to ride, if we wanted to."

As usual, Petty had a plan for everything, and riding a bike everywhere is no hindrance. He's not a touring golf professional, so loaner or rental clubs sufficed for the charity golf outing in Phoenix.

Kyle's Corner

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"The easiest thing, too, is this," the eminently pragmatic Petty said. "Since I'm following the races, I can re-pack my bag every time I get somewhere. I don't have to pack all my clothes for four or five weeks on the road, because I'm just reloading on the bus [at each racetrack].

"It's like being with the race team -- you don't unload your bolt bin every week. I'll have things on the bus, or on the truck. I'll just switch dirty clothes for new clothes and the next week, switch to another batch of clean clothes, and go again."

For his mileage readings on this trip Petty, who despite his serious endeavors many consider the clown prince of Sprint Cup, depended on Schrader, who's infinitely serious about his racing, but who possesses a delightfully zany streak beyond that.

"Kenny's got a better idea [how far they rode] than me, because he kept track of every mile," Petty said. "But I think we rode like 2,800 miles to get out [to Fontana]."

And there's no question that, despite having ridden thousands of miles in each of his annual Kyle Petty Charity Rides, this trip -- just him on his Harley and Schrader on his basic black Suzuki Boulevard --- was special for Petty.

"Spending four days with Kenny Schrader was the highlight of the trip, I can tell you that," Petty said after reaching Fontana. He just giggled like he was sharing an inside joke when he was asked how difficult it was to convince Schrader to accompany him.

"It was funny, because I first talked with Schrader about it when we were testing in Vegas [at the end of January], because I had already planned on it -- and he said, 'I'll get with you in Daytona,'" Petty said. "When we got there, Schrader said he was 80 percent sure he was going.

"But then, Schrader didn't have the best week down there, and I was afraid he'd want to go back to North Carolina. But he told me [after the Gatorade Duel], 'I need to ride a motorcycle -- I'm 99 percent sure I'm gonna go with you.'

"I know he went over to the dirt track [in Florida] a couple nights, but he was around, and he and I were comparing notes on what we were bringing -- rain suits and tools and what-not -- to make sure we made it [to California].

"So he jumped on and Monday morning we rode through the rain until we got to between Tallahassee [on the Florida panhandle, about four hours from Daytona Beach] and Pensacola [Fla., about two-to-three more hours] -- but the rest of the trip was a good trip, a fun trip."

Petty has an optimistic scope for his project that, in conjunction with the other irons he has in the fire, such as overseeing the Petty Enterprises racing conglomerate and also maintaining an active role in Victory Junction, also has a reasonable side.

"I'd like to do [the research for the book] in one year," Petty said, laughing uproariously as he considered the magnitude of that challenge. "But I don't think it's going to get done in one year, realistically. It'll probably take a couple years to get it all done."

As he tries to bring his plan into focus, Petty's relied on past experiences, including 13 annual versions of Kyle Petty's Charity Ride Across America. This past November, Petty rode from Texas Motor Speedway to Phoenix with fellow car owners Bill and Gail Davis and media members Matt Yocum from FOX Sports and David Hyatt from MRN Radio.

"That was a fun deal, just riding from one racetrack to another," Petty said. "And that was when I really started thinking about doing all this other stuff. I've always ridden a bunch, but it's going to take some time."

Petty's been blessed, in all that time on the road, to experience people in a "more natural environment," if you will -- one that's different from the stricter milieu found about racetracks.

"So many of these guys -- and you're like me -- you just know 'em at the racetrack," Petty said. "But they're good guys, and really good people away from the racetrack."