Last modified: Wednesday, June 6, 2007 7:17 PM EDT Charlie Smith, left, and his son Chuck pose with their motorcycles during Chuck's first trip in 1976 on the Mohawk Trail. (Submitted) A journey years in the making Plainville resident Charlie Smith's 8,000-mile cross-country motorcycle journey with his son, Chuck Smith of Coventry, R.I., has been driven by history. The elder Smith fell in love with motorcycles when he began riding in the late 1960s. Years later, the younger Smith would quickly become as enraptured as his father with the sleek, fast bikes, according to his father. "Chuck first rode with me as a passenger when he was about 9, his first ride as a cycle operator was when he was 16 on a trip through Western Massachusetts along the Mohawk Trail," Charlie writes in a letter to The Sun Chronicle. "We toured to the peak of Mount Greylock in North Adams, which is the highest mountain in Massachusetts. It was quite a feat for young man and I was extremely proud of him on that day in 1976." Thirty years later Thirty years after that initial trip to Western Massachusetts, Charlie and Chuck have taken many trips together throughout the Northeast and Charlie just as excited to begin this new journey with his son. "We're about to experience a ride of a lifetime as we share a father-son adventure across the United States and Canada," he writes.