Author’s Note: One critical item would have made this trip better, my brother Steve riding along. I’m writing this account, so my brother Steve can vicariously experience the Badlands run. We planned on rolling out together, but his health didn’t hold up, due to his being sprayed with agent orange in Nam. The V.A. says he didn’t get sprayed because he was a “blue water sailor” and they don’t recognize blue water sailors as potential victims of drifting Agent Orange.
The sailors on Steve’s ship were forced to scrub Agent Orange off the equipment whenever it got on the ship after coastline patrols because of potential damage to equipment, and it cost money, right? Eighteen and nineteen year old sailors on the other hand were easy to come by. He has nerve damage and can’t even walk, but they won’t even classify him as disabled. We both signed up for four years in Aug. of 1965, and that’s the thanks he gets for joining during the Nam war. He’s still a patriot, but he’s a pissed off and disappointed one.
I wish he could have gone along on our Sturgis run. We rode together since he was 14 and I was 15. We would bomb along together on our old Simplex we saved $75.00 to buy. We later rode Hondas, popular in the ’60s. We rode friends’ Vespas, motorbikes and Cushmans. Whatever had two wheels and a motor we rode if we could. All along we dreamed of one day owning a Harley or Indian. We finally both bought Harleys after we returned from the Navy and we rode together whenever we could. We can’t do that anymore, so now I ride for both of us.
I have decided to write this account of our trip as though someone was sitting across from me on my patio having a beer and they just made the mistake of asking me how the trip went. I will blab on and on uninterrupted till the glorious end of the tale. It has taken me 63 years to get my ass to Sturgis,so I decided to keep a journal along the way. I knew that, at my age, I’d forget most of the places and people we met and saw along the way. This way I can relive it over and over, if I never manage to pull this kind of trip off again. As you know, tomorrow is not certain for any of us, so we must strive to enjoy today. Here goes.
Rick and I are two old dudes from California. He’s 57 and I’m 63. We both work at the same place, a manufacturing plant in Stockton, California. He oversees the trucking and I oversee the rest of it. The business got along just fine while both of us were gone, so we figure, if we want to keep our jobs, we shouldn’t leave again and remind them of how well they can get along without us.
Rick looks and sounds like a one percenter, but he’s not. He rides a 2007 Harley Road King with no windshield, a big ass engine, with loud pipes’ and 20-inch apes. I look like somebody’s grandpa, but I’m not. I ride a 2006 Road King with a windshield, big fat Mustang seat for my skinny ass, and a removable tour pack for my wife to lean back on. Rick and I both love to ride and we both wanted to see Sturgis at least once.
8:30 AM DEPARTURE, AUGUST 5TH
In the days preceding our departure, we were like two kids waiting for Christmas. The days leading up to our planned departure drug on like pouring frozen honey. We kept busy with planning and preparations and the last week finally here. We’d gotten our bikes all serviced and in my case, I put together a list of items, which I thought would be necessary. It was a good thing I did, because somehow I still ended up packing last-minute, the night before, and I needed the list to remind me. It was just like college again, cramming the night before a big test.
Finally, D-Day (departure day), Thursday, August 5th
I packed a few last minute items and rode over to Rick’s house to meet up. He called me before I left and told me that he was going to go over to Eagle’s Nest Harley-Davidson in Lathrop to gripe about his faulty cigarette lighter he paid them to install. We wanted to be capable of charging our phones along the way. He would go over there and give them “what-for,” while I rode to his house. They flicked on the auxiliary switch, which activated the power and he sheepishly said, “never mind,” or something of that nature and got the heck out of there.
I left home around 8:00 AM and that put me at Rick’s place about 8:30. We asked his roommate to take our photo and then we departed for our first Sturgis run.
We headed up highway 80 to Donner Summit where we got gas and ate some munchies. It would be the first Diet Pepsi of Rick’s mandatory 12 per day. I didn’t know it at this point, but I would soon discover that humans can exist without ever consuming water. Who knew??
We stopped at Donner Summit for a quick photo and then cut off of Hwy. 80 onto Hwy 89 toward Truckee and on to Susanville where we would start north on Hwy 395. That was a real nice stretch of road with a lot of terrific scenery along the way.
Somewhere along the route to Oregon, we met up with a county worker in one of the rest stops. She asked where we were going and we told her to Sturgis, at which point she let us know that several other bikers had passed by earlier.
“I hate those guys,” she said, “and I told ’em so. They’re getting to make the run to the Badlands and I’m forced to work.” In fact, she told one of them that she hated one the most because she could fit on his bike. She told us of a shortcut, so we thanked her and peeled out. There were several dry lakes along the way. Just dust and alkali with winds kicking
up minor dust devils. The danced on the lake beds below us.
We pushed on into Oregon heading for Lakeview where we would spend the night. When we rolled into the old town we asked a local yokel for a restaurant recommendation. She told us to try the Roadhouse down the road. We strolled in and tending the bar was a total fox. She was all tattooed up, but on her it was just right. She had on skimpy shorts, tall leather boots and a tight top. I really blew it by not taking her photo, but I was in a daze mystified by her succulent cleavage.
I have multiple pictures of Rick and me gazing thoughtfully at the horizon, but not one photo of this beautiful bartender. She was completely out of place in this hick town bar. She could be pulling down big money and serious tips in Vegas or Miami or L.A. but no….she’s in this dump in Lakeview. The food sucked and this beauty of a bartender made Rick the worst Bloody Mary either of us had ever tasted. Maybe she should stay in Lakeview till she refines her drink recipes.
During our meal, a drunk kept pestering the bartender and other folks. He was asked to leave a couple of times. We just ignored him and finished our meal. When we got ready to cut a dusty trail, I heard a voice, “When did bikers turn into pussies?”
I turned around and sure enough, it was the swaying drunk from the bar. I asked him what he said and he repeated himself. I asked if he was trying to get his ass kicked and he said he was just admiring our bikes.
I told him that his opening comment was the wrong way to compliment our bikes and that he should just get out of there before I beat his ass.
He stepped up to me, too close, and said, “You want to throw down?”
“Yep,” I said, gave him a solid shove, cocked my fist back. “Last chance pal.”
“Forget him Gary. He’s not worth getting arrested over,” Rick said.
“Stay outta this you sonuvabitch,” the drunk muttered and Rick jumped into the middle of the action. The guy looking to get his ass handed to him, finally noodled it through and left. He was too inebriated to defend himself. It would probably have been like beating up a kid.
After a crappy meal, an obnoxious drunk guy and a long ride, we went looking for a place to sleep. We were informed by the local motel front desk clerk they were full up, but we could find a room back the way we rolled into town. So, off we went to find the Red Rock Inn. We found it and you can bet this place had vacancies. It was way over priced at $67.00 a night. There was no soap, one towel, an air conditioner that rattled like blender fulla rocks, without producing much cool air and two of the shittiest beds and mattresses ever made. The only air came from under the front door where you could see people’s feet as they walked by. I guess it was a good security, ’cause we knew if we had company about to knock on your door since their boot tips stuck under the door. Also, that door allowed the roaches and rodents a way out once they came in and
discovered what a dump the place THE RED ROCK INN, LAKEVIEW, OR.
was. We fell to sleep out of sheer
exhaustion and I slept surprisingly
well. So much for our first day on
the road.
Day 2, Friday, August 6th, 2010.
We woke up refreshed, and anxious to hit the road. We laughed about our previous evening which seemed like a surreal dream. I rapidly realized it was my brother’s birthday and wished he was with us. We quickly headed into a nice little restaurant for breakfast. Before we walked in, I offered Rick some of my sunscreen. He proceeds to rub about a quart of it into his eyes, which immediately start running and turning some sick color of blazing red.
We get seated at our table, and Rick is really starting to feel the full effect of the anti-vision, torture cream which he has just applied to his unsuspecting eyeballs. The waitress comes over wondering why Rick is crying. She thinks maybe he is hurt or someone has just died but no….it’s just a terminal case of carelessly applied sunscreen. Rick tells her he’s not crying, he just put sunscreen in his eyes. She wonders why would you do that? She asks if we would like her to confiscate the sunscreen, so Rick can’t hurt himself anymore. Rick laughed even though he was in pain, and she and I could not stop laughing either. It was somehow pathetically funny. She kept bringing him napkins for his eyes. Rick mentioned that he looked like the Charmin bear with all the toilet paper scraps stuck to his butt only with Rick, it was scraps of napkin all over his face and eyes. He damn near ruined my appetite.
After breakfast, we headed out of town on our way north. We rode through some very dry and hot country to the intersection of Hwy. 395 and Hwy. 20, where the small town of Riley, Oregon was situated. By small, I mean population three people. Can that really be true? We saw one girl running the store and two across the street at the post office. That’s three by my count, but we never really determined if they were the three residents, or if they commute to the metropolis of Riley for work. It turns out that the town was for sale. We didn’t ask how much they wanted for the place, but I wish I asked just for curiosity’s sake. The post office came complete with a barbeque out front. After drinking some water (Diet Pepsi for Rick of course) and eating some more junk food, we finally headed west toward Idaho.
The scenery started to improve as we neared Idaho. We rode all the way to Mountain Home, Idaho where we grabbed a nice room at the Best Western. Right next door was a terrific place to eat, buffet style. We ate supper and called it a day.
Day 3, Saturday, Aug. 7th.
We ate breakfast, once again at the buffet, before taking off around 8:00 AM toward Idaho Falls. Highway 20 to Idaho Falls is just a beautiful road with fertile valleys and many historic sites along the route. I stoppe at a lot of the historic pullovers.
“We’re never going to get anywhere if we stop every five minutes,” Rick said.
We stopped at one site, which was where the emigrants first saw some granite boulders and a second stop where this fellow, Tim Goodale, discovered a cutoff to avoid the hostile Indians to the south. He took 820 emigrants, 338 wagons, and 1,400 head of livestock to safety across this cutoff to the Oregon Trail. This seemed damn significant to me. If I had done it, it sure as hell would have been. Still, I decided maybe Rick was right about all these stops. The last two didn’t seem tremendously historic as far as old sites go, so we blew past the next one. As we fly by, I noticed the plaque read, “Site of the historic Bannock Indian War.” Now, that sounded historic. It even had the word historic on the plaque. Damn, I wish we could go back and read that one. I vowed to look it up later.
NOTE: I did look it up, and it was the usual story of broken promises to the American Indians. This one coming to a head in the summer of 1878 when the Indians began to leave the reservation after suffering from a lack of rations and supplies during the winter and lack of help from their government agent. The Bannocks sought allies among the Paiutes. Even though they knew the hopelessness of war, they preferred to fight rather than starve to death. According to the Burns Paiute Tribe account that I found on the internet, the Bannock Indian War consisted of few actual battles but a resurgence of raiding by the Indians and killing of Indians by the whites. The Umatilla Indians actually betrayed the Paiutes and led them into an ambush. Chief Egan was killed and with the last of their leaders dead, the Bannocks and the Paiutes surrendered.
Actually, the white settlers had (innocently, in their minds) grazed their sheep and hogs on the land where the Indians normally harvested their main food source. Their animals ate most of the Indians’ main source of food, the camas tubers, and this actually set the stage for the famine which followed and the war which followed the famine. The northern Paiutes had numbered 2,000 ten years previous to this mess and at the end they had lost two thirds of their people. Sad fuckin’ story as it turned out. So, that’s the spot where we blew past on our bikes.
Our next stop was at the Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve. We were cruising along adjacent to these plain looking fields, and all of a sudden we came to an area that looked like it burst open and blew lava all over. This was high desert country at around 5,900 feet. This was also fresh lava; not Hawaii fresh, but maybe 2,000 years old and it came from a fissure not a volcano. So around the time Jesus was alive this place split open and spewed lava. It was awesome.
While we were there, Rick and I met a guy traveling with his wife and daughter. I complimented his cool opportunity to take a motorcycle trip with his wife and daughter, who were also riding their own bikes. He was oblivious to my comment. All he talked about was incessant waiting for them everywhere.
“We get up in the morning”, he said, “and 30 minutes later I’m ready to go. But can they get ready??? NOOO!! Why can’t they just put their clothes on, eat, and get on the bikes and ride??” He continued to complain, “I think I’m going to snap soon.”
During this whole rant his wife and daughter enjoyed the lava fields, used the bathroom, read field guides and in general, had a jolly good time. We wished him the best and moved on.
Our next stop was Idaho Falls. We have been stopping in every state since we left home looking for Rick’s diabetes medicine. They didn’t have it in California or Oregon, so when we pulled into Idaho Falls. We stopped at the first Walgreens we came upon. Lo and behold, they had the correct medicine. They measured it out, brought it to the counter and took Rick’s insurance card to close the deal. But no! His damn insurance didn’t cover this particular drug. The cost of this medicine was a million dollars…not really; but some similarly outrageous price, so Rick decided to roll without. So, here we are; me and a diabetic who hasn’t taken his medicine in two days, riding 400 to 500 miles a day in 90 degree weather and drinking enough Diet Pepsi to float a boat. What could possibly go wrong there? As it turns out, he can go longer without diabetes medicine than he can without Pepsi. Without Diet Pepsi he gets headaches, but without diabetes medicine he just hallucinates. No problem!
We moved down the road and bought some food at Arby’s and while there, we met a guy who was missing a leg from a motorcycle accident. After paying for our food we went looking for the actual Idaho Falls.
I motioned for the SUV next to us at the light to roll down the window, so I could ask for directions. A beautiful girl was driving and her boyfriend was riding along. They began to give us conflicting directions, and just as the light was changing, the girl said to follow her and she would lead us right to the highway. She did just that, and we were on our way to Wyoming.
The scenery at this point just continued to get better and better as we neared the border of Wyoming and Idaho. The area by the border is a real gathering point for rafters and kayakers. We watched a non-stop parade of rafts coming by us on the Snake River below our lookout point. It was really one of the most scenic of all the places on our ride.
We continued on toward Jackson Hole, Wyoming and as we entered the town it soon became apparent that we had made a big mistake. Prior to this time, we just pulled into any town and found rooms to stay in with no problem. That’s a fine way to go about it, if you are in Lakeview, Ore. or Mountain Home, Idaho. Even though those are cool destinations places, no one is beating a path to those locales. Jackson is a different story altogether. The place was packed with cars and humans. It looked like half the New York City population was crammed in there.
We pulled into the Motel 6 thinking that it should be cheap and vacant. They were full and also wanted around $280.00 a night. As we looked around, we began to realize that there wasn’t a square foot of vacant space in the entire valley.
The lady at the counter said, “You can ride up the mountain about 15 miles and there is a campground somewhere up there where you should be able to stay.”
We rode about 20 miles and found nothing but the Teton wilderness and steep highways. We finally gave up and returned down the mountain. We stopped at a store and asked the clerk if he knew of any place where we might camp. He sent us on another goose chase. We drove around for another half hour or so and realized that it was getting dark quickly and that we had better come up with a solution soon or we would be riding back and forth on the streets all night.
We remembered a level looking pull out on the side of the mountain that we had just recently been on when we were looking for the non-existent camp ground. We took off back up the Teton Mountains in search of this last resort sleeping site. We rode about 15 miles up the mountain and pulled in off of the highway about 200 feet and sure enough, this place was level. It was a small gravel area back from the road with a small ravine which had a creek running through it. It wasn’t the best, but it was workable so we parked our bikes about 5 feet apart and proceeded to put a tarp on the ground between our bikes for our bags and tied a tarp to the handlebars to create a cover over our heads. Home sweet home!
The temperature dropped like a rock in a calm lake, and it was now dark so we made up our sleeping area as best we could. It wasn’t much, but it was good enough. Around 2:00 a.m. I woke up and pushed back the overhead tarp to get a look at the stars. I was very happy to see that unlike most of California, where we have so much ambient light from the cities, we could see stars like an astronaut flying above the clouds. It was incredible.
Rick woke up and asked what the hell I was doing, so I told him I was watching the stars and looking for meteors. He said he hadn’t seen a meteor since forever. I told him that if he just kept looking at the sky he would see one. Just then, a meteor, like a ball of fire with a tail, streaked across the sky. This wasn’t some little speck that was gone in a flash. No, this was a spectacular, wide meteor, basketball size, leaving a long blazing trail behind it. It covered a big portion of our panorama of the night sky.
The ground was gravely and hard and Rick slept poorly because he had no padding at all. I had my wife’s ¼-inch thick exercise pad, so I was in relatively comfort compared to Rick.
When we awoke, Rick couldn’t find his teeth. He finally located them in the gravel by his sleeping bag. He jammed them into his mouth and grabbed his first Diet Pepsi of the day. Great way to start the day.
We took photos of our sleeping area so we could brag about how rough we had it that night, but it doesn’t do justice to the way it really looked. From the road and the cars passing by all night, it must have looked like a crime scene, where someone gunned down two fully clothed bikers. Two bodies just lying in their leathers beside their motorcycles on the side of the mountain and in a most unlikely place. Fortunately, no one bothered us. Who the hell would want to pull in and investigate that sight anyway? We both had on all of our leathers, chaps, coats, gloves, you name it. It was so cold that we needed everything just to keep warm. Rick had a real sleeping bag but I had only brought along a thin little pretend sleeping bag. It actually was a good night for me, but Rick is bigger and had no pad so he grumbled for a few days after that.
Hey, it’s those moments that you look back on later that add spice to the trip. That and the shitty room in Lakeview added gutsy flavor to our tale. What’s adventuresome about reading about sleeping in a well-kept, clean, comfortable room? That’s like reading a goddamn motel brochure.
Day 4, Sunday, August 8th.
We broke camp quickly and headed down the mountain to grab some food. We went to the McDonald’s and snatched breakfast sandwiches. I discovered that I like bacon, egg and cheese biscuits for breakfast as much as anything else, plus it was quick and cheap and there were bathrooms we could use. What more do you need?
With breakfast handled, we headed for “Jellystone Park” since Rick had never seen it before. When we got there, we discovered even more people than in Jackson. The other half of the New York City population was in line. How is that even possible? There was barely room for the wildlife. It was a “DisneyLand-Like” experience, long lines, bad food, and full parking lots: in short, there were just too many people.
We did get to see some wildlife on the way out. We saw a grizzly bear right by the road and several elk and deer, plus a buffalo just strolling leisurely down the road without a care in the world about the cars coming past him. That aspect of the trip was cool.
I also encountered a 57-year-old fellow named Ray Brown from Eugene, Oregon, who was pushing a cart festooned with American flags. I told Rick that I had to go back and talk with him a bit because he was so out of place in the wilderness.
He was a retired 8th grade history teacher. He had bells on the toes of his shoes, which the rangers told him he must have in order not to surprise some grizzly and end up getting mauled. I asked him what he was up to, and he informed me that he was walking across the U.S. and his first goal was to actually finish the trip, but secondly and more importantly, he was trying to raise awareness of the Constitution and The Bill of Rights during this trek. He kicked-off on June 12th near Florence, Oregon on the Pacific coast and he was ¼ of the way into this walk. He was an interesting, if somewhat preachy guy, after all, he had just retired from 36 years of having a captive audience of 8th graders. That probably makes you a bit preachy.
One of the things he asks people is what their idea of freedom is? I felt I was, at that moment, on my Harley, in the wilderness, with days of great riding behind me and ahead of me, experiencing American freedom to the fullest degree. I know that there are more stirring versions of what freedom means, but at this moment I was feeling very free. I enjoyed talking with this fellow, gave him a small donation, wished him well, and we headed out. (His website is: sonoflibertywalk.blogspot.com)
While in Yellowstone, Rick decided to jump his loaded to the hilt Harley off of the curb and in the process he squashed his ride bell and popped his kickstand spring off. With the help of some foreign tourists who spoke no English, we managed to leverage the spring back into place and be on our way. We stopped at the Continental Divide sign for photos and, once again Rick had an issue with a curb.
This one he backed off of and managed to high center himself. After burning some rubber off of his rear tire trying to power himself back over the curb, we tugged a bit and freed the monster.
I thought, “what’s the deal with Rick and curbs?” After two incidents in the span of an hour or so, I vowed silently to keep my eyes on him when we rolled near any curbs. After this learning process, Rick experienced no more curb issues.
We exited Yellowstone Park heading east toward Cody, Wyoming. Somewhere during this trip along the Continental Divide Rick broke off one of the two bolts holding his 20 inch apes to his risers. He chose not to tell me, since I would probably badger him, like one of his ex-wives, until he had to either kill me or separate from me during the ride. Good choice Rick. I would have freaked at the thought of one meager bolt keeping him from flying off the side of the mountain but he rode on, as though one bolt was just fine. To his way of thinking, he still had half of the required equipment needed to stay alive. Obviously, he’s an optimist. To him the glass is half full, not half empty.
On the way to Cody we spotted this cool and strange structure that was sitting on a barren hilltop with almost no landscaping or trees around it, at least that we could see. It was like something out of the movie Mad Max. It looked like someone lived in it, at least on the bottom portion.
Somehow we made it safely to Cody and pulled into one of the first motels we came to. After sleeping at the gravel pull-out the previous night, Rick was in no mood for another camping experience. We were rolling close enough to Sturgis that this motel was catering to bikers and had a cleaning station all set up for washing our bikes with cleaning rags, spray nozzles on the hose, soap and drying rags. I took the opportunity to scrub some grime off of my bike.
Don’t miss the final episode next week. How did Rick fix his bars and did they make it to the rally in the Badlands? See it all next week.
