Song of the Dumb Biker

I used to wonder why the words “dumb” and “biker” were almost always used in the same sentence. I mean, I know that some words are independently exclusive, and are never used in the same sentence, like “smart” and “woman” but why is it always “dumb biker?” Just like that. Together.

As I say, I used to wonder. Now I know. It’s because all bikers is dumb, I know, because I are one.

The first time I realized just how dumb I really am was when a friend, another dumb biker named Billy Jack, and I decided to take a trip. We were sitting in a semi-stupor, after devouring a few small six packs of Colorado Kool-Aid, when spontaneously, the idea to take a trip came up. Afterward, I remembered what brought the whole idea up in the first place was both of our bikes had managed to make it to the liquor store and back wihout breaking down. This was a major feat since I live almost three blocks from the store.

“A scoot that trusty is good for lots of miles,” I told Billy Jack. We decided it was a great idea, and we should load up our trusty steeds and hook it across the country. There was only one small thing standing in our way. It was December.

But what the hell, we’re bikers, and we can stand up to any weather. Besides, all we have to do is take along a few extra things to keep us warm, and we would have no trouble at all.

During the planning, I remember, we decided the bikes we were riding might be the wrong type to take. After all, a rigid frame for 10,000 miles might be kinda hard on the old tail. (Maybe that’s why they are called hard tails?)

After checking out a few costs to convert to a soft tail, we decided to take a chance the way we were.

Yes folks, bikers are dumb, there is no doubt about it.

Before the Coors wore off, we made a list of all the things we would need for this big trip. We covered everything we could think of—clothing, food, stoves, tents, sleeping bags, even an ex¬tra set of gloves. It was a very complete list.

The second thing we did was take the list and cross out things we couldn’t afford.

Left was the following!
2 sleeping bags 4 helmets
2 changes of clothes each 1 three-man tent
1 small propane stove
2 pairs of long johns 2 pairs of sweat pants 2 flat face shields
2 sweat shirts 2 pairs of snow gloves 2 pairs snowmobile boots 4 pairs artic socks 2 pairs regular boots
1 instamatic camera & film
2 dumb bikers

Keep in mind that we started with a list three times longer, but when we looked at the packing area on our bikes we knew it couldn’t all fit. The fact that I am 6 ‘4” and weight 300 pounds, and Billy Jack is 5 ‘5 “ and weights 150, made things a little dif¬ficult, also, because we both had to have complete sets of clothing. There wouldn’t be too much swapping.

Since this was all before the trip, when we were still under the delusion that bikers were relatively smart, we thought the real smart thing would be to go someplace nice and cold as an official test run. You see, living in Southern California tends to spoil you for estimating the rigors of the outside world.

We decided Yosemite Park was a nice cold place to go in December, so we packed up our bikes and headed northward.
We were right. It was cold.

By the time we got close to the summit at the eastern approach to Yosemite the snow was coming down so hard we couldn’t believe it was still California.

We pulled into a place with a “camping” sign in front and asked what the rates were. All the dude did was stare at us. I wondered why?

He finally managed to stutter, “If you really wanted to sleep out in this weather, you can set up for nothing.” So we picked out a campsight, which was kind of easy since they were all va¬cant, and set up camp.

Then we made a big discovery. In winter the sun goes down really early after which it gets boring.

Around 7 o’clock we tired of playing “Hiroshima” with the gasoline which we had been squirting on the fire, and we crashed for the night.

The next morning found two dumb bikers frozen in a couple of sleeping bags. We waited for what seemed like an eternity, and then decided it wasn’t getting any warmer, so we got up.

After we limbered up with some more “Hiroshima”, we scraped the snow off the tent and rolled it up. We packed our bikes and it was time to try and make it into the Yosemite basin.

As we headed up the pass toward the summit we noticed there were fewer cars. Soon we hit an area where a sprinkling of diehards were pulled over, putting on chains. We kept going.

We got to an elevation with so much snow we had to put our feet down to keep from falling over. We were actually using our feet like skis. And it was working.

We did it. We made the summit at 9941 feet and down into the park. If we could get through that we figured we could get through just about anything.

We headed back to our home base and made a few correc¬tions. First of all, we added a sleeping bag each to the list. This would eliminate any more of those foolish frozen nights. We also added a couple of cans of Stemo to heat the morning tent.

We were set. We were in command of long range wintertime bombing and the North American Continent was our cup of hot soup.

Then the idea hit us. Since we were going across the country in the dead of winter, why not try for a new transcontinental record. It sounded like a great idea. We looked up the record and found out we had to beat 36 hours.

Ya know, bikers are really dumb sometimes.

The big day finally came. The night before Billy Jack and I had made our way down to San Diego as official kickoff point, and got a room where we would be close to Interstate 8, which was the short cut across the country. We had gotten into town early, and decided to get to sleep early so we would get up around 6 a.m. for the start. After dousing a couple of bottles of Tequila, we made it to sleep. We woke up at 3 a.m., all hungover but ready to go.

The sun came up as we headed into Yuma, Arizona, land of nothing. We stopped to dump some 90 weight down our throats, and started the coast-to-coast boogie one more time.

That day we made our way along Interstate 8 to Case Grande, then picked up I-10 through Tuscon, Lordsburg and Las Cruces. As the sun was setting behind us we were headed into El Paso. In one day we had managed to make it through California, Arizona, New Mexico, and into Texas. We knew we would make it now.

Boy, bikers are dumb.

By the time we hit Fort Worth it was early the second morning, and still very dark. I’m not going to say we were tired, but we missed our turnoff and it took almost 45 minutes for us to find our way back onto the track.

Billy Jack fell asleep a couple of times. I had a hell of a time trying to get him to wake up.

About 50 miles out of Dallas, heading toward the Louisiana border on Interstate 20, we decided to stop and have breakfast. It had been a long day and night, and we had covered almost 1,700 miles.

We wolfed down our food and hopped back into the saddle.

Surprisingly enough, our butts weren’t even too sore, but I think a lot of that was due to the numbness setting in.

We had been very lucky also, the weather was just like sum¬mer. It was about 60 degrees at noon. At night it dropped down to about 25. Wonderful, just plain wonderful.

As we hooked it east through Louisiana we started to wake up again. We crossed the mighty Mississippi actually feeling good. We really thought we were going to make it into Savannah under the 36-hour limit.

Bikers are the dumbest people on earth.

As we kissed off Mississippi the sun was setting behind us, and we were working on night number two with no sleep.

Then came our downfall. A road called the George Wallace Highway, also known as Alabama 80, looked like a short cut on the map, so we decided to take it. That was a mistake.

This road is used by all of the big eighteen wheelers to go around the weight scales and they do it at not less then 80 miles an hour, curves and things that no#ane man would try at 60 are included.

We dodged the big trucks and tried to stay awake. After 34 nonstop hours we were starting to weaken. Then we hit this foolish drawbridge and almost lost the game. I figure the design¬ing engineers must have hated bikes and know the width of motorcycle tires. They put steel girders just far enough apart to catch bike wheels and hold them. We had to go over almost at a crawl speed, with 18-wheelers disputing our right to be there. I recall this to be the most trick riding required in the entire 10,000 miles.

A large truck crossed the double line a few miles farther up the road and knocked one of the sleeping bags off my bike. Billy Jack tried to turn around to pick it up, but his front wheel lost it in some gravel, and he ended up on his kiester in the middle of the road, with two large 18-wheelers bearing down on him.

When I pulled my hands from my eyes after the longest screach of brakes, I saw Billy Jack sitting in the middle of the road with two large trucks about 5 feet from him, their tires smoking from a kingsize panic stop.

We got his bike out of the way, and loaded my sleeping bag back on the bike. We headed into the next town, Selma.

As we sat filling up our tanks I looked at my watch.

We didn’t make it. It was exactly 36 hours to the minute since we left the west coast, and we still had over three hundred miles to go. We thought we could do it, but we couldn’t.

To celebrate (?) we got a motel room and had our first good meal in the last two days, thick steak, washed down with mucho Tequila.

That night we slept well. In fact, almost too well since it was almost 11 a.m. the next day when we woke up.

No matter how bad things look at night, you can count on the fact that they will look even worse the next day. Here we were in a place called Selma, and we hadn’t seen one bit of the country between Los Angeles and here. We decided that it was time to slow down and start enjoying the trip.

We looked at a map and decided it was a good time to see Atlanta, Georgia, since neither of us had been there before. We headed north-east.

You know something? \^u can sure see a lot of a town when you ride through on a bike. It was really neat to think that just three days earlier we were at home, and here we were all the way across the country, riding through a strange town on our bikes. We really felt good.

We kept heading north all that day, and by night were heading into Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where my long-lost brother lives. I hadn’t seen him since we were kids, so I gave him a call, after searching three phone books for his number, and soon we were in his nice warm house.

After a night of old-time talk and good food and drink, we hopped back on our scooters and headed north again, after pro¬mising to return for Christmas dinner in about two weeks.

All that day we wandered up through North Carolina and Virginia.
You know, it is a real trip to ride the back roads of states like that, where so much has happened. I mean, you ride along and see a sign that says “Shilo,” and you get a lot closer to the history of the country. It is really a strange feeling.

That night we ran into a dude named Fuzzy Dave, who heads up a biker rights organization called ABATE. They were active in fighting the helmet law.

He invited us to stay for dinner and to crash at his home. We may be dumb bikers, but not dumb enough to pass up an invite like that. After dinner we hopped into his four wheeler (since it was about 18 degrees out) and visited a guy named Gary Zager. We talked about helmet laws and the like until late in the night.

The next day we got up and packed our bikes again, by now a familiar procedure. As we rode out of Fuzzy’s driveway we pass¬ed a farm house used as a hideout by rebel troops so long ago.

The weather was starting to get cold. Even though the sun was out, it was only about 4 degrees at the warmest. We rode into Washington with fuzzy, and met Gary there. They gave us the grand tour of D.C., including getting a ticket for not wearing a helmet in front of the White House.

On that parting gesture, we bid ado to our new friends and hit it north again. As the sun disappeared into a west sky cloud we started to think, “good campsight.”

Our map showed one at the head of Cheasapeake Bay that looked good, so we headed off 1-9$. Just as the rain started we found the park. It was totally vacant. The good thing about traveling in the winter is you have your choice of camping. The bad thing about traveling in the winter, as we were discovering, is it’s cold. We hurriedly set up the tent and spent the rest of a cold, wet night sitting in it watching the rain fall. What a bummer.

In the morning the rain had stopped, but it was overcast. Still about 40 degrees. Temperature dropped to the low thirties, and still dropping. As we passed New York City it was in the 20’s.

We pulled into Bridgeport, Connecticut, about three in the afternoon. Bridgeport temperature was 24. All this cold truckin’ was just to get with Rogue, a friend, and International President of the Huns Motorcycle Club. We gave him a call and were soon warming ourselves at the Huns clubhouse.

That night was party time and party we did. The clubs in the east are a lot like the clubs on the west coast except they park their bikes in the wintertime. Westcoasters ride them year around. Other than that there is no real difference between the two areas. It is party + party = party, all night long, in both places.

The next couple of days were spent in warm luxury, just sitting around and checking out the local action. It is weird being 3,000 miles from home and only a short-time gone, seeing strange sights and handling strange flesh. Actually folks they were the same as home folks, but the low mileage woofies were even nicer.

As with all good things, the good times came to an end. In this case the end came when we heard storm warnings on the radio. All we could think of was being stuck here all winter. From the weatherman’s tone, we were in for a big one. Billy Jack and I decided to load up our scoots and hook it out of there.

This time we chose west. We passed through New York again (yech) and rode on until we hit the Pennsylvania state line. Temperature was really starting to drop now. We pulled over just before we entered the turnpike and packed every bit of clothing we had onto our bodies. A few hours later the temperature had dropped to zero. We just kept riding.

Damn, bikers are dumb. High in the Pocano Mountains we came upon a sign that said “camping ahead.” We followed the signs and pulled into Hickory Run State Park. As had been the case for the whole trip, we were the only people in the whole park, so we had our choice of camping spaces.

After unpacking our tent and setting it up, we started looking around for some firewood. Guess what, there was none.

In the entire park, not one piece of wood was big enough to bum. And the temperature was now down to six-below-zero.

Being smart and resourceful as the average biker, we condemn¬ed a picnic bench which had seen better times and reduced it to campfire size pieces. We stashed some and dumped high octane on the rest.

I doused the fire on my leg caused by careless handling of the bum juice, and slid up the evening can of beans. With this weather we should have brought fresh T-bones.

Our dinner guest that evening was a Smokey Bear Ranger. It wasn’t until he had stopped his car and walked over to warm himself by the fire that we realized the legs of the bench were sticking out, prima facia evidence a law had been fractured in a very literal sense.

A very long fifteen minutes later the ranger left. He never did say anything about the two legs sticking out of the fire. I know he saw them. I guess he just didn’t want to hassle a couple of frozen bikers.

The following day we decided to head for some warmer weather. This cold was OK, but enough is enough. We checked out the map and decided south was definitely a good way to go. We turned left in Ohio, and headed for Kentucky and the blue grass pastures.

That night we stopped in a small town just south of Cinncinat- ti, on the Kentucky side of the street, for a quick cup of coffee. While sitting there Billy Jack informed me his mother lived near¬by, and he would like to stay there for Christmas. This meant an unwelcome split of a team of dumb bike bums that had become close and (yes, I’ll say it) proficient at bad weather, hard luck wintertime biking.

With me almost 1,000 miles from my brother, where we are supposed to be for Christmas, Billy wants to stay here.

We stopped at his mother’s house for the night, and the next day, as the Snow Monster descended on the United States, I left for North Carolina by myself.

As I headed into Tennessee the snow got bad. I hooked it over the mountains and down into Knoxville where the weather was a little better, but that was just to sucker me into trying to make the rest of the trip. Bikers are all pretty dumb, and I am probably the dumbest, because I fell for it.

I made a hard left in Knoxville, and soon I was heading up over the great Smokey Mountains. The snow started to come down again, but this time it was a little thicker. The first hint that I might be in a little bit of trouble was when I noticed there were no more cars out there, just me and the 18-wheelers. It was then I noticed no snow moving equipment was working, and only the big trucks could make it over.

As the snow increased it became a white blanket. My visibility was cut down to about 25 feet. I closed in behind a truck and followed him. All I could see was the left taillight.

For what seemed like an eternity I followed that lone red light. Every once in a while I heard another truck going the otheway, but very few of those. It was just me, my bike and that red light.

After what seemed a long spell of me trailing the red dot against a world of white the snow lightened a little bit and I could see the truck that I had been following. It said “Frozen Food” on the side.

No shit.

9The splash guards on the truck were about a foot thick with ice, and that started me thinking. I looked down to find that my feet had become completely encased in frozen slush. It was all the gook the truck had kicked up for the last 60 miles. The ice and snow was about 4 to 6 inches thick, and it was a solid as a rock. The snowmobile boots and the special Calafia riding suit had kept me warm, but the snow and slush froze on the outside.

I knew I was in trouble when I tried to down shift from third gear as I pulled of to get some gas. My foot was frozen solid to the foot peg.
Damn, bikers are the dumbest people on earth.

I made about four figure-eights while scheming what to do. I decided to pull up next to a wall in the gas station and stall the bike using my front brake. This I did OK, but I couldn’t take my hand off the bars to take off my helmet without falling over, and no matter how hard I called, the gas station attendant couldn’t hear me.

I imagined spending the rest of the winter as a frozen sculpture in a abandoned comer of an Exxon station. Just then a Highway Patrol car pulled in and asked the attendant what I was doing over there.

A few minutes later he had taken a hammer and screwdriver and broken my feet loose from the foot pegs.

How embarrassing.

Fifteen minutes of warming up in the station, and explaining how it had happened, got me back on my frosted bike, and started down the hill again. Farther I got, the better the weather got until, as I headed into North Caroline, the weather was almost nice.

All of the snow and ice had melted off the forks and front of my bike, and it just looked like a normal old dirty bike.

As I pulled into Winston-Salem and my brother’s pad it was just getting dark. I pulled the bike into the garage and the rest of the night was spent talking about my close call, and getting thoroughly wasted. What a lovely way to spend a day, huh?

The next couple of days were like a dream. Riding around in a car, with the heater on. Eating big steaks and home cooked food. It was really enough to spoil me, even if I hadn’t been on the road for awhile. The crowning glory was Christmas dinner. Turkey, ham, and all the fixings.

But all good things must end, and so must the holiday spirit and good times. Before I even knew it, the time had come to pack up the old scoot and head out to meet Billy Jack. We had made plans to meet in Knoxville the day after Christmas. It was hard to do, but I managed it. I made for the mountains again. This time I was lucky. No snow. Just a lot of cold weather.

That night Billy Jack and I tried our damndest to make each other jealous with rundowns of what we had eaten and the warm beds we had lain in. Each claimed the better dinner, and the tenderest care, and neither would believe the other. It turned out a tie.

We decided the best place to go in the winter was the Gulf coast, so we headed south, for Mardi Gras Country. We didn’t care if there was no Mardi Gras this time of year, we were going to New Orleans any way, mostly for the warm weather and Creole cooking.

The farther south we got, the more we realized we had made the right choice. Heading out over the long bridge over Lake Ponchartrain the temperature was well into the 70’s, and we were riding for the first time without jackets. Life was getting to be almost bearable. In spite of comforting warmth for the first time in what seemed years we stayed only a day then headed out again.

We headed west, out of New Orleans, towards that big Texas state, where we got a big lesson in weather and thermodynamics, which I will pass along to you for future reference:

In the dead of winter, when you putt through a warm front, the next thing you will putt through is a wet front, and in this case it was almost a solid wall of water at the Texas state line.

The folks down there call it rain, but I know better. I’ve seen rain and this was not rain, it was a solid wall of water. I wondered how they got it to stand up like that.

Well anyway, for the next 300 miles we rode through this mobile ocean, all the way into Houston. There, just as it was get¬ting dark, the rain ended, and once again it was almost nice out. Even though it was dark, the temperature was still in the high 60’s and very comfortable.

The next day of riding was uneventful, until we jammed into this little town called Shefield, just as it was getting dark. Shefield stands out so well in my mind because people there are without a doubt the unfriendliest folks in the world.

We were about a quarter of a mile out of town when my chain slipped off the rear sprocket and lodged against the frame, lock¬ing the rear wheel up. I borrowed Billy Jack’s bike and headed back into town to try and get a hack saw to cut the chain loose so we could tow the bike into the next large town.

No matter how I argued, no one would let me use a saw. I even offered one guy $20 just to rent one, but to no avail. They were real sweet.

Back at my busted scoot, we flaged down a passing pickup truck, and the guy said he would give us a ride into Fort Stockton for just $25 and a tank of gas. Did you know there are pickup trucks with 40-gallon gas tanks? Well, there are. We found out the hard way.

We found a friendly biker in Fort Stockton, Rick, who helped us get a chain from Odessa, Texas, and it only cost us $130. The small towns in Texas definitely like to see stuck bikers, and then stick it to them.

After a two-day wait for the chain we found the wrong master link had been sent with it. So, being your normal dumb bikers, we jury-rigged it so we could get on down the road.

And down the road we went. It was December 30th, and we figured on making it back to California in time to celebrate New Years at home with some other dumb bikers we know.

But Texas was not ready to kick us free yet. It seemed like a conspiracy to keep us from making it.

Near Van Horn, still in Texas, the Mickey Mouse master link gave out. It was almost midnight, and the temperature was back around 20 degrees. Just to add to our fun, the wind decided to kick up, gusting to about 60 miles an hour. This made for much fun when the big old 18-wheelers passed at 80. Slipstream and wind almost dumped our scoots.

Then we made one more neat discovery.

The spare masterlink didn’t fit. The posts were too big to fit the chain, and we would have to find a way to file or sand them down.

Once again I hopped on Billy Jack’s bike, and one more time I headed off on my own to get help. Van Horn was about 25 miles away, but in the clear desert air it looked like it was only about 5 miles off. The longer I rode, the farther away it got. I hooked it up pretty good and finally made an off-ramp. There was now a new problem: red lights flashing in my mirror.

I sat there in numb shock as the Texas Ranger explained that I was going to jail for speeding. It seems they have this neat little law for out-of-state speeders. You go to jail until you pay the fine. Unfortunately, the Justice of the Peace was home sleeping, so this meant I was to spend the night in jail, while Billy Jack sat out in the 20-degree wind storm and froze to death.

It was at about this point that our luck improved, but then again, it had to get better because it couldn’t get much worse. The ranger believed my story and called the JP at home and ask¬ed him to set a fine so I could pay it and get back out to fix the bike. The JP must have felt sorry for me, because he only fined me $25, which the ranger said was low.

That out of the way, with me 25 skins lighter, I got back to the problem at hand. Soon we would be on the road again, I thought.

I trucked on back to where the bike and frozen Billy Jack were and we proceeded to try and fix my bike.

Do you need more proof that all bikers are dumb? I got it.

We were trying to sand down case hardened steel rollers with sandpaper. That my friends, is dumb.

After about one and a half hours of cold wind and sanding, we realized, dejectedly, that it wasn’t working.

Three weeks of freezing my ass off, getting rained on, pushed off the road by trucks, of eating cold beans and constantly suffer¬ing the pains of a stiff and sore butt were just too much.

All of a sudden everything went red. I picked up the biggest Harley rock I could find and proceeded to beat the damn pins in¬to the chain. To my amazement, they went! Who said force doesn’t work?

We put the master link together and packed up. We still plann¬ed to try for New Years at home.

We pulled into Lordsburg, New Mexico, sun-up on December 31st. It was New Years eve, and we were still 800 miles from home. Not only that, we hadn’t slept in the last two days. Tired or not, we still were going to try and make it.

Dumb, dumb, dumb.

As we sat slugging down 90 weight to wake us up, a truck driver came over and asked us if those were our bikes. After affir¬mative nods he commenced to tell us how he had ridden for a few years, but had given it up. He then offered us a few hits of this neat little white powder that he swore all truckers used to stay awake while they drove. Being your average dumb bikers, we figured what the hell, and dumped some in our coffee.

Now I didn’t know what the stuff was, but in about fifteen minutes not only were we awake, we were ready to tuck our bikes under our arms and run all the way home.

We backed our bikes out of the parking lot and the next thing we knew, the sun was again coming up, and we were heading into California, about 200 miles from home.

Then we found out a neat little thing about crank:

What goes up, must come down. And we did.

In a matter of minutes we had gone from feeling fine, to dead on our butts, and we were not yet home. The next 200 miles took us almost 8 hours to ride. We had to pull over about every 5 miles to try and wake up. We hadn’t slept for three days and nights, and we were starting to see things that weren’t there, unless pink elephants are back in style.

At 7 p.m. on New Years Eve, we pulled into our driveways. We made it. After 10,000 miles of cold and wet and garbage food, we were back with the comforts of home. There was just one problem. We were so damned tired, all we could do was flop on the bed and deal ourselves out of the world for a time. We both slept though the celebrating and the start of a new year.

Like I said, bikers are the dumbest people on earth, and I am the king of dumb.

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