Touring America Harley Style

Bob Bitchin

Warmth was ahead. I turned the throttle a couple of degrees more, and headed for sun and fun. But Buford T. Wheems, Friendly Sheriff and resident asshole decided that large bikers should not get to where it is warm, and pulled me off the road, for a little tête-à-tête. Now folks, here I must digress. You see, I get a little sleepy when I am on the road, and to keep me “up” I sometimes use a little, uh, well, pharmaceutical help.

In other words, I down some drugs. Well, on this particular trip I was fortunate enough to have a friend who had just returned from the shores of Colombia, and snow was offered up as a going away gift. How nice. To make this ‘snow’ able to keep me up, I added a little secret white powder, known as pure crystal methedrine, and topped the mixture off with a dab of extract of the weed, better known as THC. Now this little mixture was in my front right pocket, for easy access when I would start to feel a little drowsy. It would wake ya up, make you feel good, and do all kinds of other neat things. Like give you things to talk to when they ain’t

there.

Anyway, I had this vial in my pocket. But wait, there is more. You see, when I get into paranoia, I like to do it right. No screwin’ around, ya know. In my inside jacket pocket I was also carrying

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a four barreled .357 magnum derringer. Just in case I would be attacked by warring natives or other unfriendlies. So there I sat, exchanging pleasantries with this escapee from a 1956 Brylcreem commercial. All I was trying to do was think of what it was going to be like doing 20 to life for felonious existing. But what’s this? Sheriff Buford has a soft spot. Right smack dab in the middle of his head. He’s letting me go, with just a warning. Seems the boy has a younger brother (if I were his mother I’d have stopped with the first one) and he rode a bike. I gave him a copy of our rag, smiled with all the pretty white teeth my folks paid so much for, and rode off into the sunlight, jamming large doses of “medicine” up my nose. The rest of the day was spent bouncing along the highways of Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. As things will happen, the later it got, the worse things got. First the temperature dropped to below freezing. Then, as I shook in my boots crossing into West Virginia, I made a great discovery. It seems that the roads in West Virginia suck. At least the Interstate I was on. It was like a motocross track. I bounced from berm to berm, barely able to keep the fool bike between the lines, and made it the few miles across the tip of West Virginia. And then I was there. “Welcome to Pennsylvania.” Man, I never thought I would see as beautiful a sight. It was near midnight as I pulled in and found

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a warm room for rent. It was a sleaze bag, but it was warm, and I slept like a rock. In the morning, like about 5 a.m., I crawled out of the most comfortable bed in the world and pulled my clothes on. Only a couple of hundred miles to go, and I had to be there by 10 a.m. I packed my nose with some “Bitchin Powder” (that’s like itching powder only better), and headed towards Carlisle, where I was to meet up with some folks from ABATE of PA. I found the campground they were staying at, and after smoking a few “doobies” to get our heads straight, we headed towards Harrisburg, where the big protest was to be. Four of us left ahead of the pack to get down there and make sure all the arrangements were made. We hopped onto the interstate and rode. And we rode. And we rode some more. Pretty soon even I knew we were lost, and I had never been there before. Seems we missed the stupid turnoff, and went about 20 miles farther than we should have. All I could think of, as we headed back, was that I had ridden 2,800 miles without a wrong turn, and now, just 20 miles from the protest, I might miss the damn thing because of a wrong turn. But I worried for naught. As we pulled into the capitol the bikes were filling into the parking lot. Since it was Saturday, and the place was closed, the lot was reserved for bikers only. After a few speeches by boring speakers like myself, the fun part of the protest arrived. It was time

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to parade lidless down the main streets of Harrisburg. As thousands of citizens looked on, and with a police escort both front and rear, we wound our way through the Capital City. As the parade wound past an entrance to the interstate I made a quick right, and I was on my way to New York, and another fun protest. The ride to New York, Albany to be exact, was about the most pleasant that I had so far. Nice sunshine, good roads, and, even though I can’t get used to toll roads, no stops. I arrived at the sight of the Albany protest, bike show, and swap meet. The whole thing had been set up at a parkn-ride off the interstate, and it looked like an armed encampment. The weatherman had been screaming that the rain would soon be on us, so I decided that instead of sleeping in a soggy sleeping bag, I would get a room. Never can tell when you might need a warm place to go.

I headed to the same motel that I had stayed in two years earlier when I had come up to cover a protest, and pulled into the driveway. The big welcome sign in front blazed “Vacancy” for all to see, and the parking lot was empty. Far out. Or so I thought. It seems that there was a Greyhound bus coming in at midnight, and they were holding all the rooms for it. Now folks, I am a pretty gullible guy, but there are limits to my gullibility. As I stood there listening to this asshole tell me

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there were no rooms, a car pulled up and while I stood and listened to one clerk tell about this magic bus that was on it’s way, the guy in the car walks in, signs up for a room (no reservation) and goes to his room. What the hell. After balancing my options in my head (a thump on his head for a few nights in jail), I decided to forget it and boogied back to the park-n-ride. That night the skies opened up and the rain dumped down as 15,000 bikers partied and enjoyed the preparations for the big protest. When the protest was finally over and done with, I packed up the Black Bitch once again, and kept up my eastward trek, belching sausage burgers and warm beer. The weather was fine as I hooked it down the Taconic State Parkway. I wasn’t used to paying to ride down a road, but, as they say, when in Rome, whatever... Anyway, I was feeling pretty good, when all of a sudden there is this sign, right there in the middle of the friggin’ road. “New Massachusetts gun law. 1 YEAR MANDATORY JAIL”. Now folks, let me tell you just how I feel about

jail.

Well, on second thought, your ears probably ain’t ready for such language. Let’s just say I cannot remember one good thing about being in the can. I pulled off the roadway and took out my trusty cannon. I took out the hollow points and stashed ’em in a safe little pocket on my tank bag. Then I took the

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barrel off the gun and stashed it in my camera bag. The rest of the gun went into my raincoat, that was rolled up in a saddlebag. Didn’t want to take any chances, dontcha know. Feeling a little better, the trip into Boston wasn’t too bad. When I arrived I went over to Paul Jamiol’s house, our staff cartoonist, and the rest of the night was spent shootin’ the bull with Bob Doiron from the MMA, and munching on Italian food. The next day was time for me to get my butt back to Los Angeles to put together an issue of Chopper and to put together an issue of FTW News Magazine, that also had a deadline. For the next three days I sat chained to a typewriter typing out shit like this, to fill enough space to justify my traveling all over the country. When that was all done, after three days of uppers, speed and more uppers, the issues were ready to go to press, and I boarded another airliner for Boston, some 3,000 miles distant. As I sat there, traveling 30,000 feet over the ground, I couldn’t help but think how boring flying is. Here I was covering the same ground I covered over the last week or so, but it was a drag. I had to watch some off the wall movie about love in bloom, or some other such horseshit, just to kill the time. Riding a bike’s a bunch more fun. No doubt about it. The flight back took 5 hours and 25 minutes. The ride out in the first place took 5 days. I arrived early afternoon and Paul was waiting for me. We made it right over to his place, packed up

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the bikes, and were soon on the road to Fitchburg, where the MMA show was planned. The ride up was perfect, with the temp in the high 70’s, and soon we arrived at the center where the show was being held. After shootin’ the shit with some of the folks who were putting the show together, we went over to the Coach Inn, where the MMA was headquartered, and we check in. Now, I should have figured something was going to be wrong when I went to grab the pen from the man behind the desk and his limp wrist almost dropped it. I ain’t gonna say the dude was a pansy, but, really now, pink slacks? Later that night a bunch of us went back to the bar, to have a little sleep tonic prior to crashing. As we sat in this lounge that looked like a set out of the 1940’s movies, a weird warbling was heard from the main part of the bar. Now I now you ain’t gonna believe this, but there, in all her splendored glory, was this chick (and I use that term lightly) that had to be in her late 80s. She was singing with the man playing the piano. Are you ready for this? They were singing, “When the red, red Robin comes bob-bob-bobbing along.” Now, ya know, there has to be a limit to what a man can take. Here I was in a bar that was a throwback to the era of bobby socks, listening to some over-thehill gang’s mother warble tunes that even Stephen Foster must have found obnoxious. And then the topper. Two of her older sisters

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got up and joined in. With a look of sympathy for the bartender I got up, invited those who had survived the first song back to my room, where we turned on the idiot tube, watched I Love Lucy re-runs, and got higher than a kite on some very good Columbian herb. The next day, as the show was in full swing, the great weather gods of the east decided to take a shit on us, and soon the rain was dumping like a drunk at a pie eating contest. When the show was over I mounted the Black Bitch once again, and headed out into the wet. And proceeded to get lost trying to find the highway. You see, for those of you who have not been to the great northeast, there are no straight roads there. Not one. Every road has to have at least 8 curves per mile and can’t end anywhere but into a residence or driveway. It took me almost an hour (a very wet hour, I might add) to get to a road that was on my map. And then my luck changed. The road I had found was called the Mohawk Trail, and it followed old Indian paths through Massachusetts and into New York. It was one of the most beautiful rides I can remember taking. Late into the night I rode through the backwoods of some of the prettiest roads in the northeast, and soon I found myself halfway across New York. In the morning I checked my map and found a new route to take. I had to be in Michigan for a protest run on Wednesday, so I decided to cut through Niagara

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Falls, into Canada, and then along the top of the Great Lakes into Detroit. When I hit Lake Erie I made a right and went up to the great Niagara Falls. Now I’m not a whole lot into sightseeing and the like, but when I got this close I had to make like a tourist and check it out. I rode out onto Goat Island, wandered around with a camera around my neck and my thumb in my mouth, like a million other nerd tourists, and as soon as I felt secure in the knowledge that I had seen what there was to see, I headed to the Canadian border. But wait. What’s this? There is a thing that says no firearms. Oops. Think I screwed up. I had almost forgotten that Canada was another country, and they don’t allow things like small cannons, smoking herb, or nose candy.

All the fears from Missouri came back, only now, instead of being “Cool Hand Luke” in a Missouri work camp, I was going to be Papillon in a foreign prison camp.

I stuttered something about forgetting my birth control pills and was soon heading back the bottom side of the lake, in the good ol’ U.S. of A. I spent that night in Toledo (can’t resist it... Holy Toledo!) and in the morning made my way up into Detroit. It was about this point that I noticed a draft somewhere about my footal region. Looking down I saw that there, where my sole used to be, was a sock,

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with large holes and bunions sticking out. For the next hour I stood in a shoe repair shop in Detroit watching a grandfather-father-and-son team do a rebuild on my clod-hoppers. Then it was over to Jim Rhodes’s, the power behind ABATE of Michigan, and one of the promoters of the Michigan Helmet Law Rally, that I had come to cover.

That night we picked up a young suckie for Jim to play with (no, she didn’t have a friend, dammit) and then we sat and got high and talked until the wee hours of the morning, with some folks that came up from Indiana and Kentucky to join the protest. In the morning, some 250-300 bikers met in a shopping mall parking lot, and rode bare headed to Lansing, for the protest. It really felt good after being trapped in a fiberglass toilet bowl, to be able to ride free again. Living in California has spoiled me. After the protest I joined up with Indian from Indiana and rode on down to Gary to party some with Roy Boy and some of the folks down there. While we were standing in front of his place in Gary, just talking and shit, Doc shows up. We partied a couple years back, and had a lot of things to talk about.

I wanted to show him my gun, since he was into such things, and after he told me he had been busted for having one when he shouldn’t have. We walked into the shop, and I pulled it out and handed it to him. Just as his hand closed around the stainless steel handle the door opens up, and lo-and-behold. Two of the narciest looking dudes in

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the world were standing there. It took Doc and I almost two and a half seconds to stash the gun and walk back into Roy’s place behind the store. After the dudes left it turned out that they were police, investigating a murder that happened a couple months ago. All I could think of, as I stashed the piece again, was what would have happened if Doc had been busted holding my piece, with a concealed weapons beef already against him. The rest of the night was spent discussing such possibilities. In the morning I packed up the Bitch once again and aimed her towards Oregon, where I was to cover the Choosey Beggars Memorial Day run, some 2,200 miles away. I had two days to get there. Like I said, the check writer at the magazine was kinda cheap, and time is cheaper than money in their book. Out of Indiana, across Illinois, through Iowa and into Nebraska. The weather was great. In the high 80’s and so was I. When I pulled into Greeley, Colorado I had covered 1,080 miles. Just 20 miles short of my goal for the day. I checked my map and saw a “shortcut” that went over the Rocky Mountain State Park and across highway 40, into Salt Lake City. I made a mental note, and in the morning I started up the mountains. The beauty was unbelievable as the flatlands dropped away. Snow capped peaks and dark green

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pine forests greeted the eye at each turn. Each time I would stop to take a picture the next bend would bring an even more beautiful vista. Then, just about the top of the mountains, some asshole had put this barrier across the road. It said “Road Closed.” Now folks, when you are in a hurry to get somewhere, and some nerd throws a bar across your path, what do you do? Me too. I pulled around the road closed sign, and headed up the road. For about a mile. Then, as my front wheel sank about four feet into a snowbank that was once the road, I knew I screwed up. I pulled the bike out of the snow, took one last look up the area where the road once was, and headed back down the mountain road, some 75 miles, to the main highway. From there I had to take a 100-mile detour around the closed roads. There was one good thing that happened because of this. The road I ended up taking around the closed area was unbelievable. The beauty simply was staggering. Once you have ridden those roads west of Denver, in the high Rocky Mountains, well like John Denver said, “It’s a Rocky Mountain High,” without any drugs.

For the next couple of hours I rode through the Rockies and then down into dinosaur country. Yeah, that’s right. dinosaurs. The northwest corner of Colorado and the northeast comer of Utah are covered with old bones. Not too exciting for me,

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but the other folks were going nuts shooting pictures of these old dog munchies. Oh well, some folks think I’m nuts too. As I headed towards Salt Lake City, these large black clouds started to form over my head. As I got close to the city they started to leak, all over my head. Now folks, when it rains in Utah it’s not like other places. It comes down in large, hard buckets. The rain turned to hail and as I crossed from the small country road I had been on, onto Interstate 80, the rain turned to a steady drizzle. Yuck! As I passed away from the Great Salt Lake, the land flattened out to a smooth, white, dry lake bed, the world famous Bonneville Salt Flats. Only this time they were the great Bonneville Salt Water Flats. The wind was whipping across the dry lake bed at well over 50 miles per, cutting directly across the road. Now, if you want to know what misery is, try riding in that for about a hundred miles or so. Just a hundred miles, you ask? Yeah, because after a hundred miles the rain turned into sleet. The temperature dropped into the low teens, and the wind kicked up. It was so cold that when I stopped to take a picture as I entered Nevada, I couldn’t stop shaking long enough to change the film. And from here, believe it or not, it got worse. After stopping at the state line to take a picture, I mounted the now frozen Black Bitch and headed west. I remember the last time I had been through Wells, Nevada (the next town), it had been too hot to

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spit. I hoped it was the same now. After all, it was almost June and that’s summer,

right?

Well, the closer I got to Wells the worse the weather got. By the time I was dropping down into the town it was a full-force blizzard. Now folks, who the hell would think there would be a blizzard in the Nevada desert late in May? No one I know. Anyway, I stopped at the first motel I saw, got the last room they had (almost had to arm wrestle a truck driver for it) and crashed for the night, with my poor bike outside, covered with a Gazebo bike cover, freezing its ball bearings off. For some reason I figured that when I woke in the morning everything would be alright, and the snow would be gone. In the a.m. I awoke and walked to the window. At first I thought that it was just a fake window, painted white.

It wasn’t. I was seeing outside alright. The snow was totally covering everything in sight. The only way I could tell was when a section of the snow started to move. It was an 18-wheeler truck taking off, covered to the top with cold, icky, slimy, white snow. I turned on the TV that was in the room and found a weather station. It seems that there was a “freak” weather front stalled over Nevada (naturally) and it would be there for at least two days. Now I don’t know about you, but there was no way in hell I would sit in some two-horse town for two

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days. Not me. I’d rather take a chance and get out. So I checked my map and found what I was looking for. Since the Choosey Beggars run was due west, and the weatherman said that Donner Pass and all other passes were closed, there was no way I could make it. I had to head south, where it should be warm, and where, by coincidence, I lived. I uncovered the freezing Bitch and started to pack her up. I then went inside my room and put on every piece of clothing I had. Longies, leather pants and jacket, the works. Except for warm boots. You see, when I had taken off on this trip I figured I wouldn’t hit any snow this late in the year, and besides they were so bulky to pack. Next time, no matter how warm, I take my snow boots. Heading south out of Wells on 93 it looked like it might start to clear up. The first twenty miles weren’t bad at all, then as if on cue, it started to come down harder. The farther I got from town, the harder it snowed. By the time I was in Currie, which is a town with a population of two, and they were still asleep, the snow was two feet deep on the road. Ok. So here I am, 70 miles from Wells (behind me) and 75 miles from Ely (in front of me). In other words, just me, the vacant road, and a blizzard that was getting even worse. I knew that I didn’t want to sit in the closed gas station in Currie, so I got back on the Bitch, and continued riding. By now the snow was so heavy I could only see a few yards in front of me. I put it into second gear,

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took it to about 25 miles per, and held it steady. I just watched the small poles on the side of the road and kept in the middle. I tried to hit my rear brakes once, and found my front end trying to pass my back, so from then on it was a steady 25 miles per hour, no slower, no faster. And it kept snowing. Every once in awhile the snow would let up, as I would drop down into a valley, and it was absolutely unreal. Nothing but white, as far as the eye could see, except up. That was black. It was the scariest thing I have ever been through. Almost. I hit the town of Ely, took a break for some hot coffee, and let my frozen feet thaw out a little before heading south again. It was only a couple of hundred miles to Las Vegas, and I knew that it never snowed like this down there, so I was getting closer to safety. About 80 miles from Vegas I came over a snow-covered mountain and, in front of me, it was green. No snow. I shook my head and stared. I could not believe it. I had been in snow for over 200 miles, and it had taken almost 8 hours to cross. As I headed down into the green valley with the still black clouds overhead, I started to get a sinking feeling. The clouds were even darker than the snow clouds, and great black pillars dipped to the ground, filled with rain, hail, and sleet. Between these pillars of black, shafts of lightning would hurl to the ground followed instantly by thunder that would scare the

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