Rally Daze

"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you may be swept off to."
Bilbo Baggins

Rally Daze

posted 07/10/2007
I’m a rally virgin. 59 years old (for the second time!) and I’ve never been to a motorcycle rally. My Fearless Wife and I did go the Sturgis Black Hills event once years ago but that doesn’t count. Sturgis is not simply a rally; its size and duration make it an alternative Universe. Sturgis South Dakota is the county seat of Meade County and has a population of around 6200 people. For one week every summer it grows to 500,000 plus!

FEMA should talk to the organizers to get pointers on how to handle crowds. Talk about a tourist crush. At Sturgis, like Katrina, many of the rules of polite society are suspended. It’s loud, dusty, expensive, and crowded. The difference is that unlike a FEMA sponsored block party, people want to come back to Sturgis The 2007 Chief Joseph BMW rally was my first overnight motorcycle event in three decades but it was nothing like the Sturgis event.

A classic BMW

Remember my concerns about not seeing any motorcycles on the way to the Rally? As I approached the county fairgrounds I finally saw the banners and tents so I knew that this was the right place and at the right time. John Day Oregon is a small town (pop. 2200) spread out along a stream valley and you come upon it quickly.

It’s located in the NE corner of the state about 100 miles south of Pendelton. The business district is a few blocks long with a couple more stretched out North and South. The fairgrounds are about twice the size of the San Juan County grounds. I pulled in, paid my money, signed up, and started looking for a place to pitch my tent.

Shade seemed to be at a premium so I looked for trees that would ward off the afternoon sun. I also wanted to have a little sound insulation from the rest of the campers as my Fearless Wife impugns my nocturnal integrity by commenting on the alleged noise that I make when I sleep. She says that I sound like a Harley with straight pipes. I say that it’s all a lie! I’ve never heard anything and I’ve been sleeping with me all my life.

There was a small gathering of tents around some trees in the area marked "Quiet Camping" so I left some space for sound insulation in the faint chance that she might be right and pulled out my ancient backpacking tent. Modern tents practically erect themselves. They are all fiberglass poles and bungee cords. Mine is very lightweight nylon but is rather old school, as it requires 12 aluminum pegs and two poles to set the tent and rain fly. It’s also not as tall as the modern tents and while rated at ‘3 people’, one old squid and his gear seem to fill it to the point of claustrophobia. "Maybe back packers are smaller," I think as I get everything set. They certainly must be much more agile. Eventually the tent is up and I start looking the rally over.

High density camping!

All rallies have vendors and because this one is brand specific, they cater to the BMW tribes taste. At a Harley rally you will find leather, tattoos, and chrome bling. Here I found widgets for long distance touring.

For hundreds of miles around Sturgis at the annual Harley shindig, parking lots are filled with trailers left by people who pulled their bikes most of the distance and only ride their bikes far enough to leave the trailer out of sight. Of the 450 bikes at the John Day rally I only saw one that had come in on a trailer! The rest were ridden in from LA, St. Louis, New York. My paltry 600-mile ride was just a warm-up for these guys. For the next 4 days I’d listen in to conversations as riders talked of trips across Russia, Europe, Africa. One couple was selling videos of their trip to Tierra Del Fuego! The vendors were selling GPS mounts and other navigation aids, 12-volt pumps; tools to fix your bike in far-flung places. A traveling crew to be sure.

Tom Young with a tent full of things to keep you going...

After a few hours of wandering, the sun was going down and I went back to my tent and found out what "Quiet Camping" meant. Everyone was in bed by 9! At the "Noisy Camping" area where the ‘party animals’ hung out they stayed up until 10. These are after all BMW people. Their bikes are quiet and they go to bed early.

While I’d been wandering the vendors and looking at the bikes, my campsite had really filled in and we were set up in a density equal to a Hong Kong apartment complex. I worried a little about the noise I might make but I was tired so I turned in and fell right to sleep. I woke at 2 a.m. I’d visited the beer garden just before turning in and realized that I needed to practice better fluid management next time.

My tent did not have a handy bathroom and unlike a wilderness camp, I couldn’t avail myself of the nearest tree. I got dressed and put my shoes on and crawled outside my tent. Then I heard it!

All around me the steady buzz of 200 well fed carnivores purring away. Either that or all the male campers were ‘snoring’ as women so coarsely put it. The sound was so continuous and so steady that it really wasn’t obtrusive. It sounded restful and, well, just so "male". I felt like I was part of the gang. I don’t know how the few women in the camp slept but I slept very well and so did the rest of my purring comrades!

Whenever I go to small towns I always like to roam the streets and hit the local haunts to get a feel for what they’re like. John Day was interesting in that it had many similarities to Friday Harbor but also, some striking differences. The population size was similar and though it wasn’t the county seat it incorporated the fairgrounds and school system for the area.

The real county seat of Canyonville was only a couple miles up the road and was a separate town by boundary only. A difference is that John Day is spread along three main highways and not as compact as Friday Harbor.

Another difference is that they have winter sports and their summers aren’t the mad rush that our tourist seasons are. The area has many campgrounds but those aren’t as popular as they used to be. In fact, they were mostly deserted.

We baby boomers camped with our parents and backpacked though our youth but we seem wed to the RV and named destinations now. The BMW people were a hardy lot though, throw backs even, and more dedicated to camping than most of the population. The town appreciated having them there.

Everyone I met was friendly, from the gas pump jockeys (Oregon does not allow you to pump your own gas) to the kids at the McDonalds, everyone had a smile and seemed genuinely happy for the break in routine that 500 motorcycles and 800 visitors brought to this weekend.

A smile with coffee in the morning...

...and wine in the evening. The Old Squid meeting friendly locals.

There are a lot of reasons to travel: new sights, new experiences, new people but being from a small town on a small island there is another good reason to travel. I call it the "Anti-Cheers Syndrome". Sometimes, after a winter of dealing with the same people over and over, the same faces, the same issues, it’s kinda fun to ‘go somewhere where nobody knows your name.’

Don’t get me wrong; I love my town and friends. I love being deeply woven into this place but sometimes a break is good. In Oregon though, my past came back to haunt me, not once, but twice!

Friday night I’m sitting at the picnic table in front of the coffee stand. The local Mom and her daughter who ran the stand had adopted me and in return for motorcycle rides and keeping them company, they gave me free coffee (the best), peach smoothies (outstanding!), and a place to sit inside the booth with them. I really got the best of the deal but wasn’t about to complain.

I was sitting, waiting for the Mom, Lisa, to meet me for one of those rides when I heard my name. I looked across the table at a woman who had been sitting there when I sat down and she smiled and said, "Do you remember me? We met at your nieces wedding in Bend last summer." Boy did I remember!

I had introduced myself to a man standing in line next to me after the wedding ceremony and as soon as I said my name he commented "You know, you really got my wife in trouble when you gave her a ride on your motorcycle." Whoops! Shields up! Do I know this guy? Is this guy angry?

Nope, he’s smiling, then his wife comes over and laughing she reminds me how 42 years ago when I was a freshman in college I had given my youngest sister's best friend a ride on my old 1941 Harley. She was a freshman in high school and her Mom was not amused. Her Mom called my Mom. I was never to bring that devil's machine over again and in fact it would be a good thing if I was never to come over again. And I didn’t.

Now, four decades later, we are sitting in John Day, chuckling at the irony that she and her husband have ridden their own motorcycle to the Rally. Then she asked me what I was doing and I explained that I was waiting to give a woman her first motorcycle ride and she cracked up. "You haven’t changed a bit!" she laughed and I think she was still laughing when I rode out with my new passenger a few minutes later.

My past got me again the last evening. I’d organized my gear and was ready to get up early. Time to hit the head one last time (I’d learned my lessons fluid management in tents!) and turn in. I was standing outside the shower area and struck up a conversation with another rider, asking him how far he had to go in the morning.

"St. Louis." he replied.

"You’re a long way from home. What brings you to a rally out in Oregon?"

"Oh, I grew up in the Portland area."

"Yup, me too. Where did you go to school?" "David Douglas HS." He replied.

"Hey, you were in our sports league. I went to Clackamas."

We talked some more and it turned out that we both had been involved in sports and so he asked me my name. When I told him he exclaimed, "I remember you. You beat my hero!"

He had been a freshman and I was a junior when I ran at the District track meet for the Metro league. He had idolized a runner from his school named Claxton Welch. Claxton was an all-around athlete and after a great career at the U of O, he went on to play on the winning Dallas Cowboys team during Super Bowl VI.

He was also a star in basketball and in track too. He was expected to win the sprints in track at that year’s District meet and then go on to win the state meet too.

I was a hick farm kid and unknown. I tried cross country (no stamina). I tried football (no talent) I knew better than to try basketball but the one thing that I could do was run in a straight line faster than most people.

I won at District that year beating his childhood hero. Claxton didn’t go to State that year, I did. I didn’t win at State that year but the next year I did. We talked a bit more then I went back to my tent muttering, "Small world, small state."

Time to head for home. It’s one thing to run into people you know in Friday Harbor but to keep running into people who knew me from over 40 years ago in what now seems another galaxy a geologic age ago was unsettling to say the least.

(to be continued)

- The Old Squid

news @sanjuanislander.com

ABOUT US | ADVERTISING INFO | CONTACT INFORMATION |