By Joe Gresh
Motorcycle riding gives you a good excuse to go places and see things, not that you need an excuse. I like a steam train, I have a motorcycle, thus riding up to Ogden, Utah to see a big old steam train seemed like a sensible thing to do.
My Carrizozo Mudchuckers buddy, Mike, was all for the idea so we planned to meet Big Boy, the last of the steam locomotives, in Ogden, where the train would stop for two days. As we waited for the appointed day the normally beautiful New Mexico weather cooled and became cloudy with rising damp. Ogden, being 900 miles north of us, was experiencing the same weather degradation except much, much colder.
Just a few days before leaving there was snow and rain in Utah. A 75-car pile up in Denver, and rain and cold all along our route north, had us thinking “this ride will suck.” I kept watching the weather reports hoping for a better forecast, but it looked like miserable weather the entire trip north only starting to ease off a bit on the Monday we would start riding home from Ogden.
I have plenty of cold weather riding gear. Things like electric vests, heated grips and a plastic rain suit can keep you warm enough. I’ll use them if there is no other option. But there was another, simpler option: Don’t ride into the rain and cold.
One day before were planned to leave I called the Mudchucker and said: How about we go to Willow Springs for vintage motorcycle racing instead? Call me a fair weather rider but sunny California was an easy sell. We dumped Ogden and the Big Boy steam train faster than oil prices rose after we bombed Iran.
The plan worked. We left town a day later than the Big Boy run. That allowed some of the bad weather to move east. Our first day on the road was cool, cloudy but comfortable, the second day we had strong headwinds and 40-degree cold, but nothing nearly as painful as the stuff we would have experienced earlier and further north.
We mostly followed old Route 66 west jumping on and off Interstate 40 as required. It was an odd time of year I guess. The entire town of Seligman was closed: Gas stations, food markets, all shuttered. Further on we rolled into tiny reservation villages with nothing available to buy or rent. I admit, traffic was light on historic Route 66. If a guy set up a food truck he’d starve to death.
On westward we rode, through Kingman down to Oatman. Again, every store in the tourist-friendly little donkey-town of Oatman was closed. The day ran long, we needed ice cream, it was getting dark, I couldn’t see much through the dark face shield on my helmet, and we pulled into an abandoned gas station to check out the motel situation in Needles. The Mudchucker was tired. He stopped next to me and toppled over. I tried to hold us up but the combined weight of Mike, his Moto Guzzi V7 and my ZRX1100 Kawasaki was too much.
We went down like the stock market after we instituted tariffs. The bikes were stacked against each other much like the system is stacked against the common man. It took a bit of doing to untangle them and lift the bikes upright. Damage was light: a few dings in the right-side Guzzi jug, a busted turn signal, scratched gas tank, and bent brake levers on the ZRX1100. Amazingly, there were no dents or major issues.
A homeless guy camped at the gas station saw the whole thing. He didn’t laugh or say anything. He must have thought we were total losers.
The tip over had us in a melancholy mood. In the motel that evening we talked about that inevitable day, our strength gone, our skeletons frail, the day when we could no longer ride. Mike felt a side car was the way to go. I favored a three cylinder, two stroke, Kawasaki-powered gurney.
But gurney-time isn’t here yet and by the third day we were riding along basking in the warm Mojave desert. Things were looking up and thoughts of our physical decay burned away. Or maybe we just forgot we were falling apart. I hear that happens but I can’t remember where I heard it. Route 66 to Amboy was closed so we had to stay on Interstate 40, only returning to Route 66 west after paying $7.50 per gallon of gas at Ludlow.
Out of Barstow we rode past Hinkley, the toxic-water town made famous by Julia Roberts and Erin Brockovich. We made it to Lancaster, our base camp for Willow Springs.
Lancaster is an interesting place. On the back roads we came in on there were piles of trash dumped everywhere. I guess the town doesn’t have a dump. Or maybe the dump fee is too high so people drive out of town a few miles and drop their load. It reminded me of the trash piles I used to pick through in the Florida Everglades. You can find some good metal in those piles.
I saw some nice chairs 5 miles from Lancaster. If I had the Toyota truck, I would have grabbed them. There was a lot of broken concrete that would make excellent fill back at the ranch. Drywall was another popular item on the side of the road. Once in town things cleaned up slightly, and Lancaster looked much the same as other generic, California desert towns: New chain stores along the highway, decomposing shops, homeless people and frequent stop lights in the old sections.
The Wyndham motel on Avenue I was new and along the highway. They have a pretty good breakfast setup. There were the usual sausage paddies, scrambled eggs and pour-your-own waffles. We waddled out to the bikes and rode the 20 miles to Willow Springs racetrack.
Vintage motorcycle racing is mostly a family affair. Spectators not directly involved with the racing or supporting the racers are rare and we had the grandstands to ourselves. Multitudes of classes meant non-stop action all day long.
AHRMA racing covers all eras with heavy emphasis on bikes that were never actually raced back in the day, at least compared to the races I saw as a youth. Honda 160s are a popular class and an example of bikes that were never raced where I grew up.
An unusual number of Moto Gizzards circulated the Big Willow track. Maybe because they were so popular, only a few Yamaha Twins survived to race AHRMA. Most of the race bikes were 4-strokes. In the 1970s that ratio would be flipped and 2-strokes ruled the track. I guess the point is to run what you want and have fun with it.
The Willow races were not as well attended as the Laguna Seca AHRMA events. Laguna Seca is set in soft, coastal hills and has space for vintage motocross along with a vintage trials section. The camping at Laguna Seca is better. I suppose you can camp at Willow but it’s more of a motor home type camping than a tent. I’m not sure what happened between AHRMA and Laguna Seca and it’s none of my business, but I wish they would get it sorted out and go back to Laguna.
Willow isn’t bad, mind you. The racetrack recently sold and the new owners are fixing it up a bit. There are several tracks and the food concession was better than Laguna. You can get a decent meal at Willow.
The last time I was at Willow Springs was in the 1970s. The pit looks the same and there are added buildings along the front straight. My memories are dimming and I can’t remember why I was there in the ’70s, but it was probably motorcycle racing of some sort.
Rosamond, the town closest to Willow has grown quite a bit and lots of housing developments are being thrown together. Eventually someone will build houses around Willow if the new owners don’t do it first.
The ride back to New Mexico was full-on warm. We took backroads from Lancaster to Victorville and sort of paralleled Interstate 10 along Yucca Valley and Twentynine Palms to Parker, Arizona. Our miles per day were shrinking and we were stopping more often. Temperatures reached 95 along the sparsely populated Highway 62.
I was smelling the barn, you know? I kind of lost it on the last day in Show Low. We woke up at 4:30 am to get an early start. I wanted to get home and the Mudchucker was leisurely watching TV and eating a bagel. By 8:30 a.m., I had been awake 4 hours and drank 16 cups of coffee waiting. I had a lot of pent-up nervous energy.
Finally underway, we burned up the highway into New Mexico, a slight frost between us, and I managed to get home at a decent time (before dark). I’m starting to wonder if 7 days on the road is too much for me. Riding motorcycles with a partner is a series of compromises strung together with miles and miles of pavement. Are the compromises worth the companionship? I’m sure I must annoy the Mudchucker at times.
Maybe I’m just getting old and cranky. At least, that’s the excuse I’m going to use.
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