Riding with a Southern California motorcycle club

 4/15 - Let's get back to basics. 

This blog was originally a way for me to document my own travels and adventures. Over the past few years, however, I've gone away from that and wrote about stuff like debt repayment. I want to go back to writing about my travels now that I'm debt free again. 

I've done my share of travel since moving to Bishop. I went to Alaska in September 2021 and rode a train to Denali National Park where I was lucky enough to see Mt. Denali, the tallest mountain in North America, with my own eyes. Someday I'll return to Alaska to explore it more. 

I've rode motorcycles a few times since my move to Bishop, mostly in the Palm Springs area. I've also explored Joshua Tree National Park on those occasions. 

But this entry will be about my most recent motorcycle adventure. Once again I'll head to Palm Springs to ride with some friends in a group. Like last year, my horse will be a Harley Davidson, a machine that will be lent to me by one guy in the group. And like last year, I'll be fortunate enough to spend a night in perhaps the most luxurious bedroom I've ever had the pleasure to use. 

This time, we'll go on an overnight trip to a small town in the mountains of San Diego County: Julian. This town is known for its apple pie. Our group, whose leader is a friend of mine and the guy who invited me to join, will head south on the eastern shore of the Salton Sea, California's largest lake, and head west through Anza Borrego State Park, home to massive dinosaurs and scorpions, all the while navigating a maze of little used county roads and a mixture of tasty state highways.

4/24 - Back to the most elegant home I’ve ever stepped foot in, and one more opportunity to sleep in a comfortable bed in a spacious, modern room I would never be able to afford myself, I found myself back in Palm Springs for another motorcycle ride. This time, however, I was prepared to step foot inside this home; last year I was genuinely shocked. I had found myself wondering what the hell I had done to deserve such an awesome opportunity. I ended up talking to a therapist about this issue. 

But I digress. 

My horse for this trip was a blue Yamaha V-Star 950cc, a standard/cruising style of motorcycle. Our ultimate destination was Julian, a small town in the mountains of San Diego County with a history of gold mining and a reputation for quality, buttery, flaky apple pie. It was my first time riding in more than a year and as I write this, my body is reminding me that I’m not in riding shape. I ended up riding in a group with nine other bikers, something I hadn't done before. The biggest group I had ridden with before this adventure was two other bikers. The group consisted of members of a Southern California motorcycle club, most of whom I had never met before. 

With a low center of gravity and lighter weight than the 2018 Harley Davidson Fatboy 1800cc I rode last year, I adapted to the V-Star  quicker. Although, it still took me a few miles to knock the riding rust off. This included a near wreck, as I fishtailed in response to the leader unexpectedly slamming on his breaks for a yellow light at an intersection. Fortunately, I stayed upright, but not without a spike of adrenaline. Some of the guys complimented me afterwards for keeping the bike upright. 

We headed east through the Coachella Valley, away from the final hours of the Coachella Music Festival and between the fields of agriculture so oddly placed in such an arid, desert climate. We turned south along the eastern shore of the Salton Sea, California’s largest lake but also an environmental disaster. I had visited the Salton Sea once before, but hadn't traveled south beyond Bombay Beach. On this trip, the itinerary called for a visit to Bombay Beach, Salvation Mountain and Slab City, havens for artists or people who wish to live off the grid. In order to live in a dry, desert climate like this, one must be wired just a little bit differently. We took group photos in these areas and continued farther south.

We eventually tore through Anza Borrego State Park on the west side of Salton Sea. Anza Borrego is a geological wonderland, filled with washes and alluvial fans, colorful rock, wildflowers and tall ocotillo plants amongst a landscape that looks as if someone had pushed two ends together and squashed everything together. While riding through California's largest state park and leaning through its meandering Imperial County road in a state of disrepair, I giggled and sang, babbled like a madman and felt euphoria. 

We stopped at a seedy biker bar in Borrego Springs, where the fish tacos were surprisingly good and glasses of water wildly refreshing after getting pounded by the afternoon sun for a few hours. Borrego Springs is a desert oasis on the edge of San Diego County that's completely surrounded by Anza Borrego State Park. One thing that immediately sells Borrego Springs is the presence of numerous metal sculptures of various animals such as horses, camels, tortoise, eagles, dinosaurs and in one case, a dragon that traverses a road.

Here's where the ride became a notch more difficult. Our path was S-22, a San Diego County rode that sharply rises above the Montezuma Valley floor and tightly curves and winds a few thousand feet up the mountainside. Having not ridden for more than a year, my cornering skills were understandably rusty. Picking a quality line to follow took some time to get used to. There was one moment where I leaned too far over and scraped the underside of the footrest on the pavement, sending a shiver through the bike. There was another curve where I went a bit too far wide and came uncomfortably close to a white box truck descending the mountain. 

But, I got the hang of the road eventually and made it up the mountain in one piece. I noticed that on these tight curves on twisty mountain roads, I do not laugh or whoop. I am entirely focused on taking the right line and holding the angle through the turn. This is one reason why motorcycling is physically and mentally exhausting compared to driving a car. You must be entirely present and engaged on exactly what you and your machine are doing. 

The curves of this road relaxed at about 4,000 feet. We emerged onto S-2, a county road with gentle, fast bends through a green valley surrounded by mountains and an access point to the Pacific Crest trail. It was on this road that I felt a smile appear on my face, a sense of calm settle into me, feeling at peace with the world. 

We then roared into Julian's Main Street, where we turned south for a few miles to arrive at our Airbnb, a home in Pine Hills complete with a fireplace, hot tub, wild turkeys and comfortable beds. We had ridden more than 230 miles; I was exhausted. Sleep came easily that evening. 

4/25 - When riding a motorcycle, you have to accept that you’re going to crash the bike at some point. In my eyes, this is an inevitability. I’ve dropped bikes my fair share of times. I’ve dropped them after stalling the engine in the middle of intersections, back when I was a new rider. I’ve dropped rented bikes trying to turn too slowly on slopes. 

But I’ve never been seriously injured after crashing at highway speeds. Back during my time in Porterville, I crashed on a bicycle going 35 mph going downhill and suffered some serious road rash. I spent a week nursing that injury and picking out gravel from my wounds. 

Thankfully, I haven’t had a major motorcycle crash. But on Sunday as we were returning to Palm Springs, weaving through the gentle green hills of State Route 79, we witnessed a serious motorcycle accident. Certain images will probably always be there in my memory now.

A truck pulling a horse trailer was going slower than the speed limit and had built up a line of cars and bikes behind it. The truck had plenty of opportunities to pull over and let traffic pass, but it never did. A lone biker on a black Harley Davidson began passing everyone, including our group of bikers. He attempted to pass the horse trailer right before a curve. A car was coming the opposite direction, so the biker sped up to make the pass. He went into the curve way too quickly and ran off the road.

I remember a cloud of dust and a starfish shape of his body 10 feet in the air. This man flew 20-30 feet from his bike, which exploded in the field. Fortunately, he had crashed in a grassy field on top of soft dirt. I yelled in shock inside my own helmet. Our group pulled over, as did the cars in the line. One man in our group was a retired doctor. Another, a nursing assistant. Several people including myself called 911.

“I need to report a motorcycle accident on State Route 79 at postmile 52.”

While we waited for the ambulance, the leader of our group, the retired MD and a few other people raced to the guy on the ground. The MD, though he didn’t have much training in trauma response because his expertise had been in family practice, collected data from the guy. What’s his name? Can he move his limbs? Any lacerations? Can you breathe? Where’s the pain? What's his heart rate? How does his color look? Is he turning blue? Just focus on breathing.

The guy had trouble breathing. It seemed that it was less painful for him to lay on his right side than on his back. He was groaning in pain.

“Oh no,” he repeated.

Those of us who were not immediately tending to the man righted his motorcycle and put the kickstand down, to prevent gas and oil leakage. We collected his things from the wreckage; I noticed that his jacket had either fallen off in the crash or burst forth from one of the saddle bags. We brought water when asked, moved our bikes to make room for the ambulance and flagged it down.

Eventually the EMTs arrived. They worked quickly; their training served them well. They got the biker into the ambulance and away it went, perhaps heading to Temecula. Miraculously, the biker did not suffer any lacerations. I have no idea of what happened to the biker after the ambulance took him away, or of the fate of his Harley.

We got back onto the bikes and continued our journey, eventually descending 3,000 feet in elevation to the Coachella Valley on State Route 74, one of the best roads I’ve ever ridden on a motorcycle. But I kept thinking about the crash I witnessed.

We discussed what happened upon our return to Palm Springs. The MD suggested the biker had broken ribs and perhaps a punctured lung. He showed me pictures of what a punctured lung looks like, known as a pneumothorax. He explained what happens to the blood vessels and airways in that case. He suggested the biker was in shock.

It was certainly a learning experience, an overdose of real life. As I lay here in bed, wide awake and unable to sleep even though my body has been through the wringer this weekend, I recognize that I directly faced my own vulnerability and mortality while motorcycling. 

We only hear about crashes like that through news reports, horror stories passed on by people we know whose goal is to discourage us from riding or educational videos during safety classes. We don't actually expect to see it unfold with our own eyes, to hear gasps of pain, to see legs and feet thrashing in discomfort, to feel the frantic energy of a group of people who know they must act quickly to help a person who's badly injured. 

While it was an excellent weekend filled with something that makes me happy and experience true freedom, the accident shook me a little bit. I took a sick day from work because I was still thinking about it the morning after and on the journey back to Bishop. 

I am a biker. It is part of who I am. I am good at riding. After I returned to Bishop, my friend and the leader of the group said I did a great job, and that I fit in well with the group. It may be time to seriously consider acquiring another motorcycle for myself...