Must Be Art Weblog

Pat Witt, Wayne Doyle, and I rode our motorcycles to the Laughlin River Run motorcycle rally this weekend. We stayed Friday night at the Harrah’s casino hotel in Laughlin. Didn’t even need a reservation at Harrah’s. I guess the bikers don’t like to pay $180 for a hotel room at the far end of the strip.

Wowie. There were many whole boatloads of motorcycles there. Almost all Harleys. Many with obscenely loud exhaust systems (”pipes”). Many with spectacular custom paint jobs, or even custom frames and odd shapes. Even the regular open parking lots were like custom motorcycle shows.

The vendor area was entertaining for a few hours. Lots of t-shirts, leather accessories (all kinds), and other stuff with even more tenuous connections to motorcycling, in addition to the obvious motorcycles and related stuff. Pat bought a new non-leather motorcycle jacket to replace his heavy black leather one. Wayne bought a rally t-shirt. I bought a diet coke.

They had some biker gang violence at this event last year (or was it two years ago?) so this year the police were very much in evidence, and all the hotels were enforcing a “no colors” policy: nobody was allowed to wear a jacket with any type of writing on it. Even a non-leather jacket with just the manufacturer’s brand name logo on it (like mine) was out of bounds. I suppose the hotels believe that the gangs are too stupid to kill each other if the combatants aren’t clearly labeled. Be that as it may, I didn’t hear of any violence this year. The cops seemed mostly idle, except for ticketing the more outrageously moronic displays of drunk driving (riding) among those cruising loudly up and down the strip.

Pat was having some trouble with his bike, which is an old 1979 Harley. We had to push-start it a couple of times (which it turns out is easier than it sounds). Pat decided it was the battery, so after leaving Laughlin we stopped at a motorcycle shop Pat had spotted in Needles and bought a new battery. That’s a bigger deal than it sounds like, because the battery ships uncharged and with the battery acid packed separately. To make the battery ready for service, you have to add the acid and then charge it for an hour or so. Then of course you have to get it into the bike. And if you’re a cheapskate like Pat, you do the last part yourself with semi-appropriate tools borrowed from the standard Honda toolkit on Wayne’s bike. Among other limitations, the Honda tools are of course all metric, while the Harley is all prehistoric. So we ended up cooling our heels in Needles (right on historic Route 66, next to the BNSF railroad tracks) for about an hour and a half.

The bike started right up with the new battery. By the next stop, it was flat again. Oops. My theory (that it was probably a problem with the alternator or charging circuits) was apparently correct. So we push-started it again and rode on. No problem. Except that with the extra delay in Needles, we were going to run out of daylight while still in the mountains around Anza. And … the headlights, tail lights, turn signals, etc. on a motorcycle run off the battery, not off the motor. So as it got dark, we noticed that Pat’s bike had no lights. Not good.

I proposed the safe (and legal) solution was to park the busted bike in Anza and come back for it in the daylight. This proposal was not accepted. Instead, Wayne and I rode escort in formation around Pat’s dark bike all the way back to Pat’s driveway. It went safely, without incident or near-incident, but it was still without a doubt the stupidest thing I’ve done on a motorcycle so far. Like most stupid stunts, we got away with it, this time.

Total miles: 690, including the detour to Pat’s house at the end.

See a few photos from the trip.

The authors of Radio Userland sent me a renewal notice, informing me that my license was about to expire. So, I dropped their software like a hot potato and converted over to Blosxom, which is free (but not as fancy).