It was all down to a jerk off artist, name of Richard, a dentist out of Dallas who had gone through three divorces and finally ended up owning the latest 1500cc Honda six with, for all I knew, the kitchen sink tucked away amid the mass of GRP. We were both dead drunk, relating motorcycle tales that got taller as the evening wore on. One thing about Americans, in ten minutes you'll find out more about their lives than an English guy would give out in ten years.
It soon became apparent that the ownership of such a ritzy item as a GL1500 was more down to lack of penis size and staying power than anything else. Somewhere along in the evening I had mentioned where I was staying and the next day I was summoned back into the land of the living at a most inconsiderate few minutes past noon by the phone vibrating off the side of the desk. The GL1500 owner rang to remind me that everything was set for the Gold Wing rally the next day, the old GL1000 he had tucked away at the back of his garage was still a runner, ready and waiting for my ministrations.
Jesus, what had I let myself in for now.....I have to admit I was more than drunk when I turned up at his minor mansion. Some reprobate just out of high school had dumped about 200 amphetamine tablets on me, apparently under the impression that I was well connected and only staying in the cockroach infested motel as a means of covering my tracks.
Shit man, it works like this, you hit a few pills and then become paranoid about being busted with enough left over to make you as a dealer, so you hit a few more to quell the paranoia and so on.....I was so out of it by then that the vibes from the CB750 were running straight up my spine into my eyeballs, causing triple vision.
The next thing I knew I was aboard this venomous flat four which rattled and roared like a dustbin full of ball bearings being shot out of cannon in a lift shaft....I didn't think my head was about to fall off and I knew it had already. Covert flashes of reality found me amid these massive cruisers with dazzling chrome, laid back ancient white trash at the controls and a degree of engine rumble that hit me in the belly and made me want to spew up. Just gotta get out of this place.
Naturally, I peered through the tunnel vision and whacked on the throttle, the waltzing Matilda under me frightening the wretched denizens out of my path until I made it to the front. The speedo quivered at the ton and only the sudden realisation that I didn't know where the hell we were going made me back off a notch. At least I seemed to have woken up the dead, two GL1500 riders came streaming past, lights turned up so high they nearly fried my brain in the myriad of mirrors some narcissistic ninny had deemed fit to add to the huge, wobbling cowhorns attached to the GL1000.
The GL had 12,345 miles up, which I knew for almost a fact was a whole 100,000 miles short of the truth and any attempt to wind on the throttle past the ton was met with the kind of deep rumbling noise only Norton Commando owners would recognise as main bearings about to disintegrate...I was still together enough to imagine how the UMG would frame the obituary when the engine locked up solid at the ton and I was spat off, carved up by a hundred or so Gold Wing fanatics...
Somehow I made it to the first stop. Talk about a weird place. From the outside it looked like a single storey factory unit with a few flashing neon lights around its single entrance. From the inside it was a mixture of Rome meets Bangkok. The customers were even weirder, hard nosed bikers, even heavier truckers and a bunch of rednecks who looked like they'd reach for their shotguns at the merest taint of tan skin, despite the fact that at least half the Go-go dancers were of Asian descent.
Dentist Dick was rubbing his crotch like he was hoping to find something large and friendly down there, staring myopically at one particularly well endowed Mexican looking doll who had a bra full of ten dollar notes......it was all in all a pretty horrible place to stop for a break and I was relieved to get back on the road even if it was on a jumping flash rat bag of a Wing.
It was really strange, stuck amid all those huge bikes, fifty or so different stereos blasting out middle of the road music, competing to drown the engine and exhaust noise of the barely ruffled flat fours and sixes. Back in the bar I had been warned of the radar traps ahead and the need to maintain a steady 55mph. I was at least 20 years younger than the youngest of this group of semi-geriatrics; the oldest was in his nineties, so my natural pace of riding was about twice theirs.
A semblance of sobriety was gradually descending and with it a dark depression that was heavy with the boredom of the outing. At the next petrol station I put 100psi in the dentist's tyres whilst he was in the toilet. Once the group was back on the road all hell let loose when his bike went into a nasty weave, the tyres skipping all over the road as soon as he hit 30mph. The resulting pile-up involving half a dozen machines, worth about fifty thousand pounds, had me in such hysterics that I almost fell off as well.
You should have seen the perplexed faces as they tried to right their machines. The bikes were real heavy metal with all the equipment on board needing four to six people to get just one machine upright. Damage was minimal, more dented pride that wrecked metal or scarred bodies. I couldn't help them, it took all my energy to stop myself rolling about on the tarmac, kicking my legs up in the air and laughing like a madman.
It was in a fairly wild mood that I did the final 25 miles to the camp. Word eventually emerged that I had been seen playing with his tyres, after that I was ignored for the rest of the weekend and had to pitch my tent amid some other cruiser clowns. The camp was miles from civilisation, so I spent the rest of the weekend close to the beer tent, occasionally emerging to watch some of the antics.
There were only half a dozen women, all over fifty and ugly as a crashed CZ. The men did strange things like tug of wars over a cesspit, singing terrible songs at the top of their voices and late night farting competitions. They seemed happy enough in their second childhoods but I was so bored out of my head that I tried to organise a wheelie competition.....when my demonstration of how to wheelie a Gold Wing resulted merely in the monster lurching the back wheel a yard or so sideways, I decided to change the idea to a hill climb.
There was this neat mound of a hill that I felt any halfway decent pilot should be able to launch the Wing off the top. I shrugged off their protests (something about not upsetting the landowner), lined the GL up, let rip with the throttle, dropping the clutch with seven thousand revs up. The beast lurched forward, gouging out a huge furrow in the ground for the first hundred yards, covering just about everyone in a thick layer of mud.
Approaching the beginning of the hill, I yanked on the bars to little effect. Rather than trying to go up what appeared a rather more vertical climb than I had at first thought, the GL tried to go straight through the hill. The ground was soft and the front ended up hidden right up to the radiator. I was flung viciously forward, catching a very sensitive piece of my anatomy on the fake petrol tank. They didn't even laugh. They ignored me, pulling the precious machine out of the hill.
Dickhead pocketed the keys, whilst his friends hurriedly tried to clean up the great God Gold Wing, grabbed hold of my shoulders and shook me viciously. He shouted something about getting my act together and getting sober if I wanted to ride the machine home the next day. I sort of nodded my head in acquiescence and slept the rest of the day.
In the morning it was monsoon time. Five minutes in the rain and I was absolutely drenched despite leather jacket and nylon overtrousers.....after 15 minutes behind the huge Vetter style fairing fitted to the GL, daring to do no more than 50mph in the atrocious conditions, the Wing appeared to make some kind of sense. I could see the huge grins of contentment flashing between the geriatrics, they were even giving me the thumbs up sign. I huddled down to it, gave in to the conditions and began to actually enjoy riding a Gold Wing. God help me!
Johnny Malone