Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/118161
terrorized townies than portrayed in the movie): a rowdy Gypsy Tour the American Motorcycle Association organized over the 1947 Independence Day weekend to bring together motorcycle clubs. But magnified by the media, including a staged photo in Life magazine of a biker double-fisting atop his 'cycle – crankcase deep in beer bottles – and a fictionalized account of the event in Harper's, the rally swiftly rose to the level of legend. Today there is nothing much to see in Hollister, but the drive up from the coast makes it more about the journey than the destination. Hwy. 152 yields some sinuous track into the hills, and we exchange salutes with other riders winding it out back down to sea level. In town we hit a taqueria, then wander through Johnny's Bar, peering up at blackand-white photos of that bonafide motorcycle club the Boozefighters (led by founder Wino Willie Forkner), before heading back down for another run through the S-curves. A Harden, pointing to my Cheshire cat grin. The next morning, Mark and I are back on the BMW for the pilgrimage to Hollister – "Birthplace of the American Biker," about 80 kilometres south. The town of 37,000 was the quiet backdrop of the first biker movie ever made: The Wild One, starring Marlon Brando on – not a Harley as one might expect for this American film classic, but some British iron, the screen legend's own 1950 Triumph Thunderbird. The film was inspired by a real-life event (featuring fewer s Bruce Brown narrates in On Any Sunday, "the most fun in all of motorcycling is to load up your bike in a pickup and head out into the country," which, two days later, is what we do. Our buddy Matt Schober has trail bikes for us, and we load the three vintage Hondas onto a trailer and fill the truck bed with gear and supplies. Mark and Matt jump in the cab. I ride escort on the GS. Then we're off, with no set plan. There's something unmistakably dramatic about the land this side of the Sierra Range. Impossibly delicate desert hues rise into mountains, the softness of pointillism mixed with the strong lines of a wood-block print. Days are spent going from familiar loops Matt knows well to poking around the edges of the map, places he's always wanted to explore. At night we make camp amongst the sage at 2,100 metres and wake to frost on our sleeping bags. One night we grab an open-air tub site at Benton Hot Springs and soak for as long as humanly possible while a rare rain shower passes, leaving a sky bright with clouds of stars. We climb old packhorse trails, built to service mines up in the hills, and bounce the bikes through whoop-de-whoops and streambeds, up steep banks and down tracks rolling with melon-sized rocks. Riding sweeping single track high on Glass Mountain, we gain wide-open views of the desert floor and the White Mountains across the valley. Up here, colours achieve extra degrees of vibrancy. Stands of trembling aspen, orange and mint-green, shimmer in the wind. We find graffiti carved by shepherds into the trees' white trunks, dated "1916," and – riding a ridge – come across pines hundreds of years old, trunks gnarled into bonsai twists. The grain of the silver wood, blast-polished by sun and wind, forms bold, swirling patterns as if hammered from precious metals by Issey Miyake. A raptor circles in a sky so saturated in colour it's a midnight blue. For two days we see no one else, save for a hand waving from a lone passing truck. Down low we roam volcanic tablelands, encountering Paiute petroglyphs in slot canyons, and poke our heads into abandoned mineshafts shored up by rickety timbers. Tracks turn to red volcanic pumice, hemmed in with bitterbrush and sage. A single cloud puff hovers off a peak like an exclamation point as we drop back to the valley and past salt flats and fresh desert springs, oases vibrant with life. After a week on the bikes, wearing all our armour in all this heat, we walk bowlegged like cowboys and smell like bags of hockey equipment. We strip down and jump into a slough to cool off. With three days of Sierra Nevada mountain and desert riding behind us, it's time to head south. We sadly part ways with Matt before stopping for an obligatory burrito at the Big Pine Chevron – then, back on the BMW, head for L.A., past motels advertising "Clean N'Quiet," "Cable & HBO." Convenience stores announce simply, "Gasoline. Beer." Hookand-bullet shops bear such classic neon signs as a fish on a line arcing out of the water, in western boardwalk towns from the era of Norman Rockwell. Always to our right, the bleached-bone pinnacles of the Sierra Nevada, to our left, Death Valley. And now, just to the west, the highest point in the contiguous U.S., Mount Whitney; 160 kilometres east is the lowest – Badwater Basin. WESTWORLD p36-41_Calif.Cycle.indd 39 >> FA L L 2 0 1 1 39 8/17/11 12:22:35 PM