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Boozefighters Motorcycle Club
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" The Original WildOnes."

Gypsy Tour 2003

Part III

THE ROAD HOME IS ALWAYS THE LONGEST!

Having spent a week of adventurous riding to get there, a long three day weekend meeting and partying, it became time to load em up and head towards home. Lots of guys had to put on the hard press and zap out a couple of 7 or 8 hundred miles to get back to work. Others needed to get their ladies to the airports in Reno or Sacramento. Some would continue a long vacation by heading on the Pacific Ocean and then up Hwy1 and 101 to Oregon, Vancouver and who knows where all they’d end up….

Boozefighters are a strong collective brotherhood. But they are also free spirited thinkers and blaze their own trail a lot, especially on the long road home. Here it is the end of August and after nearly 3 months Chaplain Irish Ed is still out there on his pilgrimage. Been camping out with a clan of Hippies in Colorado I understand. I’m confident they’ve got an ear full of the “Good Book” by now, and are better off for it. I just hope they didn’t corrupt our chaplain too much in the process.

Around a dozen of us had to pay our respects to “Wino’s” ash urn and memorial display in Johnny’s Bar in Hollister. Then Monday morning we broke up into even smaller groups, taking different routes. ‘Dancer’, ‘Wideglide’, and ‘History’ chose to fight the thousands of ground squirrels that liked to converge on Rural Hwy # _______. As we re-traced the “Original Boozefighters” travels south to King City ‘Wideglide’ discovered one such stubborn varmint that refused to yield the right of way on a sharp curve. Never say Joe Edwards don’t have compassion. The squirrel was spared and ‘Wideglide’ picked up his bike and continued on- a bit banged up of course. That’s one time he was thankful he kept his lid on (you aught to see the road rash on the side of his helmet!!!!).

We three Musketeers bunked down in Oxnard and around 9:15 the next morning met the general manager, Henry Fuchs at the Vintage Museum of Transportation and Wildlife. “That was impressive” Dancer said after about an hour and a half personally guided tour of the 50,000 square foot private vintage museum, and Dancer don’t impress easily. Joe and I totally agreed.

You can’t set foot in that place without a private scheduled invitation. Ours was arranged by Honorary Boozefighter National Ambassador Daniel Statnekov. He’s the guy that was our special guest at our 2001 nat’l meeting in Fort Worth. The vintage bike collector that brought Jack Lilly’s old 1939 green and white Crocker (click for related story).

Afterwards we stopped at a Ventura Harley shop for some routine service needs and then blended in with the challenging freeway traffic as we arched over the top of the LA are and on to sizzling Palm Springs. After shucking a lot of cloths we continued up into the mountains and arrived at Jack Lilly’s ranch in the Anza Indian Reservation. Bill Hayes (our book writer) had beaten us there and already recorded rich historical stories as told by Jack Lilly, and Johnny and Jeannine Roccio.

We had a great meal and conversations. Bill and I elected to do a little dirt biking thru the tall desert vegetation around the ranch…. On our Harleys. “That was a blast,” bill said. “I couldn’t see the ground most of the time and now my bike is covered with sand and dust.” Poor baby- join the rat pack.

Next evening ‘Snowman’ and `CHOP' came up and we did steaks on the BBQ. Man I wish I had recorded some of those stories that got batted around that night. “PRICELESS!”

‘Snowman’, we’ve got to get Bill Hayes to include the one about how JD Cameron took a small hand grinder to Wino’s broken snaggle tooth and smoothed off the sharp edge that had been cutting into his tongue. Inventitive old Boozefighters could finagle most anything.

Dancer and Wideglide needed to get on back home so they left before I did. My lone ranger ride back to Texas was hot and uneventful, except for the hundreds of devil’s witches (whirlwinds) I observed in the Arizona desert around Tucson.

But in Texas all hell broke lose. First was a dust storm to my right, then it sucked into a thunderstorm on my left buffeting me back and forth in the colliding turbulence. Then it started hailing dirty ice balls. I checked into a Motel 6 in Midland and went across the street to a saloon to weather out the storm. Saw one heck of a sunset later.

Okay, that’s it…It’s a wrap!! I put over 250,000 miles on my old Sportster that I bought brand new in 1973. I’ve put 56,000 miles on my 98 Road King I bought for my 60th birthday in 1999. I’ve been to about 40 states, Canada and Mexico. Some of them numerous times.

I’ve camped out in fields in Mexico, side of cliffs in New Mexico, the beach of the Great Salt Lake, goat pen in Michigan. I’ve slept on park benches in roadside parks, $9 bug infested motels, cheap KOA’s and Motel 6’s. And I’ve stayed in $185 hotel rooms just to see how the other half lives.

I’ve broke down more times than I can count. Made roadside repairs, and hitch hiked home to get my truck and go back to fetch my bike a bunch of times.

I’ve been lucky to have made everything work out, and I’ve never had a serious accident in the process. I wouldn’t change a thing in the past. But for my 65th year I’m changing things. I’m going to do shorter trips- more times- and if per chance it’s got to be a long haul it’ll be with my bike loaded in the back of my truck.

I’ve served my dues and its time someone younger head up the annual gypsy tour thing.

JQ- ‘History’

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