Installment #06 – Kern River, ’83

I’m just telling this sordid story because we’re trying desperately to piece together the tale of how we got a wild hair to hit three runs in one weekend. They were the annual Kern River Run, the Bakersfield Motorcycle Jamboree Run and the Molachs MC party on the coast. Problem is that everyone I spoke to remembers something different and we can’t seem to make the pieces fit. You name it, we’ve got it — breakdowns, drugs, screaming women and Mick falling asleep on the highway and crashing into the median full of oleander bushes. So we’ll hold that tall tale until we can further interrogate and get the story at least partially straight. Thinking about it reminded me of the following Kern River Run tale that took place in 1982.

It was to be a simple ride to Kern and back, about 350 miles round trip. Yeah, right. It went something like this: I was riding my first cone-motor Shovelhead. It was a ’72 swingarm with 5-gallon fatbobs and a wide glide front end, stock length. I made these bars with dual headlights on them. They were actually dresser spotlights. At the time, the choice of fenders was limited to two or three designs.

You could use trailer flat fenders, ribbed English fenders or some bullshit bobbed fiberglass fenders. I made a bobber flat fender, welded it to the swingarm so it cupped the tire and welded rails down to the swingarm in the back. It looked good, but you couldn’t pack anyone and the vibration back there was horrendous.

I never was much of a joiner or hanger-on, so I didn’t ride with large groups. I stuck to myself mostly, although I had some club time in the ’70s. I knew a couple of guys in Moorpark and we decided to ride to Kern together. One of the guys, Toby, knew a group that was planning to have a party at the Kern River and we could hook up and camp out with them. Toby rode the same swingarm Pan for as long as I knew him. It was clean and packed tall ape hangers. He had more than one accident with that machine, which he always repaired and rebuilt. The high bars constantly drew the cops because of his short stature, but he never changed them.

We left at the crack of dawn. When I go on a long run, I like to leave before daybreak, power out of the city before the traffic musters and watch the sun come up. That’s one of the reasons I ride alone. No one in their right mind wants to roll out at 4:00 a.m.

We buzzed out of Moorpark and went the back way on 23, through citrus groves and horse ranches. We caught the 126 in Fillmore to Interstate 5 just before it climbed into the Tejon Pass north to Bakersfield. The Grapevine, as it’s known, is notorious for its steep climbs that become slick in winter and cause cars to overheat in the summer. We got off the freeway on the other side for breakfast, then cut across the fields heading for the mouth of the Kern River below Lake Isabella. All was going well until I came to a boulevard stop in 100-degree heat in the middle of no place. My clutch was making some strange sounds, but when I released the lever it engaged and I kept going.

There’s something about a motorcycle that talks to you. It seems to tell you that you better keep rolling or you’ll be stopping for good. I rode another five miles into the summer heat and farther away from civilization. At the next stop, I looked down at the primary I had drilled lightening holes in. I had made one of my belt buckle-wheel derbies out of brass so I could look inside and see what was flying around. I like open primaries for ease of repair and access to the driveline. I looked beyond the brazed spokes into the interior to discover that some of the clutch splines were sticking well beyond the pressure plate. My eyes got wide and so did Toby’s. I shut off the bike and removed my precious art object/derby cover and stuck it in my vest. With the engine stopped, I kicked the splines back into the hub and started the bike, keeping in mind not to allow my ankle to come within spline distance from the hole in the outer primary. We kept riding and the sun kept getting hotter.

We had less than 50 miles to go. I nursed that clutch and monitored the splines that crept from the clutch hub. Sweating and wondering how I was going to get home, we reached the winding road leading to the town of Kernvale. On the edge of town was a gas station. It was one of those stations with the shop in back, where they did everything from machine shop jobs to welding and body work. I pulled in and shut off my motor. The owner kindly gave me access to the acetylene torch in the back. I told Toby I had a job to do and to go find the camp. I pulled off the primary and the clutch basket and managed to get the hub off, left handed threads and all. Then came the trick. The splines were peened over on the back of the hub. The peening didn’t hold and some we’re creeping out so I had to gas weld them back in place. The trick was to weld about 5/16-inch splines to a chunk of steel almost a half-inch thick. I had to do that while keeping the splines straight, not fucking with the bearing surface of the hub and doing it with a torch in 100-degree heat. I didn’t know whether I was going to melt or not. It took a few hours, but I got the job done, and that hub lasted for years.

Then the fun began. It was mid-afternoon before I found the camp and settled in. The drink for the afternoon was beer and tequila and so the party began. I’m sure there were a couple other stimulants floating around the party. The camp was on the Kern, where raging waters whip against mammoth boulders strewn along the shore to create a watery obstacle course. These waters have swept many a drunk to his death. We parked our bikes around the granite mounds and under pine trees. Everyone was having a good time until late in the afternoon, when someone ran up to tell me that a surfer had pulled a knife on one of our guys. I don’t know why they alerted me, but I went to check it out. I was unarmed except for a half-drunk fifth of Cuervo Gold.

As I rounded a couple of rocks, I saw a long-haired guy in a Hawaiian shirt and shorts with a long knife sheath strapped to his side. He had pulled the blade and was threatening one of the bikers from the camp. I don’t know if it was the heat, the tequila or the beer but I approached the guy, told him to calm down and put the knife away. He did, briefly. Then the shouting kicked off again and he pulled the knife again. This flashy blade with its antler handle and brass bolsters must have been over a foot long. It was more like a sword. I had told him to put it away, but he ignored me. So I hit him upside the face with the Cuervo bottle.

You would have thought I hit him with a baseball bat the way he hit the ground. I jumped on him and took the knife away. His face swelled up like a balloon and it took the fight out of him for awhile. Later that evening, a contingency from his camp came looking for the knife. I remember Toby asking if we could return the pig sticker to the surfer. I was seriously stoned by then, but I remember thinking that the guy had broken the Code of the West by pulling the thing in the first place. I couldn’t, in my right mind (if that’s possible), return it. It seemed as though the inquiries came every couple of hours throughout the night, but I stood by the code–use it and lose it. I had that knife for years.