Installment #13 – Yuma Run Once More

This is one of those strange stories about the past that conjures up a bushel of memories. Until recently I never thought much about the Yuma Run, then it dawned on me that it was the first serious run I tried. A couple years later I went out on a rescue mission that was mentioned in the last issue. My third and final run into the desert was with George Christie, a good friend who ultimately made motorcycle history. George is now president of the Ventura, California, chapter of the Hells Angels, and has been for about 25 years. He was the first and only Hells Angel to run with the Olympic torch.

We took that run to Yuma almost 34 years ago. I was working at Easyriders at the time. The magazine had been underway for almost three years and the boss, Lou Kimzey, asked me to quit college and follow the rag from Seal Beach north about 85 miles to Malibu, where he’d bought a home. I was pissed at my folks and my old man was equally pissed at me (’cause I was a dirty biker), and since I was always up for an adventure, I left home turf behind. I moved to Oxnard and one of the riders I met locally was George and we became fast friends. For as long as I stayed in the region, George and I hung out.

Since I was doing my best to build ABATE to assist brothers in fighting helmet laws and custom bike regulations, I got to know many of the clubs throughout the Los Angeles area, including the Monks, the Righteous Ones and the Sundowners. They made the run to Yuma each year and set up a private area to party in.

Anyway, I was invited to attend their Yuma gathering with a local brother club, called the which I can’t remember (many apologies). George and I were the epitome of loners at the time. We did our thing, our way. We didn’t ride in packs. We showed up at a party when we wanted and left when the mood struck us. George rode an impeccably clean 80 flathead with a stock springer and highbars. The engine had aluminum heads and chromed shotgun pipes. The frame, bobbed rear fender and 3-gallon fatbobs were jet gloss black. The scoot still had mechanical brakes and no front fender. It was classic.

I remember riding with George one night in the Valley, on the rocky Hollywood Freeway. He looked over at me, horrified, his arms straight out to his bars. Without letting go, he signaled with his eyebrows and eyes that something was seriously wrong. His solid risers were attached with studs sticking out of the rear legs. As my eyes followed the shine of the chrome bars to the risers and to the base where the risers were screwed to the studs, I noticed one of the risers had broken the stud off. Once over the shock of the damage, George knew that the front end still wanted to track straight whether he had a set of bars or not. He leaned gracefully and we rolled off the freeway and called his wife, Cheryl.

Maybe it was a Saturday when we left the Oxnard area and headed toward Arizona. We decided that we’d take small roads as far as we could across the state and into the desert region of Yuma. All I remember of that ride is the countless fields on small highways all the way there. It was before developments were dropped all over Southern California, like the bombs launched on Hamburg, Germany, in World War II. Most of Hamburg was leveled. The devastation in California has nearly expanded Los Angeles, like some nasty corrosion, all across the state nearly to the border. We made a wrong turn from time to time, but we were proud as a couple of perverts with the right girl when we rolled into their camp. In those days a 400-mile putt was a major accomplishment.

My memory of that weekend is not packed with detail, so please excuse my lack of exacting facts, but we had a helluva time and met guys we still know until this day, even after all we’ve been through. In camp, a 50-gallon drum served as a pot for pinto beans so chow was constantly ready. We were along side a narrow body of water. I don’t think it was a river, it was more like an irrigation gully, but it had to be 15 feet wide. Many of the brothers gathered beer bottles and cans and created a target practice area on a sand dune on the other side of the water. Many of the riders brought pistols and there was shooting on a regular basis until a specific time in the evening when arms fire was no longer allowed. We were in a remote place with no town or cops nearby, but the clubs kept an eye out for trouble all weekend.

It was the ride home that I found most memorable. We took off early in the morning and headed west toward San Diego. The weather reports weren’t good. It certainly wasn’t summer. I was riding the rat bike I mentioned last issue. It was a laid back stretched monster for long hauls, not designed for dirt tracking or bad weather. About 50 miles out of camp it clouded up and started to hail on us as we crossed a few low mountains. Then it began to snow. I remember hoping that it would break up as we hit the coast, and it did. As we neared Dago and our destination for breakfast, it quit snowing and started to rain.

I remember losing George at one point in the zero visibility and pulling off the freeway. I stood on the overpass soaked to the bone and looked down at the freeway. It was a murky mud hole full of careening cars that sent sprays of sludge and sand into adjacent lanes. I remember distinctly that I could have turned in my key right then. Then George showed up and the Code of the West dictated that we keep rolling. He had been pulled over by a CHP officer who was determined that he was a Hells Angel on the run. He made him strip and peel open his pack for evidence of a patch. He finally cut him loose.

It calmed some as we entered Dago and got off the freeway for breakfast. As we ate we decided that the only way to handle this mess was to take the shortest, surest route right through it, going north out of Dago for 120 miles to Long Beach and staying on the freeway through Los Angeles, into the San Fernando Valley and home 50 miles beyond. George searched the restaurant for used newspapers which he stuffed inside his Levis and leather. It was dismal on the freeway as we filled our tanks and rolled into a no man’s land of treachery and torment. We couldn’t see for shit and the more we rode the worse it got.

In Los Angeles, it continued to rain. The worst part was that the slippery traffic increased tenfold as we entered the city. Visibility diminished as cars swung between lanes; we attempted to split lanes in the slipstream between them. We held our breath until we cleared the city limits, but did the rain let up? Hell no! We hit the worst of the rain as we rolled north through the Satan Slaves’ territory in the San Fernando Valley, finally reaching for the Conejo grade. Terrified, we slid down the side of the mountain in sloppy lanes and leveled out for the final 15 miles into town.

By now we were strung out on rain riding and just pushing for home. We knew that either one of us could go down in an instant, but there was some relief when we reached Ventura County. There was some shaky awareness that if we crashed we wouldn’t be run over by 200 careening cages. In the city, it would have meant sure death. As we got off the freeway and rolled into town, the sun was out, the sky as clear as an August day, and if we had seen a fellow rider he would have looked at us and laughed. There was no sign of rain as far as the eye could see. We simply shrugged at an intersection, gave each other the brotherhood fist, shared the blue sky together and rode home. It was another one for the books.