Good Vibrations

by Tom Cunliffe

  Every so often we overtook a lady on her own bike. Some were riding ‘safe’, others making a statement for freedom by wearing next to nothing in the golden sunshine. Comparatively secure in her full-face helmet and leathers, I could see Roz peeking in disbelief at the black leather bikinis, minimalist buckskin jackets revealing cleavages with all-over tans and at least one set of the sexy, black, North American chaps with the open behind worn over nothing more than a G-string. One false move among the tight group she was riding with and the lady’s manicured bum would look like a field of burnt shell-holes. I could almost feel Roz shuddering. Such valkyries in control of their own destiny were, however, in the minority. Most of the fair sex trundling west were perched uncomfortably high up behind their men, the young ones with their feet so close under their behinds that they hung on only by splaying their bare legs in a manner only the simplest could misconstrue.

  Beyond the classic ‘strip’ of Rapid City, the smooth surface of Interstate 90 rose steadily for 30 miles to the Sturgis turn-off under a shoulder of the 7,000-foot Black Hills. It had been a long day from the luxury of our overnight refuge, but the last thing we wanted at the ‘Greatest Motorbike Show on Earth’ was a wholesome, family camping place. Zealously searching for action despite our fatigue, we scoured the outskirts of town for the forbidden venue.

  ‘Buffalo Chip?’ I asked the leader of a group of half-shaven road-burners drinking beer under a threadbare tree. He looked hard at me for a few seconds, dragged at his roll-up, then spat in the dust.

  ‘If you gotta ask, mister, you shouldn’t be goin’ there.’

  His cronies made ‘Mr Cool’ expressions and flexed their tattoos. I met their stare with a nonchalance I did not feel, nodded and opened my throttle.

  ‘Give it one more go,’ suggested Roz.

  Our next human road sign was leaning on a smart new custom model filling his trendy peanut tank with ‘Premium Unleaded’ and taking the sort of care with the hose that would normally be reserved for a nitric acid dispenser. With such a pitiful fuel capacity he’d never have made it across the Badlands, and he had no more clue about the forbidden campground than we did. He even fished a plan out of his pocket that indicated where a homeless biker could unroll his bedding. Still he shook his head.

  ‘Ain’t no Buffalo Chip on this map,’ he said, ‘but there’s a good place right here behind the pumps. They got showers, dancing, the lot.’

  And so, by chance, we pitched our tent beside a Dutch couple on a similar expedition to our own. Marek looked at home on his ‘Springer-nosed’ Harley with Death’s Head handlebar ornaments, leather vest and riding cap. Marlika rode pillion, but had reached a similar conclusion to Roz about motorcycling long distances in her underwear.

  ‘I think we should form a chapter of uncool bikers,’ she proposed in almost-unaccented English as we glugged a quick bottle of Wild Turkey to get in the mood. At 9.30 we marched across to the dance.

  The barn was full of atmosphere and the music vibrant, but nobody stood up from the trestle tables to bop around, no voice was raised either in wrath or delight and the booze was going warm on the shelves. We necked a few beers to be polite, then the band hit us with ‘Mony, Mony’ and Roz couldn’t take any more idleness. We hopped out on to the floor followed by the Dutch contingent, danced the number through and sat down again. People looked at us as though we hailed from Mars, so we gave that up and struggled to join in the table conversation over the sound of the redundant band. Perhaps not surprisingly, this proved to be 100 per cent Harley-Davidson. Nobody talked about threading the high passes out of Colorado in soft snow as Nell had, and no-one was gossiping about sex, drugs and demolition derbies. There were no ’Nam vets stretching out their pensions on the highway, just part-time bikers discussing ‘Screamin’ Eagle’ carburettor parts and chrome custom fittings. You expect people to voice their enthusiasms at such gatherings, and Marek and I had some interest in the subject, so we stuck with it for a quarter-hour. Then Marlika leaned across. A lovely girl even though she was covered up.

  ‘Roz and I are going back to the tents to drink the other bottle of whiskey,’ she announced to the assembled teetotallers. ‘I spent all day on the back of the bike and I don’t want to pass the night talking about the thing.’

  Marek glanced at me.

  ‘We’ll come along too,’ I responded quickly, relieved to be out of the tedium.

  Back at the Khyber Pass, Marek splashed scotch into his plastic Coke cup. As a transport driver who had fired himself to make the trip to America, he was an expert.

  ‘They have trains full of motorbikes coming from all over America to nearby towns,’ he announced solemnly. ‘And there’s trucks galore. There’s still a few who really ride out here. You’ve met some, so have we, but folks like us are a minority. These are mainly middle-class people. Most of them don’t have the time to do it right. They have to get back to their jobs. There are a few reformed ravers, but even those guys are middle-aged with kids now. The wild times are done.’

  As he spoke, a gust of cold air swept through the tents from the lowering bulk of the Black Hills. Within a minute, a katabatic wind off the mountains had risen to near gale force and tents were blowing away. I ripped open my saddlebag and fished out my sailor’s coil of line to fashion a storm guy. Marek was contriving a similar lash-up for his own outfit as a flock of ‘superlite’ igloo motorbike tents somersaulted like tumbleweed in the moonlight. Bikers in various stages of undress scattered in disarray across the dusty campground like infantry in rout before an avenging Chief Touch the Clouds. The flimsy shelters wrapped themselves around trees, pick-ups and motorcycles. One shot clear away past the well-lit toilet block and out the gate, pursued by a hobbling shadow in a forage cap, pulling up its pants with one hand. For an hour or more, chaos was king until the storm died as suddenly as it had risen, tattered tents were re-established, and all was peace except for the constant drone of unsilenced V-twins that continued day and night.

  ‘I think that’s the most action we’re going to see here,’ predicted Marlika, and she was right.

  The morning after the tent-storm, we mounted up to hunt for some of the people we’d met along the road. Having failed miserably to locate Buffalo Chip, we fared no better searching for Bear Bluff with Red’s campsite under the cliff. Hoping for better luck with Nell, Steve and the rest we filtered into the mob of rumbling, roaring bikes cruising into town.

  Here, the crush was drastic. The broad, Wild West main street of Sturgis is designed for a winter population of around 5,000. Now it was home to what was effectively a nation of bikers.

  ‘There’s something like 200,000 machines here,’ I overheard one long-haired knight of the road tell his companion.

  ‘Someone else just said that,’ observed Roz, sotto voce, ‘but it must mean the number of extra people here, including all the hangers-on. If it was bikes, that would mean half a million humans, and there certainly aren’t that many. There’s an awful lot, though…’ she tailed off as an even denser mass of approaching metal deafened us. The street was virtually impassable as we struggled to wrestle Madonna into a parking space. Two hundred thousand or not, the effect was monstrous as bikes and owners strutted their stuff in the blazing sunshine.

  Phenomenally executed tank art abounded. Paintings of Indian chiefs heroically greeting the sunrise shouldered up to neighbouring bikes where half-naked babes reclined in the inviting poses normally reserved for the noses of World War Two American bombers. Bikes with buffalo horns instead of handlebars crushed against sidecar outfits that seemed to contain all the owner’s worldly goods, right down to the dog, all kitted out in scarf and goggles. Side panels painted with liquid fire competed for attention with tanks bearing the US flag with a dagger or machine gun and motifs such as, ‘Free Spirit’, or, ‘Live whole and die free’. Vast trucks with their diesels idling to keep a cool cab were parked immediately off Main. Superheated gases from gleaming exhausts distorted billboard sides decorated with ghos
t horsemen, buffalo herds and biker cowboys that would have outfaced the most cynical of art critics.

  Towards lunchtime, the strip became so crowded that it was virtually impossible to ride down it, let alone make a pass at its length in a motor car. The only tourist we saw trying was lost without trace. We refreshed ourselves in every bar, elbowing alongside the posers, the enthusiasts and the occasional genuine hooligan, but we never found our friends.

  ‘I’ll bet you they’ve all vanished into the same legend as the gang warfare and the mob sex,’ I said to Marek, who had also failed to find a Canadian he was hoping to run into. In a final effort to dig out some deep-down human colour, the four of us jostled into town on our last night to try our luck in the once-infamous Broken Spoke Saloon.

  We jammed the bikes into the side parking lot soon after midnight and shouldered our way to the bar through massed, uniformed motorcyclists sipping small beers. Another great band was blasting away for all it was worth along the only solid wall. The other three sides of the huge room were open to above head height, allowing drinkers to wander in and out more or less at will, while affording those inside an uninterrupted view of the world’s most spectacular motorcycle parking lot. Interesting bikes were suspended from the upper walls, mostly Harley-Davidsons, but one ‘Indian’ graced the scene with its 1930s styling. I was pleased to note a British Norton and, of all things, a Matchless, a lifetime away from the Mersey Tunnel. Amongst the metal were charts of North America covered in markers indicating sites on prairie, mountain, desert or in towns where ‘fallen brothers’ had met their violent ends.

  Marek stumped up almost as much for a round of drinks as Roz and I had recently paid for a full night’s lodgings, and we squashed into a square yard of floor space. The bodies were so densely packed that taking in an overall impression was impossible, but it was safe to say that although fashions in here were even more racy than on the road, the action was slower than the last bike at an Angel’s funeral. Shapely women accompanied some of the boys, as usual wearing imaginatively revealing variations on the traditional biker gear. Two close by had opened their jerkins to reveal breasts straight from a tabloid newspaper, but despite the provocation, none of the brave lads were fondling them.

  ‘Keep your eyes down, boys,’ Marlika had spotted Marek and I shaping up. ‘If you so much as tweak a nipple, you’ll be sued for sexual harassment. You’re not in Amsterdam now!’

  At the bar, a couple of aggressively unattached girls were either searching for love or touting for custom. One, a tall woman whose face revealed her to be around forty, still had a figure like Miss America. Clothed modestly in a halter top and tight jeans, her roving eye brimmed with promise. Her blonde chum was shorter but more than made up for her lack of stature in all other departments. Her cowboy hat set off a ‘come-on-boys’ grin and her faded jeans were so tattered they were literally falling off her tanned bum. As we drank our cloudy beers, we watched several guys plucking up courage to tackle this pair, but after an hour there was no sign of close contact. Nobody danced, although the drummer of the band had clearly been sent by God; nobody was shot, although it seemed more than likely that a number of those present would be armed, and if there was any casual sex going on, it was in the cosy privacy of some RV.

  ‘I don’t know why Americans can’t let themselves go properly,’ said Marlika suddenly. ‘It’s bloody frustrating. Look at this scene. It’s the best in the world. But where’s the action?’

  ‘I’ve known plenty from this side of the ocean who could walk on the ceiling after a few pints,’ I argued, although really I was right behind her.

  ‘They’re all in your memory,’ Roz put in. ‘We knew some lunatics in the old days, but the puritans seem to be winning now.’

  ‘They certainly know how to set a scene though,’ Marek growled, ‘and look at this waste of talent.’

  He had hit the spot with his last remark. All the rest was idle talk. Like him, I’d been trying not to think about the possibilities of this bar for a single man who knew what he wanted. In the end, our wives took pity on us and we were led away, seething with frustration. Muscling back to the bikes, we dragged them out of the tangle of ironmongery and the four of us roared off into the night.

  On a whim, without even discussing a plan, we steered into the Black Hills, gaining altitude all the way. We clattered through the gold-rush town of Deadwood, where Wild Bill Hickok was gunned down from behind as he played poker in Saloon Number Ten, on through the active mining community of Lead, tucked deep into its system of conjoining valleys, and made a further 10 miles towards the Wyoming Line, then stopped in total darkness.

  For the first time in four days, the only motorcycle noise was that of our own machines cooling off as we split a full hip flask of Bourbon. It was cold in the still night, and fresh with the scent of the pine trees. We shrugged down inside our gear, huddling together for warmth. Suddenly, the eerie howl of a timber wolf rang out around the mountainside above us. A second took up the refrain, with more joining in until the hills were echoing with the ancient cadences. My spine shivered as the supernatural sound rose and fell under the circling stars. For a while, I tried to gauge whether the pack was heading our way, but soon I realised that these secret inhabitants of the sacred mountains were going about their prehistoric business with less interest in me than I had in a rabbit back in the Badlands. Left undisturbed, their descendants would be wailing their melancholy song long after both me and all the motorbikes in the world were dead and rotten.

  16

  THE GREAT DIVIDE

  AND THE DEEP

  GREEN REDWOODS

  A moment arrives about half-way through a month-long ocean sailing passage when the mariner stops looking back to the previous existence before departure, and starts considering the possibilities of the destination. This is an emotional effect over which a sailor has no control. Coming on watch, he settles to the helm and chooses his steering star, only to find himself thinking about what he will order when he hits the first restaurant on the new continent, or what mountain he will climb. At the same time, the troubles and joys of his past life begin to fade into history. Then he knows the procession of days is working on his soul. Traversing Wyoming and on up through Montana, Roz and I experienced the same phenomenon. We recognised the signs, asking each other whether pioneers and settlers lurching down the Oregon Trail had had a similar impression.

  Mountains almost the whole length of both Americas lay across our path and the country was opening up into views that seemed to encompass half the planet. California and the West Coast were still 1,000 miles away, yet we had come so far that, quite unexpectedly, our initial destination felt within reach. For me at least, the succeeding days continued to deliver meaning enough by virtue of the road flashing below my boots, but the journey had adjusted my mindset and I realised that, like the stormy sea passages that had preceded it, it would leave its marks on me.

  Perhaps it was significant that this powerful response coincided with our arrival at the Little Bighorn, the site of the confrontation between Custer and the Sioux. That crucial encounter was the inevitable conclusion of the increasing scale of mining activities in the Black Hills, which the US government had guaranteed would remain undisturbed forever. Repeated betrayals, broken promises and the sickeningly predictable shooting down of women and children finally left those Indians who had rejected the reservations with no effective choice. In large numbers they came upon Custer’s troops. Under the wide skies of Montana, inflamed with impotent injustice, they showed the man who had opened up the ‘Thieves’ Road’ into the Black Hills what they were capable of. The aftermath of this humiliating annihilation of the white man was one of systematic revenge upon the Indians, culminating in the Wounded Knee massacre.

  Despite their effective combat credentials, the Sioux and their allies the Cheyenne proved as powerless to stop the European expansion into even a small part of the West as had any other Native American. One of history’s great exp
ansions was in full marching order, backed by a well-organised political and military system. The Indians never stood a chance.

  As we breasted the rising prairie, Big Horn County was as impressive as its name, with huge panoramas of undulating hills covered with waving grass and dotted with bushes of darker green. The sun shone from a cloudless sky and tourists flocked to a visitor centre occupying a stretch of ground that would have brought delight to a buffalo in search of a fruitful afternoon. Under a large sun awning on the putative site of the General’s last stand, a bus-load of these good folk were receiving the word about Custer over the tannoy. Signs pressed us to go the same way, but we ignored them and strolled across to where rows of immaculate headstones marked the graves of the fallen. These appeared to be white men only but, in fairness, it may be that the Indians disposed of the bodies of their own dead elsewhere.

  Walking the battlefield was forbidden, but a minibus offered tours. Cutting our losses, we returned to the bikes instead, thinking how much better the Sioux had managed their memorial at Wounded Knee. Next, we sidestepped the gift shop and made 5 miles across the otherwise deserted prairie. The only sounds to break into the rushing whisper of the breeze were occasional shouts from a distant cowboy working a small herd of cattle. Only the ever-circling birds were as they must always have been.