Issue:
July/August 2004

Text:
Robert Smith

Photography:
Robert Smith

Geographic Region:
OR, USA

Pages:
102 - 106

Visit the gallery for more pictures

 

"There's camping in Dufur, ten miles up the road," says Geoff. "I asked in the Safeway."

I'm thinking: Yeah, right. What does Safeway know about camping? But up the road we go. South from the Columbia, 197 climbs toward high plateau, and soon it's tolerably cool. A tiny farming town, Dufur, hoves into view across golden wheat fields.

We swing into a faded trailer park of plastic trellis works and kitschy garden ornaments, and a cheery sixty-something woman soon arrives to size us up in a Kawasaki golf cart.

"You'll be better off in the city park," she says. "I'll show you."

This is too bizarre. City Park? Four Norton Commandos trailing a golf cart through an Oregon hick town? But the park is a gem: lush grass, a pool, fire pits and picnic tables – for eight bucks a night! A tingling shower, sub sandwiches, a couple of Sierra Nevada ales, and all is right with the world.

British Columbia
The International Norton Owners Association awards an enameled pin to those riding a Norton 1,000 miles to their annual rally. But the 2003 rally in Lumby, BC is only 250 miles away. A group of us from Vancouver's British Motorcycle Owners Club decided we could easily qualify by going the long way round – via Polson, Montana – to collect a fellow Nortoneer, Maggie.

So five of us assembled at the Canada-US border, all on Commandos – except for a sheepish Dave, who, having grenaded his engine the week before, arrives on his Paris-Dakar R100GS.

Washington
Border interrogation completed, we cross into the US. Our route takes in the North Cascades Highway, a lazy snake sidling through the Skagit Valley, whipping over the 6,000-ft Washington Pass and just skimming the snowline. The vegetation changes from dense cedar and Douglas fir to straggly ponderosa pine up there where it becomes clear why Washington's coastal strip is the only justification for the name "Evergreen State."

We lunch in faux-western Winthrop – all boardwalks and livery stables – and head into desert proper. This is the Okanogan Valley, a subduction ripple in the North American plate that runs from Canada to Mexico. Here, the hot, dry winds blown up from Death Valley toast the lake-watered orchards and sear the nostrils.

From the Bavarian fantasy town of Leavenworth, an "alpine" village of cuckoo clocks and cowbells, we summit Blewett Pass into Ellensburg. At the KOA, we assess the day's mechanical issues in a blustery wind. Ian's bike is running way rich, so he opens the Commando's two Amal carbs and drops the needles one notch. Steve has a noisy valve, so we pull the rocker cover and find the clearance is way too wide. No one remembered feeler gauges, so we guesstimate the setting.

Next morning we hurtle along 821's extravagant sweepers through the Yakima River canyon. Then on to Mount Rainier, a perfect Fuji-esque volcano that jumps out at us – a veritable smack in the visual cortex – as we clear Chinook Pass.

The Cascades are really a string of volcanoes running from Canada to California. Next, south from Rainier, is the blasted remnant of Mount St. Helens. Vulcanologists anticipating steady lava flows were blindsided when half the mountain simply blew away in 1980, taking out 230 square miles of forest. Now, the bald, lopsided crater overlooks a bleak valley of flattened and stripped sun-bleached trunks.

Mount St. Helens' roads are glorious: new tarmac and sweet curves, and mercifully they're unpopular with motor-home drivers. Over 36 seemingly endless miles, the freshly paved two-laner swoops through the trees, and every bend a perfect radius. I push the handlebars ever closer to the deck, grinding the kickstand. Yeah, baby! Just three miles before Wind River, my engine splutters on its last fuel, and I spot a one-gas-pump store just in time.

When riding any distance on old bikes, paranoia is normal. I strain to hear imagined engine noises, feel for changes in vibration, and watch for leaks. Potential problems stalk my thoughts. Is that a small end bearing? Piston slap? A tappet about to disintegrate? No – just the sounds from the steel-mesh bridge deck as we cross the Columbia.

Oregon
After Dufur, northern Oregon is a treat. Though mostly rolling grassland, the terrain is sliced with ravines and chasms, while bluffs and buttes soar in stark relief. The buffalo roamed, and the deer and the antelope played here. Tiny communities, sometimes bland and often bizarre, dot the landscape. Maupin is a neat, colorful whitewater-rafting town nestled in the Deschutes Valley. The proto-ghost town Shaniko (pop. 25) has re-invented itself as a living museum: board-front stores, bank, post office – and a mobile jail! The road from Shaniko to Antelope amazes. It switchbacks through the John Day Fossil Beds and then careens wildly across open prairie.

We pull into tiny Ukiah for gas and Daniel Vincent of Dan's Ukiah Service supervises our fueling. Oregon law prohibits gassing your own vehicle. Ukiah's only two gas stations sit opposite each other. Dan's gas is 10 cents a gallon cheaper.

It's the second time in a year I've stopped in Dan's gas bar. Billboards angrily denouncing government overspending and bureaucracy are still in place; and Dan, not only unpopular with his roadside competition, is now in trouble with Oregon's environmental department for refusing to leak test his underground tanks.

We're rough camping at a beautiful forest site in Minam, Oregon, by the rushing Big Canyon Creek. Ian's speedometer has died and he's burned a liter of oil during the day. Steve finds gearbox oil contaminating his clutch, causing it to stick. Geoff's rear tire has worn right out, and he owns up that it's the original fitment – 28 years old!

Keith introduces himself. A keen outdoorsman, he's vacationing from his nuclear waste disposal job at Hanford in southern Washington. He insists on passing around his handgun. "The safety's on, but it's loaded," he says. I nervously hand it back.

Keith offers to catch dinner and grabs his rod. Twenty minutes later, he's back, but sans salmon, trout or minnow, so we share our fire-broiled steaks with him. The next morning, Keith swears he'll make good on an offer to land breakfast, but again returns empty handed. We share our sausages. I suspect a pattern is emerging...

We'd actually planned on having pancakes as well, but a morning-muddled Ian adds dishwashing liquid to the mix instead of cooking oil.

In crisp sunshine under an indigo sky, we cruise across the corn-gold Wallowa Valley toward Hell's Canyon. The road to the rim sweeps through the trees along winding terraces, rounding hairpins at each end, finishing with an impressive series of left-right-left repeat twists to the scenic overlook. Though 2,200 feet deeper than the Grand Canyon, Hell's Canyon lacks that site's spectacular overlook. Instead of sheer walls, the ground rolls away and the grandeur of the Snake River, 8,000 feet below, is hidden from view. We thunder down the narrow forest road into the canyon and the tiny town of Oxbow, engines throbbing hypnotically on the overrun.

Along the Brownlee Reservoir, the fresh, smooth tarmac ricochets round the steep cliffs that line the Snake's deep chasm. The blind twists that cling to each outcrop cause many heart-in-mouth moments as they whip tightly into each canyon, a sheer drop on the other side. We ramble out of the Canyon across open grassland to Cambridge, Idaho.

After our idyllic creek-side campsite in Minam, our next stopover, a run-down RV park in Kooskia, Idaho is the pits. The toilet's a porta-potty and the shower is a bare, unventilated plywood stall. Both Ian and Geoff desperately need rear tires, so next day we plan to cruise bike stores in Missoula, Montana. First, though, the Lolo Pass : "Winding Road Next 77 Miles."

Nineteen-inch rear motorcycle tires are scarce as hen's teeth, and none turn up in Missoula until Triumph dealer Mike Tingley drums up a couple of old-stock Dunlops. We fit these at our next stop, Maggie's lakefront home in Polson, Montana. From Polson, our route takes us over the Yaak Pass. The slender tarmac is pockmarked and frost heaved, and its tight turns include the odd patch of gravel to keep us awake. But from the summit, the forest spreads below like a green carpet.

We're soon having problems with Maggie's bike. It's smoking badly, burning oil and way more gas than it should, and the engine quits just as we roll into Moyie Springs, Idaho. We push the bike into the gas station and start our analysis. The mufflers are loose, but that's not the cause of the problems. The oil tank is empty and we add a liter of oil. "It was OK this morning," Maggie says. And it seems okay again when the bike restarts after a gas fill.

Back in BC at our campsite in Ainsworth Hot Springs, we spend the evening tinkering with Maggie's bike, but her troubles really come to a head the next day when the left carburetor falls off! A stud has gone missing and the nuts have unwound. We make a temporary repair with vise grips and limp into the rally. Maggie's bike is in a sorry state, oil-drenched and misfiring badly.

Fortunately, we have five days for repairs. Anheuser-Busch provides shims to snug up the mufflers, and the carbs are remounted and re-jetted, thanks to the parts vendors at the rally. Running, the bike at last is certifiably OK.

The rally itself is a wild success, drawing over 300 participants and more than 200 Nortons. I feel like an alcoholic in a liquor store, drunk on the sights, sounds and smells. I pass on the organized rides, and spend my time wandering around the campsite, chatting with riders from New York, Quebec, California, meeting old friends and making new ones. Too soon it's time to return to Vancouver, just 250 miles, an easy day's ride. Anyone ready for the long way round?

Maggie's Farm
I asked Maggie how she got into motorcycling. "I grew up on a farm," she replies, "and my brothers had dirt bikes."

But why Norton? "I had horses for years," she says. "I did all my own maintenance – tack repairs and so on. There's a pride of ownership in that. When the Norton is running properly, it's wonderful."

Maggie traded one of her brothers an R100RT for her '75 MkIII Roadster. The first time she rode it, a rocker feed line parted, soaking her in oil. "At least it happened in my driveway," she says.

The Bikes
When the Commando was launched in 1968, cynics sneered that only a British manufacturer would take a bike (the 750 Atlas) with an obsolete engine and a great frame (Norton's legendary "Featherbed"), then ditch the frame and keep the engine! Still, Britons voted the Commando "Motorcycle of the Year" five years running.

[Dr. Stefan Bauer conceived the Commando's vibration isolation system, though Bernard Hooper is credited with putting the 750cc Norton Atlas engine in Bauer's Isolastic frame. In the Commando, rubber buffers allow the powertrain to vibrate up-down and fore-aft, while lateral movement is controlled by shims. The Uniplanar system Erik Buell designed for his Harley-Davidson-engined sportbikes is conceptually identical, but rose-jointed transverse tie-rods replace the shims.]