Ignorance is Bliss on the 33rd Annual Range of Light Gypsy Tour
(Originally Published in On the Level, the magazine of the BMW Riders Association.)
Imagine the scene: a couple hundred mostly old codgers on BMW motorcycles gather in a random campground in Northern California, sleep in the dirt, drink beer (but only at night), and traverse vast stretches of the state (and beyond) for three days.
But here’s the kicker: no one knows where the next day’s ride will go until they arrive at camp each night. By the next evening you could be playing the slots in Reno, toasting marshmallows around a campfire in Yosemite…or spending the night in jail in Jamestown. You couldn’t tell your spouse where you were going even if you wanted to—or if they wanted to know (which mine doesn’t).
Welcome to the wonderfully named Range of Light Gypsy Tour, put on by the BMW Club of Northern California. It’s where your secrets are safe—just like the route.
Range of Lies
Each night, after riding up to 300 miles, people are busy ministering to flat tires, analyzing electrical gremlins, and laboring (often in vain) to get the day’s carefully crafted GPX files to miraculously appear on their GPS units. One K bike is propped up using a freshly cut log shoved under the belly pan, with the front wheel laying in the dirt. Another rider is stuffing “pieces of bacon” (tire repair strips) into a hole where a roofing nail used to be. Those without mechanical problems wait anxiously in the beer line ready to change the course of their thinking with something volatile and aromatic from a bottle. (Day drinking is prohibited by club rules.) Liberal application of these liquids results, predictably, in a fusillade of half-truths about things such as:
- Top speed achieved during the day.
- Number of miraculous recoveries from “lurid power slides.”
- How many times they were propositioned by members of the opposite sex. (Really? In Honeydew, California, population 400? I doubt it.)
- The number of times they “shredded the very edge of the tire” (despite that fact that the profile of the tire in question is a near-perfect square from riding thousands of miles in a bolt upright position).
One grizzled veteran proudly informs me that he is riding his 40th ROL, despite the fact that the event is celebrating its 33rd anniversary. As a group, our strong point has never been mathematics.
Because the campground is awash in such prevarication, it doesn’t matter. At some level, we’re all here to assume different identities from those we wear during the normal workweek. The good news is that it’s easy to amble up to anyone and enjoy the idle chatter: things like tire pressure, mileage, and the species of mouse recently found nesting in their airboxes. But perhaps the most heated topic involves the twin blasphemies recently levied by the mothership in Munich: BMW will no longer offer factory service manuals, and most dealers won’t work on bikes older than 10 years. Crimes against humanity! the group intones in unison.
This is life among the brethren, filled, as life itself, with passion, prejudices, great truths, near truths, and outright falsehoods. Claims of speed records broken, police evaded, and midnight romantic rendezvous. Some of these things are even true. And what if they aren’t? This is camp, where truth is relative and myriad transgressions are forgiven. Heck, they even let me in.
New Tech, Old Tech
The entire affair is a Teutonic immersion: new BMWs (four 1300s!), old BMWs (an R65 , multiple R75s, and an old “Bumblebee” GS), and enough wetheads to outfit the Los Angeles Police Department. For me, part of the pleasure is doing a lap (or six) of the campground on foot, just looking at the range of bikes and their accoutrements. After three nights, I’ve done so many of these circuits that almost every bike is committed to memory. (“Did you see the vintage GS with original white and blue paint?” Yup. Sure did. Three times.)
Because my riding buddy Mark and I are cheap and generally buy used motorcycles, thoughts immediately turn to the dollar value represented by all these recent-model BMWs. If we assign an average value of $15K to each one (probably low), plus Aerostich and Klim gear, helmets, tents, fault code readers, tool kits, and bottles of whiskey, multiplied by 200 participants, fuzzy math comes up with a sum north of $5 million. “If Germany had that much in WW II they would have taken Poland in a day,” says one observer. None of us are sure that’s true, but it sounds right.
It’s not required that you ride a BMW, but it’s suggested, in much the same way that the IRS suggests you pay your taxes. Nonetheless, one stout soul does the whole thing on a recent-model Honda Monkey, which looks fantastically fun to ride around the campground, and absolute murder to ride 300 miles. (I restored and own a 1969 Honda Z50, so I speak with authority here.)
My own bike, a 2016 BMW R1200 GS, gets a look at many motorcycle gatherings, but here, it’s as common as bug splatter. No one even notices it. I briefly considered doing it on my 1978 R100/7, if only to be less boring than I already am, but decided that for a ride of this distance, modernity was the way to go. With cruise control.
I can’t seem to quit BMW, as much as I might want to. Just when I’m getting ready to jettison the marque for the 20th time (expense, warranty issues, staid reputation), I realize, with a sense of resignation, that I’ve been sucked back into our little cabal. Whenever I get the urge to ride something cool, wear black leather, and eschew electronic gadgetry, a little voice intones: But what if you need to stop in the rain? Or you want cruise control? And just like that, I’m back to dressing like a highway worker, lit up like a Christmas tree, with my gear in fancy hard cases, and carrying a fault code reader, with five different audio sources piped into my Bluetooth headset. Once a geek, always a geek, I guess.
The Best Place to Get Lost: The Lost Coast
Mornings are damp, making the grim procession to the coffee urn even more somber. Some riders depart pre-dawn, their exhaust notes causing a gentle stirring in a couple hundred sleeping bags. Most bikes are BMW-quiet, though the occasional Akropovic issues a wake-up call to the late sleepers. Once a cup has been consumed, faces brighten, and the conversation turns to a discussion of the day’s roads, potential gas stops (we were often in the middle of nowhere), and where the good taco stands are.
There’s a remarkable transition from the dry, hot Sierra foothills to the coastal Redwoods: a total temperature difference of 50 degrees Fahrenheit, requiring everything from mesh gear and a hydration system, to a full rainsuit, glove covers, and fleece layers.
On the last day, to my great joy, I discover that we’re heading to the Lost Coast (west of Garberville), an area I’ve explored numerous times on motorcycle, bicycle, and foot. It includes a lonely stretch of coastal highway adjacent to a black sand beach. I’ve been on many group tours, but this is a truly beautiful sight: a string of 50 riders, snaking their way down a switchback road to a piece of coastal roadway that most will never see.
All told, including transfers from my Santa Cruz home, the ride tallies just under 1,200 miles. It’s an experience that confirms the lasting value of finding your tribe and proves that a single obsession—BMW motorcycles—can transcend differences in age, ability…and body odor.