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Men and the Art of
Motorcycle Maintenance
Out on the road with the Border Riders
by Guy Babineau

It’s Friday morning and things are pretty rough as we head into the 
mountains on the eastbound I90 connecting Seattle to Spokane and other 
points along the northern fringe of America. It may be mid-May but man-
oh-man it’s cold! Who invented altitude anyhow?
	I’m straddling the rear end of a motorcycle, accompanying the 
Border Riders on their first run of the year. Every Victoria Day weekend 
members of the 29-year-old gay men’s biker club gather from B.C., 
Washington and Oregon to kickstart the new season with a get-together at 
a campsite in central Washington. Non-members—friends, lovers and 
bike-curious men—are invited to participate.
	In contrast to the plummeting temperature, excitement mounts 
along with the elevation, adrenalin pumping as hard and fast as the gas 
powering the Suzuki Virago I’m riding. The Emerald City is far behind as 
we ascend the highway’s snaky progress through the still-snow-covered 
peaks of the Cascades. Floral aromas have been replaced by the olfactory 
equivalent of licking frozen metal. The coastal mildness has done a 
sleight-of-hand switcheroo; now it’s a wind that cuts like a psychopath’s 
razor, slamming at 70mph. Rain, mist, pellets, wet snow. My Michelin 
Man layers of biker gear seem to be doing the trick though. I may look like 
Robocop but I’m flying like Tinkerbell. 
	 Our formation of three motorcycles, one car and a truck crammed 
with camping supplies passes a flatbed loaded with timber. The Lynch 
mob would drool over the Twin Peaksian vista. Mountaintops are 
shrouded in swirls of icy vapour, milky columns of weak sunlight 
radiating outward from patches where the cloud cover thins. Grim and 
monkish, tall dark fir trees huddle sternly by the roadside. The wind is a 
rocket roar necessitating earplugs, even with a helmet on.
	My driver is Vancouver’s Randy Harris, the Border Riders’ current 
President. He’s good. Not a lurch, not a swerve, no abrupt shifts of 
acceleration. No hysterical sissy screams (I’m talking about me here.) He 
pats me on the knee to acknowledge how well I’m doing. Apparently I’m a 
really good buddy rider, or ‘travel bottom’ as someone joked while I was 
suiting up prior to our departure. 
	At Snoqalmie Pass, approximately our halfway point, we motor by 
a Swiss Miss jumble of A-frames and chalets then begin our descent. The 
sunshine feels like a warm bath after our joyride through a Frigidaire. The 
smell of the air changes too. It’s developed a nutty, earthy essence. When 
did riding along the highway in a car ever give me aromatherapy? Then I 
get it. I was a motorcycle virgin. Now I’ve been initiated. Remove the 
chassis of an automobile and it’s like having cataracts peeled away and 
suddenly finding yourself not blind. Scent, sound and sight are liberated. 
Riding a motorcycle is—literally not figuratively—sensational. 
	It’s time to pee, eat and gas up. Our squadron’s road captain, Tom 
Curley from Seattle, signals us to turn off into a nondescript truck stop. 
From every booth, eyes slant in our direction as we amble into the cafe. 
I’m head-to-toe in leather for the first time in my life. So why not dish out 
some road warrior attitude? I Mel Gibson it to our table, the hint of a 
swashbuckle smirk on my face.  
	“You guys want some coffee to wash down them bugs you’ve been 
eating,” our affable waitress jokes flirtatiously.
	She has no way of knowing, of course. The Border Riders insignia 
emblazoned on members’ jackets features two triangles; one the Canadian 
maple leaf, one the stars and stripes. To a truckstop hash-slinger in the 
centre of the Evergreen State this would signify nothing more or less than 
international fraternity, which is partly true. But I wonder...does she know 
what the rainbow decal on the back of Randy’s helmet means? We open 
up our menus and have a good laugh over the name of the joint we’re in.
	It’s called The Buttercup.

“As far as I know Border Riders is the only official international 
Canada/U.S. motorcycle club specifically for gay men,” says Harris, a 
pleasant, soft-spoken man who runs his own groundskeeping and 
maintenance company.
	Border Riders was formed in 1969 by a group of guys who traveled 
back and forth between the bars of Portland, Seattle and Vancouver. Some 
current members bluntly say it was mainly a sex thing. That’s no surprise. 
It was the tenure of the times. One thing’s for certain, the original club had 
little to do with the times’ burgeoning gay liberation movement. The 
Border Riders weren’t into lobbying for civil liberties, and actually 
shunned community involvement for fear that members would be outed 
and lose their jobs. Things have changed since then; much. Nowadays the 
fifty-plus members of the Border Riders make a point of showing up to 
support key queer community events.
	Members pay annual dues, elect a cross-border executive each 
year, publish a newsletter, host a Web site and participate in an impressive 
variety of motorcycle tours and social activities. Road safety is a club 
mantra and despite the party-hearty biker cliché, driving under the 
influence is admonished. You won’t find too many Miss Messes among 
the Border Riders. Rather, this tightly knit crew’s so friendly it’s like being 
at a rather butch Miss Congeniality convention where the only thing rude 
is an outsiders’ presuppositions.
	After all, mention gay male bikers and who doesn’t (come on, 
admit it) briefly conjure up hackneyed stereotypes; brutish bears and 
buxom bad boys doing what comes naturally—leather creaking and 
buckles clanking—to a neverending tape loop of Macho Macho Man. Tom 
of Finland aside, all bikers, straight, gay or middling, are to some extent 
pigeonholed by anti-status quo representation in mainstream culture; The 
Wild One, Easy Rider, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the 
Hell’s Angels. Antisocial rebels? Outlaws? Cosmologists? Thugs? Sure, 
perhaps some bikers are one or all of these things. But for most it’s not a 
lifestyle, it’s a sport, one celebrating freedom, the outdoors, skill and good 
fellowship, maintained by rules, protocol and respect. And it’s expensive. 
Taoist principles are lovely, but you can’t really be completely one with 
the universe with thousands of dollars worth of 20th century technology 
under your butt.
	You can, however, appreciate the universe in a special way, and it 
is the passion do so that bonds the Border Riders, whose healthy group 
dynamic boasts an inclusive diversity of ages, backgrounds, occupations 
and politics (sexual or otherwise). And fashion smarts.

A couple of hours post-Buttercup we rumble into our campsite in the 
Wenatchee National Forest, a tiny dale surrounded by steep, rocky, tree-
specked hills. Grass and wildflowers spread out under the pines beside a 
whitewater creek.
	After pitching my pup tent, I stand by attempting to look helpful 
while several men futz about with the kitchen tent tarpaulin. A tall, 
masculine-looking bruiser steps over and bends to whisper in my ear. 
“Remember,” he says, “for the rest of the weekend your name is Barbara, 
from Redbook.” He’s referring to the journalist who witnesses an ugly 
catfight between Joan and Christina Crawford in Mommy Dearest.
	This is my tribe all right.
	Evening descends. Twinkle lights sparkle along the top of the 
kitchen tent. Beyond dozens of Harleys, BMWs, Suzukis and Hondas, the 
flags of Canada, the U.S., Oregon, Washington and British Columbia flap 
in the twilight. Over sixty men ranging in age from twenty-something to 
seventy-something cozy up to a huge, crackling fire, caught up in 
overlapping, spirited conversations. We look like we could be a bunch of 
guys in a beer commercial except for two things. One, Vicky the lesbian 
from Spokane. Two, everyone’s wearing a purse. 
	After supper the fist night of camp, it’s a tradition to give out gifts. 
Last year it was a t-shirt. This year it’s a smart clutchbag from Goodwill, 
filled with a handy, portable Border Riders toolkit. 
	“Brotherhood is the main emphasis of the Border Riders,” says ex-
President Ron Lowe, a snappy blue leatherette carry-all hanging tastefully 
from the shoulder of his biker jacket. The articulate, fortyish Seattle 
computer trainer is credited with reviving the club a few years ago when 
membership was rapidly declining due to illness and ennui.  “Each 
member  makes a difference. It’s the spirit of everyone involved that 
counts.”
	I’m not much of a group joiner. I find I spend most of my time 
ducking for cover to avoid  boomeranging shoulder chips, especially in 
associations of gay men. The Border Riders are an inspiration. They’ve 
managed to pull off quite the balancing act, probably because motorbiking 
is a sport based on staying centred despite the push and pull of centrifugal 
force or too much wind.
	Sometimes, though, the balance is thrown off-kilter.
	Last year, U.S. Customs stopped and searched member Bill 
Houghton (likely ticked off by his looks). When they discovered his HIV 
medication, they denied him entry into the U.S. Forever. 
		

On Saturday we break up into small groups for day runs. Our team heads 
up-valley. I’m perched behind Tom Curley on his road-hugging BMW. 
Curley, a computer cartographer for a Coast Salish tribe near Seattle, zig-
zags us past dusty green sagebrush, pinkish brown outcroppings of rock, 
rugged peaks surrounding small farms and apple orchards, prefab 
homesteads with corrugated iron roofs, the skeletal remains of cars and 
trucks, satellite dishes. On a series of slopes, charred matchsticks poke 
from the soil, remnants of a forest fire. Existence is hand-to-mouth here in 
God’s country.
	The surroundings seem an apt metaphor for the Border Riders’ 
renaissance. The nature of adversity is also the nature of growth, gracefully 
and purposefully moving beyond whatever arbitrary boundaries humanity 
devises. In the end, nature sets the limits, not legislation. Motorcycling can 
be the poetic exploration of this inevitability.
	Take our small group’s road captain for example. Charles D. Hills, 
known simply as Dee, has a constant mischievous twinkle in his eyes. Dee, 
68, has six kids and seven grandchildren. A retired Seattle contractor, he 
came out fourteen years ago. HIV positive, he fancies himself  a self-styled 
“opinionated sonofabitch and poster-boy for AIDS” whose message is 
“let’s let people know that family gives a shit.” He’s been riding 
motorcycles since 1947. Last year Dee rode his cycle up to Fairbanks, 
Alaska to visit a daughter, then went on to the Arctic Circle by himself just 
to say he’d done it. 
	

On Saturday evening comes the biggest surprise of the weekend, a visit 
from Queen Victoria. With much fanfare, and above the laughter, she 
delivers tokens of her affection and spicy ripostes to the assembled bikers.
	Afterwards, it’s time to christen all the new motorcycles. About 
twenty line up in a row, headlights glaring, engines revving, as everyone 
sings the two national anthems. Queen Victoria moves from bike to bike, 
bestowing upon each a royal baptism with her tinsel sceptre, which she 
dips into a big plastic bucket of water.
	Later, as I lie snug in my sleeping bag, I can’t help but worry about 
how the future might affect the Border Riders. New drug regimens have 
extended the lives of  several members who are HIV positive, enabling 
them to participate fully in all Border Riders events.. Any inconsistency in 
timing or dosage compromises the drugs’ efficacy. This makes the 
American HIV border law a real threat, as do new initiatives now on the 
table to further limit access into the U.S. by any non-citizen. But maybe I 
shouldn’t fret. The Border Riders already know how to break through 
barriers.
	They’ll find a way to ride it out, and when they do I’ll be riding 
with them.

Originally published in Xtra West

© Guy Babineau 2003-2004

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