75th Annual Bonneville Speed Week

August 2023

I imagined it was the earth rolling beneath our footpegs while we stood still in space. We twisted our throttles and the city of Bend, Oregon streaked towards us. In a rush with little effort on my part; just like this trip. My friends Josh and Kyle wanted to do a late summer ride to the Grand Canyon. I put it on my calendar, only to find out a week before that I’d been given the wrong dates. We’d actually be leaving in less than 24 hours. I cancelled my meetings and emailed my boss. Then furiously pulled the windscreen off my enduro bike and drilled it onto the bikini faring of my 1200 Sportster.

The trip was all Harley Davidsons. No radiators, no metric, no precision engineering, and no sensible design choices. As the two youngest guys in the group, Josh and Kyle brought the energy and kept it loose on detail. Henry firmed up the route on his phone the night before. I had so much else going on that it was all I could do to pack my bag and change my motor oil. I ended my last work call with their bikes idling outside my house.

We rode southeast from Seattle over Chinook Pass between the arms of Mt. Rainier. We brought 3 Sportsters and Henry’s Street Glide. Only two of the bikes had windscreens and mine was installed in a panic the night before. Kyle had his sleeping roll strapped to the handlebar risers. We turned south on Highway 97 and crossed the Columbia where Tyler met us. Tyler lives in Portland and rides a 1991 mint and chrome Sportster. His bike is the clean and classic counterpoint to Henry and mine’s club bikes and Josh and Kyle’s rat rods.

Instead of riding into Bend, we pulled off at Prineville and rode into a neon green ribbon of grass wound between the purple walls of the Crooked River Canyon. We reached the campground at sunset, grateful it was deserted on a Monday evening. We all brought our own interpretation what a biker trip should be, and unanimously agreed it should involve a large bag of mushrooms. For me it was a way to make a perfect night last night last longer. The Milky Way looked like neural network until the moon rose above the canyon wall. I fell multiple times getting into my hammock. It could have been the Coors Banquets or the stars. Moments after closing my eyes, I woke up to Kyle shouting. He claimed to be under attack by skunks. I thought it was a joke until I saw them run off with their tails raised. Josh laughed and told Kyle let the skunks finish. After two more outbursts about scorpions under his bed and otters in the river, we finally dozed off. The deserted campground reinforced my belief that America is mostly empty.

In the morning, I took my coffee in the bottom half of a beer can and we set off again. We picked our way through gravel roads across Eastern Oregon’s grazing lands. Every few minutes, the dust of a government truck blotted out the sun and everything in every direction. I remembered the boys were behind me with open face helmets. Fortunately they’d put bandanas over their mouths. At the highway again, we split the gas can Josh had ratchet strapped to his homemade sissy bar. The south eastern corner of Oregon runs over the hills and down into French Glen. The landscape was a canvass for the shadows of clouds. We had America all to ourselves and didn’t pass a soul for 30 minutes at a time. I can see how Republicans get intoxicated by the freedom of big spaces. We passed the site of a three week armed standoff with the FBI at Malheur Wildlife Refuge. A man was killed over the right to graze cattle. We stopped to see the refuge and decide for ourselves if it was worth fighting over. It was nice. Fuck Cliven Bundy for trying to graze his cattle on it.

I get 66 miles on two gallons of gas in the city. On the Highway I hit 100 miles and didn’t even trigger my light. We crowded around the non-ethanol premium pump at the next archery-shop-and-gas station. We were disappointed Kyle wouldn’t let us pick the gas station hat to replace the one he left on the road. A few miles from the Utah border Josh came up from behind with a beer can. I saw the wisdom of open faced helmets as he sipped into the distance. He swung in front of me and passed the beer to kyle. Without hesitation Kyle tipped back his chin piece and killed it in a single, quarter mile pull.

We crossed into Utah at Windover. Below us was a sea of brilliant white salt flats. The town is not shy about having painted targets on them for WWII bomber crews. Any craters have long since filled in. We found camping on the map at a spot called “Lost Boys”. We weren’t sure what to make of it but headed towards the marker. We passed the camper vans in the pullouts and saw the gravel road led up into the hills and devolved into a 4X4 track. We pushed deeper. Food and water bounced off our bikes. Bundles of firewood clung to Henry’s rear fender. We paused where the gravel devolved into grass and scrub. A trail led into the middle of the bowl shaped plateau. We weren’t sure if it would lead to anything. Kyle went first. We watched his dust cloud until he disappeared behind a large, lonely boulder. When he didn’t reappear, I went next to check on him. I found Kyle on the other side of the rock beside a blackened stone fire ring. A stone overhang sheltered the rock’s leeward side and framed a 50 ft gravel pad. It was perfect. Three angular peaks bordered to the south, west, and north. The salt flat lay open to the east between two lower cone shaped hills. Tyler, Henry, and Josh’s dust clouds were already winding through the sagebrush to our island.

We took our first fistful of mushrooms under a sherbet shy. Josh got out a .22 rifle he had folded in his duffel. We were shooting beer cans from our corral of bikes when a gust of wind blew away our targets. A bold of lightning shot across the sky. Within minutes the storm came from the west and was tearing apart our camp. Lightning strikes hit the peak above us. Without any time left to take them down, Tyler and Kyle scrambled into their tents and used their bodies as ballast. Henry and I pulled sleeping bags and bivvy sacks beneath the rock shelter. Josh came running with just a blanket. In the eddy of calm air behind the rock we were completely dry with Henry’s cot for a couch. The rain beat against the rock at our backs for an hour while we passed around a bottle of Fireball. At 10PM the wind ceased. The stars popped and moments later the desert was dry. In another 20 minutes, the boys were on their second in helping of the mushrooms.

There’s no actual gate for Bonnevile Speedway. A boat ramp leads down onto the flat where the pavement ends. We were there to see Speed Week, an annual gathering of the fastest machines in the world. The event is somewhere between a festival and competition. The “racers” run Bonneville’s 16 mile dead flat stretch of nothingness one at a time. Josh couldn’t wait when we broke camp and pulled onto the rutted, bumpy service road before we even reached the flat. He didn’t care that it was grey with mud. We paced him at 60mph from the pavement until we reached the flooding at the low, southern end of the flats.

A series of rare desert storms, including last night’s, turned the access road into a true boat ramp. Ten inches of water covered the flats for a half mile around us. We had to cross it to reach the start line. Another rider on a cafe-racer style Triumph motorcycle said he’d been out in the salt all week. He asked us to call him Tank and said he was on a cross country solo ride. His riding pants were shredded and he had over 100k on his odometer. He reassured us that we could cross and promised to lead us across the brine. It’s bad to submerge your bike in water. Very bad to expose it to saltwater. And stupid to go anywhere near brine. The effect on our bikes was instantaneous. The salt caked our exhaust and cooling fins. Our brakes were unusable. Every splash evaporated and deposited another layer of salt. The crust was an inch thick in the mile it took us to reach the starting line.

Gleaming speed machines staged at the starting line in every shape and size. The secret of land speed records, we learned, is that there are enough classes to guarantee you’ll set one. Speed freaks push the art into every corner of racing. The funny thing is that machines are so specialized for going straight and hauling ass, they can barely move unassisted at low speeds. Everything has been pruned to maximize speed, including acceleration. Most of the cars and even some of the bikes needed a push truck to get going before their sky high gearing ratios kick in. They have 16 miles to reach their top speed.

Our goal might have been to witness a land speed record, but the conditions had other plans. The course was only marginally drier than the flooded end of the track. The salt was the consistency of spring snow. Far softer than the bone white pavement that sets records. To make things more frustrating for drivers, their slick racing tires couldn’t hook up on the soft salt. They slid side to side and shot rooster tails into the air, only to regain their grace just as they disappeared over the horizon.