Meeting Up to Ride the Applegate Valley
On August 1st 2020 I woke up to a phone call from a friend asking me if I would like to go on a motorcycle ride out in the Applegate Valley with him and a few other riders that he was going with. As I love that area I said yes, gathered the location and time to meet up, hung up the phone, grabbed my helmet and headed out the door.
I lived in Tucson Arizona with my sister but we had recently taken a trip to Southern Oregon to visit family, pick up my motorcycle, take a trip to the coast and then head back home with me on my Kawasaki Vulcan 900 and my sister in her car. We were heading home in a week or two.
Little did I know when I walked out the door that morning that it was very nearly the last ride of my life. I was wearing steel toed boots, double ply Carthart pants, a reinforced motorcycle jacket, hi-visibility riding gloves and a $1,500 hi-visibility helmet.
I rode out to Jacksonville, Oregon to meet the group at a gas station. I saw a few riders at the pumps when I arrived but no sight of my friend. It was a beautiful sunny day with blue skies. I’d already seen several motorcycles on the road on my way out there so I wasn’t sure if these guys were just other motorcycle enthusiasts out to enjoy another beautiful weekend or some of the guys I would be riding with. They rode off as I started to try and fuel up my bike. The attendant ran over to me and told me they were out of fuel. At first, I thought he was joking with me until he started getting angry as I continued to try and work the pump. At that point I started arguing with him (I’ve never heard of a gas station running out of fuel). Finally, thinking he had some problem with me, I drove to the other side of the station and called my friend. He told me to meet at a new location, another gas station, a few miles away.
As I pulled into the new gas station, I saw the same guys from the prior station as well as a large fueling truck. After talking with one of them I realized they were in fact some of the guys riding that day with my friend. I also found out that there really was a fuel shortage in Southern Oregon. Shortly thereafter, my friend and a couple more guys showed up. After everyone was fueled up, we headed out. Everyone was riding on a sport bike except for me, riding my cruiser. I took up the rear as we left the gas station.
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