Easy Going Riders -- It's Teddy Bears And Perry Como For Bikers In The Gold Wing Touring Association

Some years ago, when Goldendale, Wash., heard the Gold Wing motorcycle crowd was scheduling a weekend there, officials sounded the alarm.

So many cops showed up they walked five abreast down the sidewalks. But at noon they told the mayor they were going home.

"Why?" he asked.

"Because the only thing in danger here is the salad bar."

Maybe it was the matching helmets or the teddy bears on the back of the bikes. Maybe it was the wives asking their husbands if they could borrow the bifocals to read the menu. Something tipped off the cops that these were not the bad boys who'd torn up the city two years earlier.

The bulk of motorcycle riders today are about as far from the image of Marlon Brando in "The Wild One" as he is. Make that doubly true of Gold Wing riders, who cruise along on what they call the "Cadillac" of motorcycles.

People who pull up next to Gold Wing Touring Association couples at the gas station tip their heads this way and that, pondering the contradictions: "They got a lot of power in that machine, but isn't that Perry Como I hear on the tape deck?"

It all works together for the Gold Wing tourers. They get the thrill of an unobstructed view as they maneuver like skaters through the leaves and breeze of fall foliage, and yet they leave none of the comforts behind, including their community, which sets up around them in motorhome-style wherever they camp.

There is no typical Gold Winger, but Denny Wright and Yvonne Rux-Wright, who are nearing the end of their first half century, come close.

The Wrights have put 24,000 miles on their air-brushed Honda Gold Wing since they bought it new 14 months ago. They have cars, too, but they think of them as paperweights holding down the driveway.

"We ride our bike," said Rux-Wright, who, with the help of an airplane, has even toured the former Soviet Union by Gold Wing.

There are about 1,200 members of the state's Gold Wing Touring Association and some 7,500 members nationwide. The sport started on the West Coast and has been spreading eastward.

Like a second family

Participants describe it as being part of a second family, which is good because they sometimes lose track of their first families as they pursue what they say is an addiction.

The Wrights' three grown children have much to complain about since the couple began living under the creed that home is where the answering machine lives. Or, as their youngest daughter put it: "Life's just not the same since Mom and Dad got a life."

Maybe getting a life is not it so much as maintaining a verve that comes with a very strong circle of friends. It's no different from bowling or boating or being in a book club except that the visiting together, weekend after weekend for half the year at campouts, produces a sense of community.

"We ride 300 miles on weekends to visit with the same people we had dinner with Thursday at the Dairy Queen," said Rux-Wright, who is perfect in a group setting: She loves to talk and she relishes the twist that people's foibles give to life.

She freely offers her own quirks for others to enjoy, too. At a recent campout in Elma, for instance, where the Olympia chapter invited GWTA members down for the Blackberry Festival, crowds gathered to watch Wright and Rux-Wright go through their ritual of setting up camp.

The first step is for Rux-Wright to pull up a chair. The second is for her to offer suggestions as Wright pops up the tent in the KwikKamp trailer.

"Move it a little more this way."

Will this be the weekend that Wright finds the limit of his patience? Canvas popped up. Mattress plumped up. Vanity erected. Table for four on its feet. Bring out the welcome mat.

Nope. He's still smiling. The crowd shuffles away.

"After 30 years of marriage," he says, pausing just long enough for her to add, "We finish each other's sentences."

The Wrights have enough money to outfit themselves, which can range from $3,000 for a very used bike and a tent to $25,000 for a state-of-the-art bike, camper and camp gear.

Some couples younger than the Wrights add a sidecar to carry the kids, or the husband and wife each ride a bike to accommodate a child on the back. Some older than the Wrights come to campouts on four wheels, if they've lost the strength to heft the 1,000-pound-plus bike.

No matter. As long as they can still put up a lawn chair to visit.

If the GWTA members tattooed their motto across their chests, it would officially say "Destination Friendship." Unofficially, it would read: "Eat to ride and ride to eat." This crowd rumbles all right, but only when they reach for the bicarbonate of soda.

Plenty of contrasts

Contrasts abound in camp. There's a slight militaristic feeling with the pride in the precision drill team, the Northwest Wings, and all that Citizen's Band radio talk ("That's an affirmative"). But love of the rebel is there, too. These are, after all, still motorcycles.

One of their legendary and more active national members, Nancy Wright, 81, has put more than 300,000 miles on Gold Wing motorcycles since she first saddled up 12 years ago. Wright carries an hydraulic jack in case she drops the bike.

Wright, a former pilot who tries to ride every day, rain or shine, was caught going 105 miles an hour across the desert on a quiet Sunday, but did not get a ticket. "I don't believe it," said the officer after checking her age, "and if I don't believe it, they won't believe it, either."

The Gold Wingers embrace all comers, although at least one Suzuki rider came back to camp to find a Honda name plate fastened to his bike. There's even a toe-shuffling admiration for the more renegade of Harley-Davidson riders, the only group left that the friendly Gold Wingers can't get to wave back.

`A rolling couch'

Some wags on sportier bikes have compared Gold Wings to "riding a rolling couch," but usually they can't catch up to the 1,500cc Gold Wingers to tell them. If they tried, they'd vibrate like out-of-tilt washing machines, say the Gold Wingers, and that's only one difference in comfort.

Dennis Wright started his Gold Wing career by switching with a friend while on a ride. The minutes went by. The hours went by. And Wright wouldn't switch back. Two days later, he owned one.

"It was a wonderful experience," said Wright. "Getting behind that big fairing, listening to the radio and cruising softly down the highway."

It's pretty cushy for the passenger, too. The back of the seat is raised, helping to alleviate that old problem of every state looking like the back of the driver's helmet.

The passenger has armrests and enough room to play a Nintendo Game Boy, as one GWTA woman does, or even sleep. Yvonne Rux-Wright eats sunflower seeds and reads, when she can borrow her husband's reading glasses.

"I can put myself in the book and not hear anything," said Rux-Wright.

The driver still is more comfortable because the fairing, or plastic windshield, blocks the wind and rain. It's so big, Wright said, he could ride in a rainstorm in a T-shirt and not get wet, as long as he never stopped.

Some of the bikes have side guards to block wind and foot guards to block the heat or water rising from the road. They can come with cup holders, radar detectors, deer whistles, thumb rests and cruise control. The $300 helmets have headsets for stereo, intercom and CB radio.

Many's the couple who have accidentally switched the intercom button to CB, delighting their traveling companions, said Dean Heimberger, assistant regional director of the Gold Wing Touring Association. Heimberger once listened to a woman read love stories all the way across South Dakota.

Such tales makes Rux-Wright cringe because her talking doesn't stop when she leaves the lawn chair. She has been known to gossip, she said, sometimes about the people they just camped near.

Other riders go on scenic tours when they reach the destination, and it's common to ride in parades. The little campers, which are no broader than a beach towel, hold golf clubs and fishing poles in addition to the queen-size bed.

Rux-Wright says she can carry enough clothes to last a three-week trip without visiting a Laundromat. But that was not the selling point her husband used when he convinced her they needed to move up to a camper from a tent.

"She used to have to help me put up the tent," Wright said.