On Monday Nov. 20, my husband and I caught a flight to Riyadh to be reunited with our Harley-Davidson Road King, “Maridadi.” It had been trucked up to Riyadh, courtesy of the Harley-Davidson dealership in Jeddah, for us to team up with the Riyadh Harley Owners Group (HOG) to ride to Muscat for the 7th Middle East HOG Rally.
On arrival in Riyadh, it was pouring with rain. Wet weather was predicted for the next morning so our first task was to buy weatherproof clothing. As always before a long bike trip, the participants gathered in the evening for a briefing by the Road Captain, Amer Al-Khaldi. I was the only “Lady of Harley” present and looked forward to more female representation in Muscat.
Shortly before 7 am the following morning, the Harleys were fired up to leave. As the collective rumble echoed around the Harley-Davidson underground workshop, my husband visibly glowed: “You would never get that with a Honda!”
In two groups of around eight bikes each, with Amer Al-Khaldi in the lead, we set off on a bright crisp morning, protected by several layers of clothing against the biting cold and the powerful, buffeting cross-wind. We stopped frequently for warm drinks and fuel and, as I stood beside the bikes sipping my tea, I could hear a symphony of clicking sounds made by the hot engines and metal cooling down.
I don’t think any men enjoy riding pillion and not many women either, but I love it. “Maridadi” has a seat with superb ergonomically designed comfort and support so, for hours on end, I can settle into my own uninterrupted thoughts. There are no phones, no chores to do and I can indulge in some of my favorite past times: Photography, observation, ideas, planning, remembering — or, as the saying goes, “sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits.” As my life is also at stake, I keep an active eye on the road ahead and my husband calls me his “safety officer.” Above all, I love the exhilarating sense of freedom and adventure; it makes me feel young again!
There is always a sense of relief as one crosses the border into the more relaxed atmosphere of the UAE, but the highlight of the transition is the quality of the “restrooms.” There are clean, western style toilets at every fuel station, and clean sinks with towels to wash your hands. What Saudi Arabia has to offer in this department is without exception dismal and quite dirty. All toilets are the hole-in-the-ground variety — perhaps easy enough if your legs are working properly, but for the disabled and elderly they are a nightmare. It is only the hardiest of travelers (not tourists) who are prepared to put up with such squalid facilities.
We stopped for the night at Jebel Al-Dhana and there teamed up with a few more bikers from Riyadh, including Judy and Daniel Prevost, a French-Canadian couple from Ottawa. Judy was making history as she is the first Lady of Harley to ever ride her own motorbike with the all-male Riyadh Chapter. She had owned her own Yamaha 650 cc bike about 20 years ago but hadn’t ridden a bike since then. Her husband, a keen Harley biker, began to hint that it might be fun if she had her own bike again and bought her a Sportster for her birthday. Unable by law to ride her new bike in Saudi Arabia, the two went off to Bahrain with the bikes on a trailer and there she managed to cram in a mere 250 kms practice before tackling a full day’s biking with a pack from Jebel Al-Dhana to Muscat. Once on the road, the Riyadh Chapter boys were very protective of their first Lady of Harley.
As we pulled in to the Grand Hyatt Hotel after a difficult night ride through Muscat’s heavy rush hour traffic, some two hundred other bikes were already parked. We were immediately greeted by friends we had met at last year’s rally. As the weekend progressed, I became fully aware for the first time what this HOG business is all about: It is an astonishing worldwide “family” with over a million members sharing a common interest. Once a member of a chapter, you can go anywhere in the world, drop into a Harley-Davidson dealer, be welcomed, meet people and make new friends. The chances are that if you can’t rent a bike, you will be offered a ride on someone else’s second bike.
At any biking function, the HOG members always wear either T-shirts or leathers with emblems telling you which chapter they come from. Within chapters, it is also fascinating to see just how many different nationalities are gathered together in one place. In our small group of five bikes from Jeddah, we had a Lebanese, a German, a Swede, a Kenyan, a Saudi and a Brit (me).
The following morning, my husband was up at six with his rags and polishes, tending to “Maridadi” to enter her for the “concours d’elegance.” A few hours later, his efforts were rewarded when, amid stiff competition, “Maridadi” won the first prize in the Tourer class. We gained extra points because, being a 1999 model, “she” is one of the oldest bikes at the show. Also, we had ridden the bike to the rally rather than taking the soft option of bringing her on a trailer.
A “thunder roll,” or bike parade, is the highlight of every rally and with about 250 bikes (including about six women bikers) we set off with Chapter flags flying from the leaders. Pack riding requires discipline and total concentration and there is a common etiquette to all chapters. A thunder roll is generally quite slow, but on the open road when speeds rise to a steady 130 kph, it is essential that everyone in a pack knows what the other is doing. If anything goes wrong, you realize instantaneously that it isn’t how fast you go that counts, it is how fast you can stop.
We left Muscat on the morning of Friday 22nd with our Jeddah Chapter of five bikes. As we caught up with another chapter, I found myself feeling the thrill of challenging “rival” bikers. It seems that the others felt the same as our group gathered pace in an attempt to overtake. With a long line of about 12 bikes to pass, we realized with some disappointment that we would have to be sensible and hold back.
An hour or two later, along the twisting and turning section of road leading to the UAE border, we came across members of the Abu Dhabi Chapter and the sobering sight of a nasty accident. One of their experienced bikers, riding a brand new “Fat Boy,” had become impatient with the pace of his colleagues and had decided to ride ahead at his own much faster pace. He got to a corner and quite simply didn’t go round it. At about 160 kph, his bike had flown off the elevated road in Evil Knevil style, had somehow gone straight between two heavy steel arches, and had eventually crashed into a ditch some 75 yards from the road. The biker had been thrown off the bike, which had landed on top of him. Almost hidden from view, his fellow bikers had driven straight past the spot, but a motorist had spotted him. Unbelievably, he had only suffered a broken leg. From my photos, we later saw that he had been wearing the essential protective leather clothing and helmet. His bike was more or less a write-off.
In Abu Dhabi, we split up with our Jeddah team and after two nights there, set off at 5 am on a pre-dawn ride for breakfast at Jebel Al-Dhana. My husband loves to travel as a lone biker, but although I can understand why, I miss having the other bikers to include in my photos. After a big breakfast, we joined two couples from the Dhahran Chapter — one pair from Australia, the other from Canada. This was a rare treat as in our year of biking we haven’t come across many couples who bike together.
After another very cold and windy ride, coupled with a sandstorm, we arrived in Dhahran just after 3 pm. We had traveled with bikers from Jeddah, Riyadh, Dhahran and Muscat, as well as others from the Middle East and had covered just over 3,000 miles. Are we exhausted? Yes! Do we want to do another long trip? Yes! Are we thinking of buying a second bike? Yes! We have become committed Bambies: Born Again Middle Aged Bikers.