Goodbye Orv

Yesterday I lost a good friend and riding buddy, Orv Olson.  I've known him for over 20 years and still remember the day I met him.  Ross and I had been building and maintaining trails in the local riding area for awhile when one day he called me the day before we were to meet up for a ride to tell me he wanted to bring along another guy who wanted to get back into riding after recently retiring from work.  That was Orv.  We unloaded our bikes and headed up one of my favorite trails, and old abandoned logging railroad bed.  Being an old desert rider, this was one of my kind of trails......fast and flowing and not as technical as some of the rider-built trails.  I started out in the lead with Orv following me and quickly got in the groove and was going as fast as I could.  I had been up this trail dozens of times and knew it well enough to let it all hang out, but no matter how fast I thought I was going, Orv was always right behind me.  I was pretty impressed that a guy who was just getting back into dirt bike riding seemed to not be rusty at all.  I shouldn't have been.  Orv was a very good rider, as I soon learned.  In fact, at one time he was the Oregon state enduro champion.

That was the first of many, many rides together......most of the time in the early years with Ross, Orv and I working on building trails and maintaining existing ones and then riding what we had created.  Later, as we got older, the dirt bikes required more strength and coordination than we could muster and we gravitated to dual sport and street riding, but we were still riding.

I've gone through some of my more easily available photos and thought I'd share some of our times together.

This is me (left), Orv and Ross after unloading our bikes and getting ready to ride at a secret location in Oregon.  We often rode so far there that running out of gas was a big worry.

Here we are taking a break later on in that ride.  Orv is always recognizable because he was the only hairless one.

When we first started mostly street bike riding, we used to go on rides that would require overnight stays somewhere.  One time we stayed at a place out in the middle of nowhere Oregon that had a lodge with the only restaurant for miles.  When we got there late after a hot day the lodge was open but the restaurant was closed.  I rode 20 miles to the nearest town and bought a six-pack and a pizza to bring back for us to cook in the lodge's little kitchen, and it was a fine dinner.  Ross calls this picture the "pizza bike".

Another one of our overnight rides was to the Oregon coast.  Carolyn and I were riding two-up on this one and she took these pictures of the three of us.

Before we had GPS, paper maps were the way to go, and we were always looking for new, curvy roads to ride.  Orv was a master at finding them and was usually the ride leader.  I think he and his wife Gail had done a lot of camping and traveling in trailers and motor campers and he already knew a lot of good roads.

This was from another overnight ride that included this overlook of  Lewiston Idaho and the Old Spiral Highway.  

Not all of our road rides were totally on pavement.  This was Orv showing us the way to an overlook of the Klickitat river gorge that he knew about.  

Orv would find out about demo rides and invite me along to try out new bikes.  He was always buying something new, whereas I was always riding something until it wore out.  Here we are at a Triumph demo day at a local dealer, about to start out on a ride on the latest Triumph retro model twin.  Orv ended up buying one of these.  

And speaking of retro Triumphs, we both had old Bonnevilles that we restored to riding condition.  Mine had been in our living room for almost 20 years when Orv bought one and started riding it.  He seemed to be having fun on it, so I re-restored mine and we went on a couple of rides together on the old crocks.  Mine is in the foreground and his in the back.  

As part of the re-restoration of my Triumph, I converted the ignition and charging system to a modern electronic version and Orv helped me do that.  He was a good mechanic, and restored three old cars during the time I knew him.  Below is a picture of an old Hudson that he restored about the same time Brian and I were restoring the Mustang. 

I was lucky enough to plan a dream ride for Orv and our friend Big Mike back to the East Coast to rent bikes and ride some of the famous roads in the Blue Ridge mountains.  This was some months before he got his first diagnosis of lung cancer, and he felt very lucky to have been able to make this ride.  We rode the famous "Tail of the Dragon", with over 300 curves in 11 miles, and we stayed at the Deal's Gap resort where there is this "Tree of Shame" decorated with crashed motorcycle parts. 

Deal's Gap lodging

An overlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway.  Big Mike on the left.  

Orv got to do one more multi-day ride with Big Mike and I last September when we rode up into Northeast Washington and Canada.  By this time Orv was weakening and wanted to tow his bike up to the area where the good roads were and avoid the long distance slog to get there.  This was his car and trailer that we used to get there.  

The drive up included a ferry crossing where I took this picture

On the second day of this ride I discovered that my rear tire, which I expected would go the distance, was not going to make it.  I found a shop about 50 miles away that had a tire in my size and Orv rode with me to get it changed.  To save money we dismounted the wheel from the bike ourselves in the shop parking lot, and Orv was a big help in doing that.  

Over the years other riders joined us on road rides and at times we had as many as six of us riding as a gang of old timers.  Here is a picture of five of us with Orv in the middle at on overlook of Mt St. Helens.  Big Mike was usually along, but by this time he had gotten a job in Northern Washington.  Besides he is just a kid at 50, and not really  an old timer.  

We are all going to miss Orv.  He was clever, funny, smart, friendly, and a hell of a rider.  

And he was my friend.  Goodbye Orv.