Moments of Bliss Under the California Sun
Photography by Jack Antal
Jordan Graham: The Dust Never Settles
Jordan Graham: Keeping the Glory Days Alive
Words by Seth Richards | Photography by John Ryan Hebert
“Let my body dwell in poverty, and my hands be the hands of the toiler; but let my soul be as a temple of remembrance where the treasures of knowledge enter and the inner sanctuary is hope.”
– Daniel Deronda by George Eliot
Motorcycle racers don’t have to appreciate history to make history. The past need not exist in their purview.
They are singleminded. They race to win. They tell you that if you want factory support to run the latest spec machinery, you must look ahead. To chase victory is to bet on the future. All that matters is the next pole position, the next race, the next season. What happened in the past is meaningless. The last corner, the last season: They’re as irrelevant as last century’s forgotten also-rans.
For Jordan Graham, though, it’s different. Winning isn’t enough.
Graham is the progeny of a long-lost Golden Age. He’s the first to admit that he lives in the past. Yet he’s one of very few racers to have a factory contract with Ducati North America. Ducati even released a limited-edition production replica of his race bike. He’s Ducati’s golden boy because he races to win.
When he won the 2020 Mint 400 on a near-stock Ducati Scrambler Desert Sled, it inscribed the Italian maker’s name into the history book of American desert racing. Graham’s own team lovingly describes the Desert Sled as an air-cooled hipster motorcycle. It was never meant to be a race bike; it can hardly even be considered a performance motorcycle. But winning on a motorcycle that the Borgo Panigale factory never designed to be a winner is just the kind of thing that speaks to Graham.
Graham is a custodian of the mid-century American motoring tradition of going fast by making do. In honor of that Golden Age, Graham wants to rush in a new one. He wants to see motoring culture grow at the hands of a new generation—to explore horizons and to retread the paths of the original racers, hot-rodders, and tinkerers of post-war America.
Beyond that, hitting whoops at triple-digit speeds on a retro-styled street bike designed to look cool parked outside the local coffee shop is just plain badass.
“Sometimes dirt bikes bore me,” Graham says. “You go on a group ride and you end up with 25 dudes on the same bike. And for me, I like challenging myself. How far can I push this motorcycle? It’s the challenge, the ‘holy shit’ factor.”
When Graham and his team unloaded the Desert Sled for their first Hare and Hound, no one took them seriously. People walked by and scoffed, sarcastically wishing Graham good luck, as if they knew something about desert racing that he didn’t—as if he were some superficial scenester who was only there to get some evocative photos for Instagram. You can imagine the twinkle in his eye as he replied, “Thanks! We’ll see how it goes.”
“And those same guys, I’m passing on singletrack,” Graham says. “It’s dirt, dust, and a hundred degrees out, and I’m passing them on this street bike.”
He’s quick to point out that he’s far from the first person to ever go desert racing on a big street bike.
“I think about what J.N. Roberts, Bud Ekins, and Steve McQueen did,” he muses. “I think that carries on today with racing the V-twin off road. It shouldn’t be happening, but it is. I think that spirit is what pioneers everything: There was somebody that was pushing the limits on something, and that evolved into what we do nowadays.”
Graham’s appreciation for that old-school, innovative spirit goes back to when he was a kid growing up in the Santa Ynez Valley in California. He and his best friend, Benny Breck (former supercross racer; currently a mechanic and development rider), would spend afternoons at motorcycle dealerships in Santa Barbara before wandering over to Breck’s grandfather’s house. Yankie Breck, a first-generation hot-rodder who was paralyzed in an accident in the 1960s, was living history—with a garage full of cars undriven since LBJ was in office.
“It was a time capsule,” Graham says. He was captivated. Yankie Breck introduced him to all his old hot-rodding buddies, and before he knew it, he was hanging out with a pack of septuagenarian hot-rodders who mentored him and instilled in him a love for 1950s-style hot rods.
While most kids his age would feel accomplished if they could take apart a VCR and put it back together again, Graham was well beyond child’s play. It didn’t hurt that he inherited his mechanical know-how from his dad, a lifelong auto mechanic and motorcyclist.
“I was probably 12 years old, and my dad had an old wire feed welder,” Graham remembers. “I started welding his old race car parts and making these sculptures. His friends would come over to watch NASCAR, and I’d be like, ‘Hey, you want to buy this?’ and they’d be like, ‘Yeah, I’ll buy it!’”
He thought he was hustling these guys—earning hard cash for useless trinkets—but what he didn’t realize at the time was that by encouraging him to use his hands, his dad’s friends were leading him on a path toward a vocation. Just as critical, they were sharing the passion that brought them all together in the first place. It was one generation looking out for the next.
Before he even had his driver’s license, Graham started building his first hot rod based around a 1931 Ford Model A Coupe that an old lady gave him after he weed-whacked her property, which was adjacent to his dad’s auto shop. It wasn’t long before his period-correct hot rod builds got noticed.
By 19, he even had his own television show on Hot Rod TV, called Nineteen-28.
Graham knew he could capitalize on the exposure he got from the TV show, so he started his own hot rod company. The business became all-consuming, and he quickly got burned out. He shut up shop, keeping his passion for hot rods alive by keeping it as a hobby.
These days, Graham is content working 9-to-5 at an excavation company, building hot rods in his garage and racing motorcycles two weekends a month. Not that he doesn’t second-guess himself. “I sit on tractors at work and think, ‘Do I want to race full-time?’”
It’s a question most racers don’t have the privilege to consider. For many, if the opportunity to earn the biggest share of the purse is there, they take it. It’s their best chance at big money and the only way to determine the limit of their talents and tenacity.
But Graham knows that there are greater things worth regretting than trophies and racing stories.“The way it is now, I’m home every night during the week with my wife and kids. I don’t want to lose that and be on the road 24/7 to go race. Having a 9-to-5 keeps me grounded.”
Graham also has as broad of a perspective as he does a great talent.
“I’d rather make the sport grow as a whole than race professionally and have to just go after that one thing,” he says.
When the brass at Ducati approached him to race the Mint 400, their objective was just to reach the finish line. Instead, Graham won the thing by 45 minutes. While he was sitting at the finish, soaking up the reality of it all, organizers from the National Hare and Hound Association (NHHA) came over to congratulate him. They were so impressed with his performance on the Desert Sled—that’s the “holy shit” factor Graham talks about—that they realized a Hooligan Open Class should be a permanent fixture.
Graham and the NHHA wrote a rule book and presented it to the American Motorcyclist Association (AMA). Considering the adventure-bike and dual-sport market is booming, and riders crave more versatile bikes, they knew it was the right moment to develop a real race series. The AMA was immediately receptive to the idea, recognizing that racing production street bikes harks back to its own heritage of organizing events for the average rider and the average bike.
By making the class so inclusive, Graham hoped it would attract all types of motorcycles—from custom Harley-Davidson Sportsters with long-travel suspensions to modern rally-inspired adventure bikes. He also wanted it to be accessible to riders of varying experience levels. Call it the speed demon’s noblesse oblige.
His altruism ultimately lost him the inaugural NHHA Hooligan championship.
When the class was announced, KTM decided to bring the proverbial gun to a knife fight by fielding a factory 790 Adventure R with Baja 1000 champ and Dakar racer Quinn Cody behind the bars. As it turns out, the 790 was actually an 890 Adventure R prototype that Cody was testing—cool way to do some R&D, sure, but kind of a kick in the balls to Ducati, which sponsored the class and had to be thinking KTM had overlooked the spirit of the thing.
None of that bothered Graham, though:
“It doesn’t take away from the class. A lot of guys were like, ‘I don’t want to ride my Harley out there against Factory KTM!’ But that’s not the point. We’re trying to get the class going.”
Graham also didn’t mind having someone to chase. At their first race together, Graham pushed himself, finishing around a minute-forty after Cody—a significant achievement given the KTM’s modern, rally-bred roots.
For 2021, adventure bikes and scramblers are split into different classes.
“Desert racing is the gnarliest form of dirt-bike racing there is,” Graham says, “but it isn’t an ego sport.”
The individual glory of racing is subjugated to something more important: survival. A sport that’s as on-the-fringe extreme as desert racing means competitors often have to help each other finish, fix breakdowns and generally look after each other. But the higher the stakes, the higher the sense of camaraderie and conviviality.
For Graham, the sterile conventionality of a racing paddock has lost its charm, if it ever had any.
“For desert races,” Graham says, “the NHHA gives you GPS coordinates, and you pull up to where the race is going to be and everyone’s camping. Everyone’s kids are riding mini bikes around. They play games, have a motorcycle rodeo the night before the race...the atmosphere is incredible. It’s like no other. You show up to a Hooligan flat-track race, you race, and it’s over and everyone goes home.”
“I still get that crazy feeling when I get to the desert. It brings back good memories.”
As a kid, Graham came from a broken home. He had trouble in school and struggled with ADHD.
“I should have been doomed from a young age,” he says. “My mom got me hooked on prescription meds because it was the ’90s and that’s what you did. I was depressed and practically drooling on myself.”
Part of a child’s vulnerability is that they only have the ability to see what’s right in front of them. They grope blindly. They falter. Without the perspective of time, they can’t comprehend that there are alternate paths beyond the darkness.
“The thing that got me away from that was motorcycles. The best part of my life was when my dad picked me up and we went to the desert. When I showed up to his place, he would literally throw the bottles of pills away. ”
From there: a way out.
“[Riding] two wheels teaches you so much in life,” Graham says. “From respect to helping other people—what revolves around two wheels is always good.”
For his daughters, ages 10 and 6, the desert has always been a home, not an escape. They love going to the races as a family. They camp out, hang with friends, and wander the desert bivouac wearing T-shirts with their dad’s number 47 on the backs. The girls play a role in how Graham wants to race because they’re part of his life—the biggest part. It’s as simple and as natural as that.
Desert racing on a retro scrambler and building authentically styled hot rods is aesthetically, if not philosophically, coincidental. It’s like Graham’s stuck in Southern California in the middle of the last century. The mid-century zeitgeist as symbolized by McQueen-esque freethinking, the reimagining of automotive style and performance, and the resourcefulness born of necessity are enduring components of the American identity.
But these days, many of us would rather spend than fix, consume rather than create, imitate rather than innovate. Honoring mid-century ideals involves no more than sitting on a tufted sofa from West Elm, watching Mad Men, and sipping a martini. To Graham, mid-century ideals have informed his conception of what’s cool, what’s worth doing, and how to live. Couches don’t come into it.
He wants to preserve the treasures of knowledge: how to drop an axle by applying heat and putting pressure on it with a jig; how to track down old car graveyards; how to modify a Desert Sled to make it handle in the loose stuff. He’ll give a kid a set of old wheels for free. He’ll teach his kids’ friends how to ride a dirt bike. He’ll sacrifice a full-time racing career to promote the culture that’s made him who he is.
“Influencing the younger generations and keeping the torch lit for the future is the most important thing for me,” Graham says.
He’s an ambassador of motorcycling. He’s a student of history, a steward of old-school cool. He’s a mentor to the next generation of hot-rodders, future fabricators, and would-be racers. He’s a husband, a father, a friend. He’s a motorcycle racer.
And he hopes the dust will never settle on the glory days.
Death Rides A Horse
One Last Hurrah South of the Border
Words by Nathan Myers | Photography by Harry Mark
Into the salt flats, the truck was sinking. There is no town, no road, no salvation for a hundred miles. This would be its end.
Of all the damn things to go wrong on this trip — a thousand desolate miles on vintage bikes with a support van built in 1964 — losing the brand-new, 4x4 Toyota Tacoma follow-truck was the last thing anyone expected. The one modern thing, the safety net, and now it is gone.
Six old friends stand knee-deep in the bog working tiny shovels and a flimsy bike ramp to free the truck. They’re tired and angry, but they keep digging because that is how you survive. Never say die. They’d been here before. All around the world. A decade of travel and 20,000 miles of good times gone sideways. It’s always something. And then you get down in the muck and dig.
Perhaps they’re fortunate to be able to tell this tale at all. Perhaps they’re miserable to have returned to the banality of their workaday lives. I wouldn’t know. I was just the editor for the resulting documentary, Death Rides a Horse – the title an homage to the 1967 Spaghetti Western of the same name – that is slated to be released later this year. I then sifted through the hours of footage and interviews to make sense of this hurtling ruckus, the result of which is the narrative that follows, an assemblage of how it all played out based on outtakes and the inner turmoil the crew members shared in the final version.
This is the stuff we don’t show you in the movie. This truck doesn’t even exist. The director was never there. The beer, the blood, the near-death flashpoints of glorious stupidity – none of it ever happened. Sucked in the salt and gone forever.
All things move toward their end. Some just move faster than others.
They gathered at Forrest Minchinton’s desert compound in the Johnson Valley, just outside the Mojave Desert. Late August heat. Cold beer. Old friends. This ragtag patchwork of what-you-got architecture has been the focus of enough films and articles now to garner its own mythology. This unrefined oasis of cornucopious riding options. But this was hardly the beginning of their journey together. That started over a decade ago.
It was 2013 when professional longboarders Harrison Roach and Zye Norris first made a film called North To Noosa together with filmmaker Dustin Humphrey, soon after he bootstrapped the Indonesia branch of Deus Ex Machina. In the movie, Roach and Norris, both from the quiet Eastern Australian hamlet of Noosa Heads, ride vintage motorcycles from Sydney 1,000 miles back to their home, stopping along the way to surf, make friends, camp, and drink beer.
In the years to follow, Humphrey would orchestrate a whole canon of surf-moto films, each more ambitious than the last. In South To Sian, they traversed nearly the entire Indonesian archipelago on bikes and boards. Then there were other Indo-ventures, like Scramble Gamble, Ain’t We Got Fun, and I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night. The cast was always evolving, but Roach and Norris were fixtures, soon joined by fellow Aussie surf/moto lads Matt Cuddihy and Lewie Dunn. Minchinton, the son of Humphrey’s childhood surfboard shaper, joined the crew a few years back, and quickly became an essential addition. A top-notch rider, the best/only mechanic among them, and an accomplished surfer/shaper, Minchinton was a good man to know in the middle of nowhere.
As the crew’s ambitions evolved from Southeast Asia to North America, California-based Minchinton’s involvement became increasingly fundamental. He’d raced the Baja 500 twice now, had ridden all over the U.S., and his desert Compound was the ideal basecamp for bugging out, belligerent scheming, and whatever else went down out there. Fireworks and gunfire, partly. Dreams and wheelies.
While Humphrey is the master of concocting romantic narratives and dreamy cinematography, Minchinton makes sure the bikes actually start. He studies the maps, shapes the boards, and sets the pace on the trail. Nuts and bolts. Meat and potatoes. The hard yards that make a trip like this happen.
They spent a week at The Compound, just catching up, tuning the bikes, and working back into the groove of desert riding. For the most part, these boys were surfers, and this was a surf trip – but the long ride down the Baja coast said different. And that was the Deus way. Adventures inspiring adventures, and friendships fueling the journey.
There were six riders on the trip: Minchinton, Roach, Norris, Cuddihy, Dunn and newcomer Micah Davis. While only 18, the California-raised Davis was a vintage soul with timeless talent on the bike. He fell in easily with the crew, even if their constant reminiscing was lost on him.
There were others, too. Behind-the-scenes guys. The ones you never see in the resulting film, but part of the crew through thick and thin. Humphrey was there, of course, directing operations from his new Tacoma. And veteran moto-photographers Harry Mark and Monti Smith had shared as many journeys with the crew as anyone. Cinematographer Cameron Goold was on his second project with the crew, filming everything on a handheld RED while hanging off the sides of vehicles and backs of trucks. And if the resulting film would have you believe this trip was just six friends hitting the road, do some math during the credits and you’ll see not everything is as it seems.
They film pre-trip interviews. Humphrey keeps asking if they think this will be their final trip together. He’s pushing a narrative. The last ride. The boys weren’t fully buying it. But they also know well enough to trust Humphrey. All life is marketing. “We’re not getting any younger,” Roach tells the camera. “Everyone’s buying houses, getting married, getting jobs. Who knows when the next time we’ll get to do a trip like this is? Maybe never.”
There, he said it. If only to get Humphrey off his case. But the statement follows him like a shadow ever after. It’s time to go.
They load the bikes. Three XR400s – refurbished battleaxes built to endure the desert – and one modern Husqvarna for Minchinton to lead the way. They pack the sag wagon, a 1964 Chevy panel van, owned by photographer Smith. This is how they’ll be able to transport all the surfboards, camping supplies and film gear. They review the maps. The plan is to ride all the way down the length of the Baja Peninsula to hit a remote surf mecca known as Scorpion Bay.
Time to hit the road.
Or at least, to make it look that way. It’s 400 miles to the Mexican border. And riding vintage dirt bikes on the freeway strapped with surfboards is no one’s idea of fun. So, after a few well-documented miles, they load the bikes back onto a trailer and crank the AC down to the San Ysidro border crossing.
For the Chevy, however, this journey is another story.
The first time the Chevy overheated was in the driveway of the Compound, getting ready to leave. It wasn’t even midday and the late August heat was just warming up.
The boys push-started it into the road, then took off on their bikes to film “hitting the road.” Roach and Dunn were left behind to pilot the support vehicle. Both are solid moto-riders, but they were mainly on this trip for the surf. Roach is one of the most accomplished all-around watermen on the planet, and Dunn is as much a comedian as a surfer/moto-rider, always good times on a trip.
In the planning phase, the Chevy seemed like an aesthetical boon to the trip, giving film viewers a credible explanation for how six surfers with ten surfboards could cross Baja on four motorcycles.
Meanwhile, Humphrey’s shiny Tacoma would serve as the actual safety net for the trip, which – if you know anything about Baja – is still a sketchy proposition. No one expected the Chevy to survive the journey.
Sputtering along the freeway, rust would rain down from the ceiling and asphalt could be seen through the floor, while three flavors of fluid left a trail on the road behind. Eight miles per gallon. Fourteen gallons per tank. And a thousand miles of Baja ahead. Maybe that Chevy wasn’t such a great idea, but for all its flaws, riding along inside it tended to inspire the greatest storytelling. Perhaps it was the feeling that you might not survive the trip.
It took six hours to complete the two-hour drive to the border. They crossed in the 80-degree cool of the night; failing to film that vital story point, they then veered east 100 miles to a ranch near Tecate that Minchinton knew of. While the destination of the trip was much farther south, the real point was to ride, to explore, and to fully experience all the places in between. So much of life is wasted rushing from Point A to Point B, when the real point was all the pointlessness in between.
At the ranch, they posted up for a few days of trail riding. There’s a slower pace to life south of the border. And this, in Minchinton’s experience, required a period of acclimatization, lest these overzealous gringos rush off and gobble the journey in one sitting.
Somewhere amidst their meandering trail rides, the crew stumbled upon an abandoned racetrack, fabricated of trash, tires, and abandoned cars. A Mad Max-themed park where any mistake meant mashing flesh with shredded metal, barbed wire, and broken glass. Despite the 110-degree heat, the boys couldn’t stop themselves from proposing an impromptu race.
It was a sweaty, dirty, dangerous, and ultimately pointless event with no idea who had won (Minchinton won), but what mattered most was that when they reached the finish line, the Chevy was there, with a cooler full of ice-cold beer. Bless that Chevy.
Minchinton studied the maps. He’d raced the Baja 1000 twice now – once as a teenager and more recently with a full film crew in tow – and nearly won the damn thing. Baja was his backyard. His sandbox. And as anyone who knows knows, the more you know, the more you know you know nothing. The sense of discovery just goes deeper and deeper.
Something on the map was calling to him. North of the border, there are the famous moto dunes of Glamis. Everyone knew that. Among the tallest dunes in North America, fed by winds funneling off the Sea of Cortez. But those same massive dunes also extended south of the border. Minchinton had never heard of anyone riding there. Why not?
It wasn’t exactly in the right direction, but that wasn’t exactly the point. Riding dunes was as close to surfing as a motorcycle can get. These boys were surfers. And this being a surf/moto trip – they set out in the wrong direction once again. Typical.
Approaching the dunes, they stumbled upon the ruins of Las Vegas. Toppled casinos and un-neon signs, half buried in the drifting sands. The decaying props of some zombie apocalypse film shoot, abandoned by some Hollywood production that simply couldn’t be bothered to haul it all home. They shot selfies and shotgunned beers atop the false monuments. Befuddling debris is a staple of the Baja experience.
Then they mounted the sand and spent the rest of the afternoon surfing empty waves of blistering dunes. It was 112 degrees out, with no shade for 50 miles. The sand was soft. The riders were enthusiastic. It hadn’t occurred to them that they were still in the early days of their journey. Still basically at the border, with a thousand miles of riding ahead of them. Such is the wisdom of youth. They rode the waves in the drifting sands hard, and before long, Cuddihy’s bike was half buried in the dunes, Norris’ was puking oil and smoke, and nearly everyone was nursing some sort of minor boo-boo.
Roach, disappointed by his team’s dismal performance in the waves, grabbed one of the XRs and brrapped off to crack the lip. He immediately found himself ass-over-teakettle with a mouthful of sand and a gaping wound down the length of his forearm. First-aid kit, that was the thing they’d forgotten. Now they remembered.
Broken and bleeding, they sat in the dirt complaining about the sundown and worshipping the last of the cold beer. The night was barely cooler than the day, and they were happy to hit the road before the sun had even risen. No, it wasn’t Glamis 2.0.
Norris’ bike was ruined. A fried clutch and guts full of sand. That it somehow managed the two-hour trek to the nearest town at all was a testament to the old XR400’s unbreakable reputation, spewing white smoke the entire way.
By pure luck, they managed to find a mechanic with a suitable replacement clutch. He could have the work done in two weeks, he said. The money hit the table. He could have the work done tomorrow. More money on the table. Okay, maybe today.
Minchinton and Norris labored alongside the local grease smith until the job was done. Meanwhile, the others went shopping for knickknacks, which inevitably devolved into tacos and beer.
Tacos, it should be said, are the real reason for any travels to Mexico. Those greasy, sizzling, health-code violations soothe up all the bumps, bruises, and burns incurred along the way, sticking to your guts like fond memories and sometimes recurring nightmares. Suffice it to say that tacos were the only food item eaten throughout the entire journey, and no one ever suggested otherwise.
They had a big ride ahead of them. Each stretch of road was a fuzzy math problem, quantifying the distance between gas stations and the number of gallons (and cold beers) the Chevy could carry. This was no place to strand yourself.
It’s a funny thing to ride side by side with friends for hours on end, never saying a word. Stuffed inside your helmet with just your thoughts and the roar of the bike. Together, but alone. Hurtling along at 80 mph with nothing more than 2 inches of rubber connecting you to the road. Our lives could be ripped away at any moment. Cancer or a car crash, a blown tire or a sudden stroke, poisonous tacos, or deadly snakes – we live every moment in a gossamer web of denial. Death stands right behind us, grinning over our shoulder as we roll the dice. The shackles of god and religion, as our bones disappoint to dust. Here on the bike, side by side with your friends, there’s a sense that it can all be outrun. If only you go fast enough, or far enough.
They made their way south, past the port town of San Felipe (so many tacos), then farther down to the Valley of the Giants, a park and home to the tallest cactus in the world. Here in Valle de los Gigantes, the 300-year-old cacti stand as tall as 60 feet. The group paused to camp and ride among the giant cacti, feeling rested, well-supplied, and on their way. There was a mystical peace amongst these ancient behemoths. Calming smallness. They’d overcome their challenges and had emerged stronger on the other side. Looking once again to the map, they sensed the worst was now behind them.
The next stretch of road was a tricky one. By Minchinton’s math, it was a few miles out of the Chevy’s maximum range. That fact alone wasn’t enough to stop them, but a few hours south they reached the zone where the new Baja Highway was still just a sketch on a cocktail napkin. Dirt roads. Half-finished bridges. Deathly hallows. And, just to sweeten the pot, the severe and unmarked damage from a recent hurricane had wreaked havoc on the already dicey infrastructure. The road was impassable.
They paused to consider. A detour on the map seemed to circumnavigate the impassable area, but the map was old and the detour itself – just a dotted line, really – offered small consolation. They loaded the Chevy with as much liquid courage as it would hold and pushed on.
Baja is no place for rash decisions. But it’s also no place for cowards and sobriety. Every rider knows that hesitation is more dangerous than stupidity.
An hour down the rutted, off-road two-track, the sense of impending doom grew stronger every mile. They’d passed the point of no return. Even if they turned around, the Chevy wouldn’t make it. They paused again to ponder their doom and pound more beer. And just then a fully loaded semi-truck came bumping up the road from the opposite direction. Like a mirage, the driver stopped and climbed down from the cab to address the baffled gringos. “Ándale,” he tells them, glancing nervously at the cameraman filming him. “Just keep going. It’s a little rough, but you’ll get there.”
Funny how a little knowledge can improve the structural integrity of a road. The Toyota shot ahead with the bloodless film crew to verify the truck driver’s intel, while the Chevy and motorcycles bumped along at their best pace. Salvation awaits.
Just outside of town, they reconnected with the truck, racing back toward them with the cinematographer standing on the roof, stripped down to his underwear, a beer in each hand. They were alive. They’d made it. Somewhere. Nowhere. Alive.
They paused for a proper mid-road dance party. Fresh coldies and new hope. The journey was wearing on them now. Screws coming loose. Too much dust and desire. Time to get there. Somewhere. Anywhere.
Refueling on gas and beer, they pushed on into the night, stopping at a dicey motel somewhere along the way for more tacos. By morning, they’d reached the town of San Ignacia, and Minchinton was visibly excited. This town was an oasis, established by French missionaries in the 1700s, with few improvements since then. Despite the vast, barren desert around them, the village here was lush and fertile, with historical missions, handmade tortillas, and giggling señoritas on every corner.
Minchinton pulled out the map. His map.
This final stretch of their journey he knew quite well. There were two paths ahead of them. One was quicker and more beautiful, but only suitable for the bikes. Impossible for 1964 Chevys. Minchinton advised that they split ways, filming the bike riding across the northern pass while Roach and Dunn nursed the Chevy around on the paved road to the south.
The Tacoma would come to support the bikes. But on this subject, Minchinton says he took Humphrey aside and spoke in no uncertain terms. “This is no place to fuck around,” he told him. “You get stuck, there’s no one coming along to rescue us. So, do exactly as I say.”
This isn’t even in the behind-the-scenes footage. Minchinton conveyed it later, to underline the gravity of that moment. Then he told me to forget about it. It wasn’t important. It never happened.
It was indeed a beautiful ride, marked by scenic vistas and lush valleys. Crossing rivers, they stopped to swim and cool down, then pushed on into the optical mirror of the salt flats. It was epic biking, provided you steered clear of the treacherous quicksand. Sure enough, first big puddle he sees, Humphrey veers for the splashdown. The Tacoma slurps to a halt. Sunk to the frame.
“That’s it,” Minchinton recalls thinking in that dark moment. “There goes the truck. We’re 100 miles from help. We’re totally fucked.”
Cut to hours of digging. Cut to frustration, exhaustion, and despair. For six straight hours they work the problem, moving the truck inch by inch from the muddled mire and finally returning it to solid soil. Humbled, but still alive.
The sun is setting. The joy is soiled. The once-epic crossing is now a trial of shadows. A dangerous game of “pick paths through the darkness.” Try not to die. It’s hard going, made harder by fatigue and frustration.
They smelled the ocean first. Then the sounds. Just a roar of darkness somewhere off the west. Black abyss beneath a wallpaper of stars. And somewhere out there, this fabulous point-break righthander of legend. Their pilgrimage was complete.
They struggled to find the rental house in the darkness. And when they did, no Chevy. No good. Even without their six-hour pit stop, the Chevy should have arrived by now. The house wasn’t clean, and not quite as advertised, but they were too exhausted to care and quickly fell asleep.
At dawn, an angry Mexican woman chased them out of the house with a broom. They located their actual rental a block down the street, but still, no Chevy. They should be here by now. But there was nothing to do but tacos and beer.
The Chevy bumped into the driveway a few hours later, with the boys too rattled to convey their kerfuffle. A wrong turn. A long night. They’d run out of beer, water, and food – and if they’d been out there any longer, gas. They’d spent the last six hours circling an area a few miles from their destination, completely lost. A few more mismanaged miles and they might well have been goners.
And here they were.
The next two weeks melted through their fingers in a swirl of laughter and tequila. With no TV or internet, Dunn is a one-man, nonstop comedy show. He’s insatiable. Unstoppable. Impressions. His own quiver of weird characters. Stunts. Pranks. Ball-sack. The man is a riot.
The waves are small, but long, glassy, and exquisitely enjoyable on a quiver of 10-foot gliders; long, flat surfboards made to transform the small, peeling waves into liquid roller coasters. They spent their days dancing, with party waves, board swaps, crossovers, and silly joy surfing in the late summer heat. Then long sunsets by the campfire, talking story and remembering all the roads they’d ridden together over the past decade. With a dozen people in their group, they were a party to themselves. Then a women’s surfing team rolled into town, and it was really a party after that.
The days wore on. Long moto rides at low tide. Lulls between the waves. Their conversations shifted toward what next. Buying a house. Getting a job. Getting married. Making babies. Such real-world specters looming on the horizon of their Baja fantasy. And slowly it was setting in. Maybe this was their last trip together.
Thoughts of going home. Thoughts of turning back. Checking emails. Almond milk cappuccinos. Comfy couches. Netflix and Grubhub. Chinese food, perhaps. All those things that felt like birds in the cage before. Now alluring.
On the drive back to the main road, they let the camera crew ride the motorcycles while the riders shuttled the rusty Chevy and the humbled Tacoma. It would not be part of the film, but it was part of the journey.
No one ever talks about the long ride home. No one films or writes about it. It’s just a necessity. One hectic 30-hour grind. The tacos and beer feel toxic and nostalgic at once. Arriving home feels like they never left at all. Just a dream. Merrily, merrily, merrily...
The film takes three years to edit. No one is quite sure why. It was just a ride. A surf trip. A photo shoot. But perhaps finishing the movie means admitting that Humphrey was right after all. Of all the damn things to go wrong with this trip, it was the last thing anyone had expected.
Wide of the Mark
The Hard Way Around Tasmania
Words by Tom Gilroy | Photography by Alexandra Adoncello
Presented by Garage Entertainment
The idea was simple: Six mates on bespoke, custom-built motorcycles exploring the exotic landscapes of Tasmania. No specific plans – just dots on a map connected by the road less traveled. What happened between those dots and how they were connected would be left to chance, and that blank space is where all the unexpected magic would reveal itself. We threw ourselves blindly into a new destination and found excitement in letting the details of the journey become a roll of the dice. And we brought some cameras to capture the experience and share it in a full-length documentary we’re calling Wide of the Mark.
We built and assembled this mix of vintage and custom motorcycles in small workshops and garages on the Gold Coast of Australia. None of them were originally manufactured for this type of adventure, so breakdowns and mechanical issues were inevitable. The challenge of fixing each bike along the way added a completely new element to the adventure, and we learned to embrace that challenge as an enjoyable part of the experience together. We took wrong turns, got lost and found ourselves in unexpected places, never staying in one place for too long. We took advice from the locals and enjoyed whatever random surprises Tasmania had to offer us that day. Adventure can be as simple or complicated as you make it; the question is which do you find more exciting? For us, it was all about getting ourselves into tricky situations and finding a way out. We knew we were getting ourselves into a shitshow, and in the end, we were all profoundly bonded by the experience. The challenging moments became an opportunity for self-evaluation and self-discovery. We learned to love the hard times, because it made us appreciate the more pleasant ones. Somehow, we made it to the finish, but we never really cared about that. As long as we had as much fun as possible trying to get there, the trip would be a success. From the process of building these one-of-a-kind machines to the breathtaking and remote destinations they ride them to, the resulting documentary embodies freedom in its purest form.A Decade of Cool
An Ode to the Timeless Style of the Sixties
A photo series by John Ryan Hebert featuring Forrest Minchinton
Words by Ben Giese
Palm Springs circa 1960s was a golden place where people dreamed golden dreams.
It was a time when we dreamed of putting humans on the moon. We dreamed of peace and equality for all mankind. Of romance and beauty. Of the future, and the endless possibilities on the horizon. It was a time of tension and idealism that propelled us forward into a new and better way of living. It was also a time of unmistakable style and elegance that still inspires our culture today. When I think of the Sixties, I think of the iconic fashion, the seamless architecture, seductive automobiles, and elegantly designed motorcycles. Not too loud and not too flashy, but just the right amount of classy. Clean lines that just seem to get better with age. Nothing more than necessary, and somehow still everything you could want. I also think the analog world of the Sixties just seems much more appealing as we drift further and further into a digital world. I often ponder what it was like to live at that time, when rules were few, life was slow, and style was boundless. So, to indulge in the fantasies of a decade we never got to experience, we rode out to Palm Springs for a two-wheeled vacation under the California sun. I know that I romanticize this decade, and the Sixties were far from perfect. There was immense politlical and social tension similar to what we are currently facing, so it’s nice to look back and remind ourselves of something something Steve McQueen once said, “Every time I start thinking the world is all bad, then I start seeing people out there having a good time on motorcycles. It makes me take another look.”
Two Wheels For Life
Saving Lives on Two Wheels in Rural Africa
Words by Kyle Wagner | Photography by Tom Oldham
It was a woman in labor being hauled in a rusty old wheelbarrow to a hospital in Zimbabwe who unknowingly set the plan in motion.
“Can you imagine? Her arms and legs dangled over the side, and she had been pushed along for hours on these bumpy, rutted roads to give birth,” recalls former motorcycle racer Andrea Coleman, speaking from her home just outside of London. “It was unbearably hot and dusty, and my heart just hurt for her. I knew then that we really needed to do something.”
Fortuitously, Andrea and her husband, Barry Coleman, already had been pondering the kind of something that could make significant strides in healthcare access in the remotest parts of Africa.
It was 1986, and Barry – a journalist who for several years covered motorcycle racing for The Guardian – had just returned from a humanitarian mission to Uganda with Randy Mamola, the charismatic Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme (FIM) Grand Prix Legend and current TV sportscaster, as part of a visit coordinated by the U.K.-based nonprofit Save the Children. Along the way, they noticed that behind every country’s Ministry of Health sat dozens of seemingly near-new motorbikes in varying stages of disrepair, stacked or leaning against the building. Some were rust-crusted and intertwined with weeds, others were missing whole chunks of anatomy – and all of them were useless.
“It was obvious that no one had been trained to maintain what had been perfectly good motorbikes,” Andrea says. “No one understood the supply chain for parts; no one had created any kind of preventative maintenance schedule. So, they were just going to waste.”
Shortly after Barry’s trip, Andrea saw the woman in the wheelbarrow in Zimbabwe, which in 1989 inspired the two Brits and their American friend Mamola to create Riders For Health, a nonprofit, non-governmental organization (NGO) that focuses on managing fleets of motorcycles to support the delivery of healthcare on a reliable basis to rural communities in five African countries south of the Sahara: Lesotho, The Gambia, Liberia, Malawi, and Nigeria.
Riders for Health outreach health care in Kapatawee village, Bong County, Liberia.
Riders began to make a real difference by bringing health care directly to the people, especially those who were a half- or full-day’s walk from getting the help they desperately needed: tests for tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS; prenatal, maternal, and infant care; medical supplies and medicines; vaccinations for measles, polio, and chickenpox; as well as education around disease transmission and unsafe water.
According to UNICEF, residents of the 46 sub-Saharan countries in Africa – out of the 54 countries on the mainland continent – suffer the highest maternal mortality ratio in the world, at a rate of 533 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births each year. That represents more than two-thirds of all maternal deaths worldwide each year. Even more heartbreaking, many of the primary causes of maternal death – embolism, hemorrhage, sepsis – are mostly preventable through medical intervention. But very few women in remote rural areas, where 63 percent of the population in Africa lives, can make it to a distant health center unless they walk or are carted by a donkey or wheelbarrow.
And that’s just one of the many public health issues facing the continent, where more than half the population lives in extreme poverty. According to reports from both the United Nations (UN) and the World Health Organization (WHO), a lack of adequate access to medications and testing has meant that Africans are susceptible to crushing mortality rates from malaria, TB, and HIV/AIDS that far surpass the rest of the world.
Children are especially vulnerable to diarrhea, pneumonia, and malnutrition. The WHO reports that sub-Saharan Africa has the highest child mortality rate of any global region, with one child in 13 dying before age 5, compared to the worldwide average of one in 27 reported by UNICEF in 2019. Often, individual countries also have health concerns specific to their populations. For instance, Lesotho has one of the highest rates of HIV infection in the world; Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone were the hardest hit by Ebola in 2014-15; and The Gambia, the smallest country on the mainland, suffers from widespread malnutrition, TB, leprosy, and malaria, with 70 percent of the country’s rural population living in poverty as of 2019.
And then 2020 happened.
Female nurse Jogob Gassama providing healthcare outreach in The Gambia.
International humanitarian organizations predict that the toll of the coronavirus and its resulting COVID-19 disease will be especially profound for Africa. The continent is home to 17 percent of the world’s people but, as of May 2021, it was able to administer only 2 percent of the global vaccine doses. And most of those have gone to healthcare and other frontline workers, according to Our World in Data, a research and data firm tracking pandemic-related issues worldwide.
The roadblocks are numerous and daunting, from the difficulty of obtaining the vaccine in the first place, to storing and transporting the doses at the correct temperatures, to getting them into people’s arms – especially those who live hours away from healthcare facilities and have only their feet to get them there.
Enter Riders for Health and the more than 1,400 vehicles they currently manage across five African countries. The fleet includes ambulances, buses, all-terrain vehicles, trucks, and cars. But the majority are motorbikes.
The advantages of two wheels over other types of vehicles – even four-wheel-drive – for the kind of riding required to navigate rural Africa are the same ones that make them such exceptional off-road adventure machines, and this is as off-road as it gets. Steep, undulating mountainsides. Loose gravel. Softball-sized boulders.
But motorbike riders can choose cleaner lines on these exceedingly narrow, rutted paths. Standing up shifts the center of gravity, and shoving the inside peg makes it easier to corner. Pumping eases the wavy-gravy – you could try unweighting and weighting in a Jeep, but that’s only going to result in hilarity, at least until the drivetrain bottoms out.
And then there’s the cost: Motorcycles can be had for less than $3,000, use considerably less fuel than a car or truck, and are easier and cheaper to keep running.
There are downsides to the mighty motorbike, though, and its limitations in Africa are tested by Riders, as it quickly became known, every day. Sometimes, the dry desert dust creates 8-foot clouds that obscure visibility beyond more than a few feet. Thunderstorms, mudslides, and the occasional runaway goat or herd of sheep can create instant hazards. And anything with a motor must, by its very nature, be kept in good working order.
For those living in developed countries, it’s hard to envision a place where there are no service stations just off the highway to refuel or have the engine looked at, or where ignition systems don’t magically appear on the front porch from Amazon. “If we need a part, it’s likely to come from Japan or some other far-off place, and that has to be planned for well in advance in Africa,” Andrea says.
A rural road leading to a remote village in Buchanan, Liberia.
From the get-go, the plan has been for Riders’ programs in Africa to be led by nationals in each country, “rather than by white people from far away,” as Andrea puts it. And while their very first mechanic was from the U.K., they soon trained riders in each country not only to implement maintenance schedules and set up routes, but also to train others at the same high level to do the same. That system has worked so well that they now have staff from one country going to others to conduct the training.
One reason it’s so important for operations to be run internally is that locals are far better equipped to accurately assess what’s happening on the ground. “They’re in tune with the government and the limitations of the country’s resources,” Andrea explains. “There’s not going to be a big culture shock to them to suddenly find out that there’s no electricity, or that there’s been a coup.”
To get to this position as a significant player in a global pandemic, Riders had to start from scratch, going back to the early 1990s. To create a straightforward and workable system they could build on, they first had to jump through considerable hoops to help the Ministries of Health in each country secure new bikes – paid for by the countries themselves – and then turn over control of the bikes’ maintenance to Riders.
Riders for Health workshop in Basse Santa Su, Gambia
“We’ve had some bikes donated, but because we can’t risk a rider being stranded, they have to be new, which means we usually have to buy them,” Andrea explains. “With a used bike, we don’t know what happened to it before we got it, and that can be really problematic.”
Agricultural motorbikes originally designed for farm work are ideal for unsurfaced roads, unpredictable weather, and steep gradients, which is why the Yamaha AG100 and AG200 are among the most popular options, but Suzuki motorcycles are also used, and Honda has been one of the company’s donation angels.
Once Riders became familiar with each brand’s peccadillos, Barry established what is now referred to as “systemic fleet management,” ultimately creating a price-per-kilometer fee for each bike based on its needs. It helps the nonprofit to plan budgets for the health ministries, source vehicles and spare parts, and manage fuel consumption. This precision data keeps the fleets at a high level of operation because it reveals things like when each bike needs an oil change, and through the system, that maintenance can be tracked and scheduled.
The next step was training healthcare workers – known throughout most of Africa as environmental health technologists – to ride and maintain the machines on an ongoing basis.
“We came up with a two-week training program that puts our riders through a fast-paced course that takes them from never even having ridden a bicycle to riding on the worst terrain imaginable,” Andrea says. That means putting newbies through the rigorous paces of a more intensive education than recreational riders would ever bother with – covering things like control manipulation, low-speed maneuvering, risk management, and cornering more effectively in a decreasing radius curve.
“It is something to see this transformation from not knowing even how to balance to navigating the challenges of these rural areas,” says Kayode “AJ” Ajayi, who serves as CEO for Riders, as well as the company’s Country Director for Nigeria. Ajayi joined Riders in 1999, “when I had no gray hairs,” he says with a laugh. He’s jumped onto a Zoom call from his home in the capital city of Abuja, where he has been helping this densely populated country of more than 190 million people come up with a plan for COVID-19 vaccination distribution. “As they are working and riding, as with anything, they get better and better,” he says. “And if they have a crash, they have to retrain.”
It’s a bit of a trial by fire, because the only way to truly know you can tackle extreme terrain is to ride it, and the learning curve can be steep and a tad terrifying. “There was a woman in Zambia, her name was Matilda. She was just learning to ride, and she fell into a ditch where there was a snake,” Andrea says. “She never fell off again.”
Even seven-time motorcycle trials world champion Dougie Lampkin told Andrea he was impressed when he visited Lesotho in 2020 to offer trainees a skills workshop. “Dougie would ask the riders things like, ‘What are some scenarios you might find yourselves in out there?’ ” she says. After they had described the terrain, Lampkin told Andrea, “These guys are trials riders. They don’t know it, but they have definitely been trained at that level, and wow.”
Water crossing on a rural road in Buchanan, Liberia.
Although motorbikes are rare in urban Africa, where they’re often used as taxis – and where they’re commonly known as the boda boda, a term that started in Kenya but has since caught on elsewhere – they are the primary mode of transportation in rural areas, where other types of vehicles are virtually nonexistent. The boda boda suffers from a bad reputation, however, because they are involved in half of Africa’s road accidents, according to the WHO’s Road Safety report. Because there are no helmet laws (or licensing, or motorcycle-specific regulations of any kind), those accidents often result in death or serious injury – a crushing blow for the people who also have no insurance (which is most of them).
“These are some of the difficulties we face with trying to help people understand that your training and what you’re wearing make such a difference,” says Ajayi. “If a boda boda rider and a healthcare worker pull up at the same time, you see the difference. One is wearing jeans and flip-flops, the other is fully kitted.”
Riders ensures that its riders wear the right clothing for the conditions: helmets, full-fingered gloves, eye protection, and boots, plus personal protective equipment (PPE). “That was one of the early challenges,” Ajayi says. “It’s not so bad in the winter, when it’s cooler. But Africa’s heat is hard. No one wants to be wearing a head-to-toe kit in the hot sun, but it is the only way to be safe.”
Another component of Riders’ foundation is that the bikes themselves always need to be in working order. “Our goal is zero breakdowns,” Andrea says. Each rider gets his or her own assigned bike, which they ride until it is withdrawn from the fleet, to be replaced with a new one.
“Maintenance in New York means taking the bike to the garage and having them work on it,” Ajayi says. “Maintenance in Africa is usually some guy under a tree who has trained himself to look after bikes, which is helpful if he knows what he is doing, and not helpful if he doesn’t.”
To get everyone on the same page, Riders created the acronym PLANS to represent each aspect of a daily bike check: Petrol, Lubricant, Adjustment, Nuts, Stop. This ensures that the bike is kept in tip-top shape, from making sure it has enough fuel for the journey to confirming reliable brakes. “It takes about 5 to 8 minutes to do this routine, and they must do it every day,” Ajayi says. “If you do it every day, then you know what needs to be done right away, and you can keep an eye on things that might need work in a few days or weeks. We help the riders understand that if any activity feels different, then it’s time to call in a technician.”
Riders employs mobile technicians who rotate monthly around each country, and they operate service stations in central locations. In addition, the mobile techs run workshops that offer training and repair updates, and refreshers.
It quickly became obvious that putting the healthcare workers on motorcycles was going to be a game-changer. It allows doctors and nurses to visit people where they live. It also allows them to check the drinking water and that hygienically prepared and nutrient-dense food is available. When a case of TB is reported in a village, healthcare workers can get there fast to screen others, which means faster treatment and education on how to avoid spreading the disease.
Once the motorcycles, healthcare workers, and maintenance PLANS were firmly in place, it was time to ask what the countries’ other needs were and see what could be done about them. The answer: sample transport, a way to get things like urine and blood specimens or skin excisions safely transferred to a lab from an isolated village – and the results sent back in a timely manner.
Riders for Health sample courier at the Monrovia, Liberia, clinic.
Soon, Riders had developed the unique idea of creating “sample couriers,” people they train to collect, safely store, and efficiently deliver biohazardous samples via motorbike. They drop them at centralized labs and then return to obtain the results, which they deliver straight to the patient.
“Here’s how it had been going up until then,” says Ajayi. “You’d have a man who needed an HIV test living in a remote area. He must walk for hours to get to the health center, where he gets his blood drawn, and then he walks for hours back to his home. Meanwhile, the healthcare worker who took his blood must walk for several hours to get to the lab, which is closer to a bigger town. Then a lab worker sends the results to the healthcare center, and it sits there for months, because that man has no way of knowing when the results are in. If it’s negative, they would just wait for him to show up. If those results are positive, then the healthcare worker would have to walk all of those hours back and forth to find the man and tell him.”
Now, in the five countries where Riders operates, a sample courier regularly visits a village or a centralized healthcare center, collects all the samples needed (dropping off medications, recent test results, and other information, as well), and then tucks them into a cooler strapped to his motorbike before heading to the lab. As soon as the results are ready, he takes them back to the healthcare center, or takes critical results directly back to the patient.
Riders had begun the sample courier transport program in 1991 in Lesotho, the airy, high-altitude center of the misshapen Long John that is South Africa, which completely surrounds this landlocked, independent country. Two-thirds of Lesotho is corrugated by mountain ranges with peaks that summit between 9,000 and 11,200 feet. Crisscrossing these immovable objects are far more rivers than roads, and of the 2 million inhabitants of tiny Lesotho, one-third live in mountain areas that are nearly unreachable except by foot or perhaps horse or donkey.
Now, 30 years later, nearly all medical test results across Lesotho are turned around within three days.
Once Lesotho was well established, the NGO began to approach – and sometimes was even approached by – other sub-Saharan countries, often partnering with other NGOs and nonprofits, as well as the country’s health ministries, to set up similar training and transport programs. In 1999, they took on Nigeria, where more than half the population lives in rural areas, but only 15 percent of the roads are paved. Since then Riders has managed to consistently rack up 3 million kilometers per year in transport. And although they are able to work with only 23 of the country’s 36 states, that’s still 20 million people. In 2011, Malawi and its 18.6 million inhabitants came on board, and since then Riders has logged 2 million kilometers of riding to transport more than 400,000 biological samples – with zero breakdowns.
Over the years, regime changes and political or economic collapses have severed ties with some countries – including Zimbabwe, where they managed a fleet for years; Kenya, where they worked with faith-based organizations to connect HIV-positive women trained as riders with other HIV-positive women throughout the country, to help destigmatize their status; and Ghana, which brought them in temporarily to train riders.
In Zambia, though, their short stint resulted in a welcome affirmation of the good work they were doing when the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation decided to put up $2.3 million to fund a 2.5-year randomized study. Run by the Stanford Graduate School of Business from 2011 to 2014 in the eight districts of Zambia’s Southern Province, its goal was to determine whether Riders’ systematic management of motorcycles actually improved health ministry system performance.
It was no surprise to the African nationals working for Riders that the study confirmed that healthcare workers were indeed able to travel farther, visit more locations, and make more outreach visits on Riders’ motorcycles than had been previously possible, resulting in more preventive healthcare services being offered, more tests being administered, and more efficient healthcare services being provided.
So, when the Ebola crisis hit in 2014, Liberia came knocking. The Ministry of Health invited Riders to assess the potential for a nationwide disease surveillance program to help stem the alarming wave of cases threatening its 4.8 million residents, ensuring that outbreaks could be quickly identified and dealt with.
Local community in Kapatawee village, Bong County, Liberia.
By 2016, however, it became obvious that Riders for Health needed help securing more funding. And that’s how its other venture, Two Wheels for Life, came into being. Founded by Andrea and her pal Mamola, this fundraising arm operates separately, providing support for services, local and national communications, design and web development, and the Colemans’ daughter, Zoë Herron Coleman, serves as their communications director. That same year, they shut the U.K. offices permanently, making the transport management part of the organization entirely African-owned and led. Its programs and services are now run solely by nationals of the countries – which is rare for a non-African NGO.
Of course, as anyone who’s ever been to a poker run knows, moto riders are among the most charitable folks out there – and Riders found that the community was eager to get involved, starting with the now-famous Day of Champions fundraiser that takes place during the British Grand Prix weekend. Soon, MotoGP would announce Riders for Health as its official charity, and FIM did the same, followed by the support of multiple foundations, including Skoll and Ford Global Giving.
The timing could not have been better, because in 2018, The Gambia and its entire population of 2.1 million joined the Riders fold. Since then, not one pregnant woman has died because she couldn’t get to a healthcare facility in time – a remarkable statistic, considering that The Gambia’s maternal and child health prognosis previously had been among the lowest in the world.
Riders for Health outreach in Basse Santa Su, Gambia.
All told, Riders has directly impacted more than 47 million people in Africa over more than 30 years, through the work of 697 staff members and nearly a thousand trained riders using 1,400 vehicles – a thousand of which are motorcycles.
And they’re nowhere near being done yet.
Because of their successes in helping to combat Ebola, Riders has found itself on the frontlines of the COVID-19 outbreak in the countries they serve in Africa. One of Riders’ stars, Mahali Hlasa, who joined the nonprofit full-time in 2008 and serves as country director for Lesotho, has been selected by its Ministry of Health to join a small team that will assess the successes and failures of the first wave of addressing COVID-19 across the nation, followed by recommendations for how to respond to the second wave, and how to prepare for the arrival of the vaccine when it comes.
As of May 2021, only healthcare workers in Lesotho had been vaccinated, according to the WHO, and there was no official indication as to when more doses would arrive. Like any other healthcare-related issue across much of Africa, politics, funding, and unforgiving terrain will be key players in the rollout.
Hlasa knows that terrain all too well – the Lesotho native has ridden thousands of kilometers on a motorbike, and she was the first woman to be designated by Riders as a trainer. She began working with them in 1991, while she was still working for the Ministry of Health as an environmental health practitioner, after obtaining her master’s degree in environmental health from the Central University of Technology in South Africa.
“I would ride my bike to a village, and a lot of times a resident would allow us to use their house for the day to see patients,” she says, still cheerful on an online chat from Lesotho’s capital, Maseru, where she heads back to each night to catch a few hours of sleep after long days of working in the outlying districts. “There’s a certain sense of being part of a family, even with the people we only see once a month, because they love their children just like you do, and they want to see them healthy and happy.”
Nurse Jogob Gassama
While motorcyclists in most countries around the globe are overwhelmingly men, Riders boasts that most of their riders are not. That’s primarily driven by the fact that most healthcare workers in Africa are women. Hlasa says she has always preferred riding a motorbike to driving a car anyway. While she rarely has time to ride anymore, she looks forward to out-of-towners visiting once again post-pandemic, because that’s when she takes the time to tool around the countryside, showing it off from the open-air vantage point of a bike.
“Some parts of the country are impossible to reach even by motorbike, which is our ongoing challenge, and so we use horses from the villages,” she says. “A horseback rider comes from three hours away, brings the samples and gives them to the motorbike rider, who then travels to the health facility. And then when the results are in, they reverse the process. As you can imagine, it takes extremely complicated schedules to manage this.
“Some people might ask, in terms of economy of scale, ‘Is it worth it just to get to 25 people?’” she says. “But every life is precious, and so, yes. Yes, it is.”
Hlasa says that the top priority for Riders since the pandemic began has been upgrading the sample transport system for the specific needs of addressing COVID-19, training riders to use PPE, and safe sample handling. “For this we have needed more equipment, which allows for uninterrupted refrigeration, covering the storage and transport of samples,” she explains.
As of May 3, 2021, the country had officially recorded 10,733 COVID-19 infections and 318 deaths, while only 0.4 percent of the population has been fully vaccinated.
“The spread of COVID-19 is alarming for a country like ours,” Hlasa says. “Our people have so many pre-existing conditions that make it hard to survive this kind of disease. They already suffer from a high prevalence of TB and HIV, and that can be a death sentence combined with the virus.”
And because Lesotho is encased inside South Africa, the virus is especially insidious there. “The borders are very porous, and it is impossible to tell if you are from here or there,” Hlasa says. “Most of the people who first tested positive in Lesotho came from South Africa. There is no fence or wall. People go back and forth all day from both countries because they work in the other country or have family there. In some parts, it’s easier and closer to do your shopping across the border, rather than try to navigate the impossible mountains in the other direction.
“So, contract tracing in this region has been very, very hard.”
Once the South African variant was discovered, the situation became even more difficult, and the fact that few people have a radio, much less a television, made it that much more of a challenge when healthcare centers began to shut down, “which has had a dramatic effect,” Hlasa says. For example, fewer women have been able to come to the clinics for HIV testing and treatment, which is even more troubling for HIV-positive expectant mothers, who require consistently administered medication with no interruptions to keep from passing HIV to their babies in utero.
Not to mention the effects of isolation, which inaccessible villages understood long before the pandemic. “So many times, when a sample courier or healthcare worker’s engine can be heard from miles away, people come outside and start singing to welcome them,” Ajayi says. “The rider is greeted like an old friend, and there is real happiness to see them.”
Riders for Health outreach in Basse Santa Su, Gambia.
Meanwhile, in Nigeria, Ajayi and the rest of the Riders team have been facilitating the movement of COVID-19 samples for multiple health agencies. They have transported more than 2,000 samples for testing across 12 of the country’s 36 states since December 2020, and are mobilizing to take the transport operation nationwide within the next few months. Ajayi says Riders will be involved in the storage and distribution of the vaccines, and that cold storage facilities are expected to be in use by June. “We just contracted with a company to build this cold storage,” Ajayi says, “but it can’t be the usual refrigerator for storing beef and pork and fish. It has to be one that can consistently hold the temperature perfectly. There can be no mistakes with this.”
Next up on Riders’ radar: upgrading each country’s data-collection technology, which they had begun implementing before the pandemic ground everything to a halt. Transitioning the healthcare systems from paper – which Andrea says has been “stacked literally floor to ceiling across entire rooms” in some facilities – to data-management systems that can provide real-time test results and ongoing care plans that can be tracked on riders’ phones and synced with healthcare facilities’ computers, is their highest post-pandemic priority.
It’s going to be another game-changer, and further proof that Riders and its riders are committed to the concept of “delivering health care to the last mile.”
“One of the things that always struck me in moto racing was that the motorcycles literally go around in circles,” Coleman says. “That didn’t fit with my sense of the world or what a human being needs to do to contribute to the well-being of the world. If we don’t do something to push things forward, we’ll always just be going in circles.”