Bucket List Item Checked: Cattle Drive on a Harley

An old guy was sitting on his quad, sideways and sticking out half-way into the road, when I turned onto Gwin Mine Road as I rode the Fat Bob through Paloma today. Gwin Mine is a very small road that connects Paloma with Hwy 49. The name of the road changes to Middle Bar Road when it crosses the Pardee Channel. I stopped to ask the old guy on the quad about the quality of the road, which looks pretty rough, and if he thought if I could ride through to Hwy 49. I wanted to make sure it didn't turn into a dirt road. He said I could, but that I should wait for the cattle they were driving up the road.

I spent the next ten or fifteen minutes talking to "Gilbert" about land, Stockton, Mokelumne Hill, his sons' Road Kings and sundry other things, and eventually, sure enough, a team came driving a herd of 30-40 cattle right up the road towards us. There were two men on foot on either side snapping their whips, a truck in front, and a truck in back. Gwin Mine Road occupies an extremely narrow and confined corridor on our globe, with barbed wire fences close-in on both sides, so it was probably pretty easy to keep them together for most of the drive. But the road opens up dramatically at the Paloma Road intersection where several houses sit with their ample country yards, and three roads and a couple of driveways intersect.

They needed to turn the cattle onto Paloma Road. The cattle, with that limited part of their own mind they share, seemed to want rather to turn off the main path into any open side space. So the drivers were strategically positioning the trucks, the walkers and the quads to keep the cattle together, out of the yards and driveways, and to turn the herd down Palomo Road. (Never mind the whole "driving a herd of cattle down Paloma Road" thing.)

Then, the coolest thing happened. They asked me to move my bike to block a road, and to block the cattle turning that way. I had to wrestle the Fat Bob up a driveway, and park it sideways across the road between two fence posts. It was a bitch to turn it back around. But sure enough, Fatty and I got to "boo-yah" couple of cows back to the herd.

I yelled to the guy in the truck behind the herd that it was my first cattle drive. He grinned large and said, "Boring, huh?"

"Nah, it's pretty exciting the first time," I laughed.

I'm the only Harley rider I know ever actively to participate in a cattle drive... on the Harley!

As a postscript, the scenery on Gwin Mine Road and Middle Bar Road is absolutely gorgeous, totally beautiful. Gwin Mine Road sulks along a shelf above the Pardee Channel as the latter wends its way through the mountains. There is a red iron bridge midway between Paloma and Hwy 49 where you cross the channel. After that, it's called Middle Bar.

The cattle drive was a fitting prelude, however, because riding my Fatty up Gwin Mine Road and Middle Bar Road was like twenty miles of posting English in a western saddle on an angry, crippled steel mare. I averaged about 15 MPH.I shifted up into second about three times; otherwise, it was all first gear. Everything still free to shake is sore. The road's surface resembles a repeatedly paved hell from the time of the Solutreans. Those roads may, perhaps, be comfortably navigated on a hovercraft.

The ride was definitely worthwhile for the landscape, though.

Here is a map of the ride.
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