Grand gathering

ROSALIA, Wash. – This sleepy farm town on the Palouse was transformed into, well, a sleepy biker town on Friday as the third annual 100 Years of Motorcycles Rally got under way.

There were no drunken hordes, no rampant nudity and no other signs of depravity, according to town Marshal Robert Fitzgerald. By sundown, there had yet to be any citations issued, he said, though there may have been a few fashion violations.

Fitzgerald said about 4,000 visitors had come into the town of about 650 inhabitants by late Friday. He expected about three times that number by tonight. Some stayed in RVs, which were beginning to fill the town’s rodeo grounds. Others pitched tents in yards, apparently with the permission of homeowners.

There were no lines at the food vendors, and nobody had trouble getting a drink at the local watering holes – the Longhorn Café, which was up and running in time for the rally after being gutted by an April 1 fire, and the Brass Rail. A handful of makeshift beer gardens also were in business for the two-day event.

“It keeps us afloat for the rest of the year when it’s slow and sad,” said Rita Crowl, manager of the Brass Rail.

Of course, not everybody in Rosalia is happy with the annual transformation of their town. In June, a group of opponents voiced opposition to the rally, The Spokesman-Review reported. Mayor Ken Jacobs and Chamber of Commerce president Bonnie Stites, owner of the Longhorn, said they would stop the rally if most of the town was against it, but they didn’t find that to be the case.

So this weekend motorcycles line both sides of Rosalia’s main street once again.

Thanks to the artistry of customization, the bikes come in all shapes and sizes, but mostly they come Harley-Davidson.

That’s because a Harley is more than a motorcycle, explained Buck Banks, of Shumate Harley-Davidson in Spokane. “It’s a lifestyle.”

Banks has been changing people’s lifestyles for about four months now, ever since changing his own after seeing the film “Wild Hogs,” with John Travolta and William H. Macy. That’s when the 60-year-old former school teacher from Bakersfield, Calif., decided to make the switch from selling educational materials to selling Harleys.

“There’s a lot of gratification in it because I help their dreams come true,” Banks said of customers.

About 60 percent of Harley sales are to first-time motorcycle buyers, he said, “probably the highest it’s ever been.”

Banks said most of his customers are guys around his own age. One recent customer bought a Harley after suffering a heart attack.

“I turned his $160-a-month cigarette habit into a Harley payment,” Banks said, adding that last time he saw the customer he was tanned and looking healthy.

Sitting on a bar stool in the Brass Rail, Don Leuty, 54, had a theory about why men of a certain age become bikers of a certain age.

“Everybody is looking for a way to get away,” said the real estate appraiser from Big Fork, Mont. “The world is getting so congested.”

So the graying employee of the Montana Department of Revenue has hit the open road on his Yamaha Silverado, visiting his son in Spokane before heading west to see an old friend on the coast.

After meeting some friendly Rosalia folks, Leuty said, he’ll be back next year with a tent.