Wheels of Fortune

Only three hours into the ride and already five bikers are missing. Worse, the chase truck has disappeared with all the beer on board. The 18 bikers who remain pull into a dusty bar, where they buy some beers and pop them open.

“Next time,” one says, “let’s make sure whoever drives the truck has an IQ over 60.”

Meet the Convertibles, a rough-looking group from the San Fernando Valley on their annual summer pilgrimage to the Bridgeport Harley Jamboree. They range in age from 26 to 56; their fashion statement leans heavily toward leather and chains. Their faces are hidden behind scraggly beards; their brawny bodies are tattooed and pierced.

But they have something in common besides all that. They also love making money. Two years ago, they combined their passions and formed a limited liability corporation that meets regularly in a Harley shop to chart the course of their investments--and the route of their next ride.

Members are quick to note that they are not a motorcycle club but a company. And it’s more than just a matter of linguistic nuance. Many motorcycle clubs are known for their lawlessness. For the Convertibles, violence and drugs are strictly forbidden. An infraction means probation and possible eviction.

“We’re firm,” says Jesse Fenton, the Convertibles’ 47-year-old secretary. “There’s no drugs. No weapons. We have a lawyer and money, so we don’t need weapons.”

Beyond that, there are some specific criteria for membership. The first is personality. Members have to get along in a group. Mavericks are disdained. Second, they have to ride an American-made motorcycle. The Convertibles believe steadfastly that people should “buy American.”

Furthermore, prospective members must put into the company an amount equal to the company’s determined value--a closely guarded secret--divided by the number of members already enrolled. A new member must be sponsored by a member in good standing and must be able to contribute something to the company professionally.

A few months ago, the Convertibles decided to make some money by renovating an office building. Everyone--even those members who aren’t in the construction business--took part in the project. “We killed it in one weekend, and all the money we made went into the general account,” says Tom Vasilaros, the brown-haired, silver-bearded president and resident arbiter of member disputes.

(There are no women Convertibles, but Vasilaros says membership is not gender-biased. “If a woman filled all the criteria, she would be a Convertible.”)

Eventually, the Convertibles hope to start their own construction business. They also want to provide motorcycle insurance to members, make health insurance available to those who don’t have it, and one day live off the proceeds of their investments.

“The original concept was small: to start making money and use it for our rides,” says Boyd Lindquist, the 42-year-old former secretary. “But if we continue at the rate we’re going, in two years’ time we can achieve our overall financial goals.”

Meanwhile, these guys--who originally called themselves “the Lavoris gang” after a vodka drink they invented that looked like mouthwash--are hardly all business.

Unlike the RUBS (rich urban bikers) they love to hate, they have an all-consuming passion for their bikes. Many of the Convertibles have built their bikes and, sometimes to the chagrin of their loved ones, spend countless hours tearing them down and rebuilding them, each time finding a more perfect pitch for the bored-out engines.

And each year the Convertibles take the mandatory ride to Bridgeport, a small town north of Mammoth Lakes in the eastern Sierra, where the Chamber of Commerce annually sponsors a jamboree.

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Routine weekend trips generally include the wives and kids, but the Bridgeport ride is strictly members-only--a stockholders’ retreat, as it were, at which the Convertibles converge with thousands of other bikers to drink beer, eat greasy food and watch biker chicks arm-wrestle one another in front of the stately Bridgeport City Hall.

Any one of them will tell you, though, that getting there is a lot more fun than being there. This year’s ride, organized by Lindquist, takes them up the coast to Big Sur, across the Central Valley to the Sierra foothills above Modesto and over the Sonora Pass into Bridgeport. After a final night in Mammoth Lakes and the ride home, they will have covered more than 1,200 miles in four days, stopping about every 50 miles for gas, beer and something to eat (the amount of food that these men consume could feed a small country).

It is at such a stop, in Pismo, that the chase truck and missing bikers are reunited with the group. (Turns out they’d been separated from the rest when they had to stop for some road construction.) Vasilaros is especially relieved. It’s his responsibility to make sure everyone stays together and no one gets hurt by riding too crazy or drinking too much.

“We have to respect each other,” he says. “Any one of us can hurt all of us.”

On Day 2, fate takes out the first rider. Lenny Elwell, a jovial 44-year-old with shoulder-length hair, far-reaching wit and a colorful tattoo on his ample right arm, has to climb aboard the chase truck when his bike, for reasons that baffle even the best mechanics in the group, breaks down.

Though Elwell can think of nothing more fulfilling than a long ride on a fast bike, he is a perennial optimist and manages to find something good in the idea of making the rest of the trip in the truck, with driver “Chuck the Duck” and his only other passenger, a videographer who inherits two names, Ted and Ken, because no one can remember it’s just Ted.

“At least now I can really get drunk,” Elwell says, waving to his buddies as they take off on a glorious ride along Big Sur and the Carmel coast.

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Later that day, as they head toward the High Sierra, the Convertibles are beset by more problems. One of the bikes has a bald tire, which means three hours in the small town of Seaside until it’s fixed. Later, to make up for lost time, they ride straight through the hot and dusty Central Valley. When they finally pull into the Gold Rush town of Sonora, they really want a beer.

On Day 3--riding so close together on the narrow roads that one can feel the synchronicity and would be hard-pressed to slip a piece of plywood between the bikes--they climb the 9,600-foot summit of the Sonora Pass. They stop on the edge of a meadow with snowcapped peaks as their backdrop, and they are elated.

The helmets come off and the cameras come out. There is much back-slapping. One of the guys does a sort of rain dance to the music that pulses out of the chase truck. Cigars are lit and beers are passed around.

“It don’t get much better than this,” Fenton says.

And, actually, he’s right. Because hours later at Bridgeport, where thousands of bikers have converged from all over the state, the mood is level. The Convertibles stay long enough to watch the arm-wrestling, eat a slab of beef off the fire pit and check out the portable tattoo parlors. But, having made the ride to Bridgeport several years in a row now, they are somewhat bored by the jamboree’s offerings.

So they take off on a magnificent ride on the June Lakes Loop, a drive of heart-stopping beauty through some of Mammoth Lakes’ most pristine topography. By nightfall, they’re almost partied out--some actually opt for ice cream instead of more beer--and they turn in early.

The following day, the group splits up. Some leave early; some leave later to avoid the midday desert heat on the way home.

And Elwell has had it with not riding.

By now another bike has broken down, which means that two bikes must be stuffed in the back of the truck and four bodies must squeeze into the cab. The last anyone sees of Elwell, he is leaning against the chase truck with a haggard look in his eyes, leading one to suspect that a Convertible is probably safer on a motorcycle than off one.

In a week, they will converge again in Vasilaros’ spotless garage for their bimonthly company meeting. They’ll rehash the ride, and then they’ll get down to business.