Come Hell or Hoka Hey

© FLickr / echosforberg

Try this on for a great motorcycle ride: Start at Key West, FL, and ride across the U.S. and Canada all the way up to Homer, Alaska. Depending on your route, that’s a good 7,000 or 8,000 miles, the kind of trip that would be a good extended summer jaunt. Now consider doing it in eight days. Still interested? Oh, and did we mention you can’t sleep in motels, you have to sleep on the ground next to your bike, and you’re not allowed to save time by taking the interstate?

If you’re thinking at this point that only a lunatic would take on that sort of challenge, then you might be interested to know that between 500 and 800 lunatics of exactly this type just did this very ride. They were part of the Hoka Hey Motorcycle Challenge, which departed en masse from Key West on June 20. Eight days later the first riders reached Homer, with hundreds more trickling in over the next several days.

What Possessed Them?

Well, for starters, there was a prize offered to the winner of this race of $500,000 in Alaskan gold. That’s about 25 pounds of gold by today’s price. What extremes would you go to to win 25 pounds of gold?

Still, as one of the riders, Mike Donohue of Spring Hill, FL, put it, “I doubt that you had 25 [riders] who were prepared and hard core enough” to have a chance of winning the prize. Why then did so many of the rest pay the $1,000 entry fee and make the entire ride, knowing early on that their chances of winning were nil?

“To be part of something. To belong to a group,” says Donohue. “If your sole reason was pure greed you were doing it for the wrong reason.”

Max Ornelas, of Loveland, CO, was along for part of the ride, acting as support for Robbie Vinson, also from Loveland. Speaking while the race was still in progress, he echoed Donohue, saying, “There are people who think they can win and others, the vast majority, who just want the adventure. When these guys finish this race, no matter what happens, they’re going to be among a very elite group of people.”

No Matter What Happens

Those words, “no matter what happens,” make reference to a number of things that have happened, and which have cast a shadow on the event. Riding long hours with little rest is not a formula for safe motorcycling, and there have been numerous accidents along the way. Injuries have ranged from minor to serious, and two men have died.

Additionally, there are some people who have long been convinced that the entire race is a sham designed to pad the pockets of the organizers and for which no prize will ever be awarded. Although a winner was to be announced on July 9 in Homer, the prize is to be awarded Aug. 11 in Sturgis, SD, during Sturgis Bike Week. Events will show how accurate these predictions are.

But for the multitude who never expected to win the money, what happens is not as important what already happened. They had their experience, they have their memories, and nothing can change that.

Mike Donohue tells of moments of doubt. He reached a gas station late at night on the highway in Canada only to find the place closed, meaning, “You’re there for the night.” Lying down to sleep on a picnic table in 30-degree cold, he wondered, “What the heck am I doing here?”

Still, he said, “I had a great ride. We got to experience something the rest of the world hasn’t done.” And five years from now he’ll still be telling people, “I actually did complete it.”

Hoka Hey or, as some call it, Hoaxa Hey, no one can take that away.

Coordination of the interview with Mike Donohue was assisted by Adriana Rosas, Marketing Director of Lake Weir Living, who sponsored another Hoka Hey racer.