Power Trip : Portola Ride Represents Ultimate in Male Bonding--and Hints at Who’s in the Saddle in Orange County

So saddle up men and go riding,

and we’ll hit the Portola trail;

They have to put us someplace,

but they don’t have a big enough jail.

Every spring for the last 25 years, the hardy horsemen of the Portola Ride have kissed their wives and cares goodby, saddled up the horses and headed for the back pages of Orange County history.

Again today, with a contingent ranging from expert horsemen to saddle-sore pretenders, the Portola riders will celebrate local history by retracing parts of the route first traveled by the Spanish who came through the county in 1769.

But in keeping alive a tradition two centuries old, the Portola riders have carved out one of their own. All male and by invitation only, the Portola Ride has become synonymous with passage into the inner sanctum for the county’s most important businessmen, 240 of them for this year’s ride.

For example, one of the driving forces behind the ride is Anthony Moiso, president of the Santa Margarita Co. Brad Gates, the county’s sheriff, is general manager of this year’s ride.

For one long glorious weekend--away from the public spotlight and protected by the isolation of the county’s uninhabited hills and canyons--the Portola riders can escape.

The Portola has become sort of the ultimate boys’ night out, a three-day act of male bonding and revelry in which the whiskers grow and the whiskey flows.

“It’s basically a ride the guys can go on and let their hair down completely,” said one longtime Portola rider who insisted on anonymity, after humorously suggesting that there would be a “lynching” if remarks were attributed to him.

Over the years, a wall of silence has surrounded the Portola Ride. Riders have been asked not to discuss it, so the Portola has taken on the trappings of a secret club, much like hideaways that young boys revel in and of which outsiders are kept unaware.

In addition, the Portola leaders--still an original group of eight known as the “Big 8” (plus Moiso, affectionately dubbed “Big 8 1/2”)--have assiduously avoided publicity.

“We’re a low-profile group, and we don’t want you (the media) looking at us,” said Portola rider Tony Forster, former mayor of San Juan Capistrano and descendant of one of the south county’s pioneering families. “It’s just the way we want to be.”

When asked whether it is hard to maintain a low profile with 200-plus men on horseback, Forster added jovially, “It’s not that we don’t want you looking at us. It’s just a private thing, and we don’t want any publicity.”

“I think they thought it would be a problem that once you opened it to the press, where would you cut it off?” said the anonymous rider. “All of a sudden, certain things would be leaking out and popping out here and there.”

Because of the high-powered nature of some of those on the ride, leaders probably don’t want to be badgered, he theorized. “Some people want to go on the ride because they think it’d be a good business move or they’d make good business contacts.

“There are some people who wanted to go on the ride, but couldn’t get on. It could be political, but some people couldn’t get on. I know (people who have) wanted to go on the ride and have made requests of the padrones (the leaders) to invite them, but they didn’t get invited.”

But this year, on the ride’s silver anniversary, Moiso, Gates and Big 8 charter member Bill Votaw agreed to discuss the origins of the Portola Ride and what it represents to them. They declined to discuss what happens on the ride, with Moiso saying only, “It (the ride) can be distorted if not handled correctly.”

Interviews with those three and others familiar with the ride have helped create a picture of what happens on the Portola--an event steeped in high jinks, carousing, heavy drinking and rich fellowship, but all against a backdrop of an appreciation for the physical beauty of the county and the history that modern society seems bent on trying to overwhelm.

The rider who wanted to remain anonymous said the ride represents “an opportunity to get together with friends that you may see all the time in this political event, or that charitable event, or that social event, but that you never have the opportunity to really sit down and visit with. This is one of those rare times when you can do that.

“For some strange reason, it doesn’t seem to happen the rest of the year.”

Votaw, 65, said it isn’t uncommon to see the men hugging one another as they renew acquaintances at the beginning of each ride. That only sets the stage for the fellowship generated by the ride, he said.

“When guys get out of the fast lane and get over those hills and go back into the hills, most of them can almost forget about what’s in the fast lane,” Votaw said. “When you’re sitting out there in the hills, you’re sitting there thinking that right over there where you’re sitting, or right where you have the campfire, that’s where Father Serra and all his people came who built the missions that went all through California.”

Besides those solemn moments, the ride’s history is also replete with uproarious, fraternity house-style high jinks. Besides enlivening the proceedings, many served the practical function of awakening the reluctant riders in the mornings.

Among some of the more amusing Portola snapshots, pieced together from interviews with witnesses:

* The year someone came through in the middle of the night and dusted the campsite with a fox scent. The next morning, a bugle sounded and red-coated riders chased a pack of hounds through the site.

* The time helicopters buzzed the camp with Wagner blaring in a simulation of the memorable scene from “Apocalypse Now.”

* The time a naked woman parachuted into camp.

* The time a herd of elephants stormed the campsite.

* The year several nude women were seen running near the camp.

* The years when the Capistrano Valley High School marching band was smuggled into the campsite and awakened the troops at daybreak, playing reveille and marching songs, according to R. Lynn Olinger, the school’s instrumental music director.

* The time a nude Lady Godiva rode through the camp. “I don’t know how she showed up,” one rider said. “Somebody had sneaked her in. She was riding around, and a lot of guys were running around on horseback, trying to catch her.” Asked whether she had flowing hair, he said, “I didn’t notice her hair so much.”

And then, of course, the food and drink:

“These guys eat a lot of meat, so we figure about a pound per person per meal,” said Steve Reush, executive chef for Park Avenue Catering, which has handled the Portola affair for the last 18 years. That adds up to 750 pounds of meat a day, he said.

“A lot of it is living up to each other’s expectations,” Reush said. “Sort of a macho ‘I can out-eat you.’ The thing is, it’s kind of a retreat, they’re kind of playing Old West, but not in a derogatory sense.”

This year’s Thursday-through-Sunday menu, which has been printed out on a five-page computer sheet, includes tri-tip steaks, a special Cajun-style grilled sausage, potatoes, fajitas, tortillas, swordfish, fettuccine, fried chicken, New England clam chowder, tenderloin filet, chili, hamburgers, shrimp and desserts that include strawberry shortcake, peach cobbler and cheesecake.

For breakfast, the caterers are planning on 1,000 eggs a day and 700-800 biscuits. To wash it down, they’re planning on 10 gallons of coffee a day.

Is there much drinking, you ask?

“You’re getting into a whole different arena when you get into liquor,” Reush said. “These guys drink a lot of tequila, and usually for the entire event we figure probably at least two bottles per man. So, we’re talking 42 cases of tequila. That’s what they prefer, but we’ve got Jack Daniels Bourbon, vodka, gin. . . .”

How about beer? “I’d say, easily, they go through 12 kegs a day,” Reush said.

“The drink of choice for breakfast is something called a Ramos Fizz,” Reush said. “That’s made with orange juice, half-and-half and tequila. It’s a breakfast drink. I guess it wakes you up.

“These guys are heavy tequila drinkers. A lot of the lore of the Old West is tied in with Mexico, so I think that’s part of it.”

Even though the company has catered the affair for years, the logistics are difficult, Reush said. “For a thing like this, we have one kitchen--a 40-foot kitchen trailer with refrigerator, sink, stove. . . . We have a 30-foot refrigerated truck, we have another 30-foot beer truck with taps on the side, then we have another truck that keeps our equipment.”

A 10-person crew usually handles the Portola Ride, Reush said.

Reush said he enjoys the Portola crowd: “They’re not much of a problem. They fool around, have a good time, yell a lot but no fights. They’re a real good group of people. Especially since we’ve been doing it so long, we kind of feel like part of the group. They’re always asking us to have a drink with them.”

Ray Watson is vice chairman of the Irvine Co. and was company president when he went on the first of his three Portola rides in the mid-1970s.

“I’m not really much of the fraternity kind of guy, so I don’t generally enjoy the long cocktail parties, or the sort of fraternity high jinks, which is part of that (ride),” he said.

Watson went on the first ride “on a sense of obligation” but enjoyed himself: “There’s a lot of comradeship, a lot of friendship and high jinks and too much drinking, but the fact is you’re out there in contrast to what you spend your daily life doing, and with the history of Orange County and the ranches, and it can’t help but sort of hit you that you’re part of that heritage.”

One of the highlights, Watson said, was “that they had incredibly good dinners, for so-called roughing it. The other thing was, it seemed like we stopped every hour, and they had a bar there.”

Other all-male rides into the wilderness, including at least one in Northern California, have been dogged by rumors of illicit activities, such as prostitution.

Watson said he never saw anything but “good, clean fun . . . frisky fun.”

A rider who has been on many of the Portola Rides said: “I think that (rumors of impropriety) is a figment of imagination. People talk about it, people speculate that someone else is doing something. But I haven’t seen it.”

Tragedy marred the event in November, 1986, during the abbreviated one-day ride that is a preliminary to the full-fledged Portola Ride. Santa Ana businessman Rogers Severson, not an experienced horseman, was thrown from his horse and broke two vertebrae, paralyzing him from the midchest down. Through extensive rehabilitation, Severson can now stand and walk short distances with a cane.

When Severson later held a fund-raiser to help other rehabilitation patients, many of the Portola riders contributed part of the more than $100,000 that he raised.

Although the Severson tragedy became part of the Portola history, it is a history dominated not by major mishaps but by male fellowship, participants said.

Watson laughingly recalled John Newman, then chairman of the board of the Irvine Co., getting caught up in the moment: “We started out in San Juan Capistrano, had margaritas and then rode to the ocean. I can stay on a horse as long as it doesn’t move too fast, but John rides out into the surf, sort of showing all of us what a great horseman he was. A wave came in, knocked the horse down and knocked John off, and he cracked a rib.”

Undaunted, Newman didn’t scratch himself from the event, Watson said.

On another trip, Watson said, one man had drunk himself into a stupor and fell into such a deep sleep he couldn’t be awakened. Unfortunately, he was sleeping on sloping ground near the crackling bonfire. Because Watson was an Irvine executive--and because riders were on ranch property--he felt responsible.

So, Watson said, he assigned a company deputy “to stay with that guy to make sure he didn’t roll into the fire.”

Watson hasn’t ridden on the Portola for about 12 years. “My impression is that the riders are basically thought of as friends, not who’s the most prestigious or who had the highest position. It’s not like they said, ‘Let’s make up a cocktail party and see how many names we can drop.’ These are people who’ve known each other for a long time and been around the county a long time.”

Watson said he has no doubts where Moiso’s interests lie. “The Mission Viejo family, they’re the ones who keep it together. Tony is an outstanding man and feels very much the heritage of the place.”

Like many traditions, the Portola Ride has humble beginnings. In 1963, during the building of the Saddleback Inn in Santa Ana, owner Bruce Gelker wanted a mission bell, emblematic of early California history, put in front of the motel.

Builder Bud Curtis thought something more ceremonial was in order and suggested bringing a bell from San Juan Capistrano to the motel by horse-drawn cart. With a core group that eventually expanded to the Big 8, the men sowed the seeds of the Portola.

County historian Don Meadows told the group about the trek of Gaspar de Portola, who led a group of soldiers and others who accompanied Father Serra on the first overland trip by white men from Mexico into California. Smitten by the history and already mindful of the fast-changing county landscape, the Big 8 decided to re-create the Portola Ride.

For the next few months, the group met and eventually put together a traveling group of 38 men, Votaw said. They arranged to fly the Goodyear blimp over the proposed route to figure out logistics and campsites.

“The whole thing was centered around that doggone bell,” Votaw said. “We thought it would be a good idea if we could bring it through all the old ranchos. . . . At first, we didn’t think it was a long-term thing. In fact, we thought maybe it would be the last time we’d be able to ride through all the ranches (because of increasing development).”

Instead, the ride was a smashing success. It has never wavered, especially since 1977, when Rancho Mission Viejo became the permanent host. That is why Moiso, as head of the company that owns the 40,000-acre ranch, has unofficially joined the Big 8.

Although the riders always link some historical elements to the ride, they don’t follow the same route every year. While in previous years they have left from San Juan Capistrano, this year the group will eat breakfast in that city and then take a bus ride to the Camp Pendleton headquarters, where they will saddle up after lunch and receive a send-off from the U.S. Marine Corps Band.

One of the main features of this year’s ride will be the distribution of several replicas of the bells that dotted the old El Camino Real that ran up the California coast from Mexico.

Moiso, one of the most visible opponents of the slow-growth initiative on the June 7 county ballot, said he can get emotional talking about the county’s history and the heritage of California cowboys. Each year, the Portola ride makes some acknowledgment of a part of California history, either in the placement of a marker or some other ceremony. Portola festivities also include a series of rodeo events. “It’s amazing how many professional businessmen are excellent horsemen,” one rider said.

The ride has also left its mark in other ways. Over the years, the Portola leaders have donated more than $40,000 to help restore a wing of the San Juan Capistrano mission.

“As we have grown and the ride has matured,” Moiso said, “the feeling for California history has continued to grow as a part of it.”

The Portola leaders tried to keep the ride to 150 men, but it has expanded past 200. This year, because of the increased interest surrounding the 25th ride, the list has grown to about 240.

Although Moiso, Gates and Votaw played down the notion that the ride is an exalted event, it is seen that way by those on the outside. Several people interviewed for this article, who have gone on a one-day ride in the fall that serves as a preliminary for the three-day event, said it is considered an honor to be invited on the Portola.

Phil Schwartze, a land planner for a private company, has taken the one-day Portola ride. “I do feel it’s a very prestigious event,” he said. “It’s certainly an honor to be invited out there.”

Joe Kapp, former Minnesota Vikings quarterback, actor and former football coach at UC Berkeley, was one of the guests on the ride Schwartze took, he said.

“If the ride did anything,” Schwartze said, “it reminded you very quickly what the area used to be like because when you get out there on a horse in the hills where you have no touch with what’s going on in the city, it reminds you what Orange County used to be about.”

“Honest to God,” Moiso said, “as you get older, it’s an opportunity once a year for three or four days for friends to stop for just a bit.”

“And smell the air,” Gates said.

Moiso nodded. “It’s taking care of a horse, it’s sleeping on the ground, it’s helping the other guy with his horse. . . . It’s the same game the vaqueros (Mexican cowboys, whom the Portola riders honored one year) played.”

Although the raucous times have become legendary in Portola circles, the quiet times also hold a special place for the riders.

The carousing and heavy drinking occur, one rider said, but “have never gotten out of hand. There probably have been some awkward moments, but nothing ever out of hand. You always have a few guys who get on the rowdy side and are whooping and hollering. It’s tolerated, but it’s not the dominant tone. The dominant tone is basically relaxing, conversation and visiting.”

Karen Miloe, the director of sales for the catering company that services the Portola, said: “A lot of these guys are top politicians, corporate heads, CEOs of companies, people who are somewhat in the public light and always trailed. If they say the wrong thing, it hits headlines.

“This is one place where there are no women, no cameras, no press, so they can get away and have fun and not hit the headlines. So, it gives them a well-needed outlet.”

She would be unhappy if the Portola Ride changed. “I think there’s something to be said for camaraderie and the old fraternity feeling. I think people need that.”

Rusty Richards, a former member of the Sons of the Pioneers singing group, wrote a poem about the Portola, some of which appears at the top of this article. Twenty-five verses long, Richards’ poem is a paean to shared moments along the trail, perhaps meaningful only to other Portola riders. But it offers a glimpse of why Votaw said the men on the ride remain the best friends he has ever had.

An excerpt from Richards’ poem:

It’s grooming my horse in the cool grey dawn,

and loading him saddle and all;

And then taking him down to where he’ll take me,

to answer the yearly call

to saddle up men and go ridin’ ,

and I answer that call every spring.

And it rings my heart like the Mission bells

That beckon the swallows, “Take Wing . . . “

It’s music, friends and horses;

it’s feeling close to God.

It’s the clatter of steel on the Capo streets,

of five hundred hooves, well shod . . .

It’s living life at its very best,

So good that it’s damn near bad;

Like caviar, avocados,

tequila or my Cad . . .

It’s the memories that all year long,

Keep running through my mind.

The good that we brought with us

and what we leave behind.”