Another Story Part III

I wish I had been there to see what he thought was so funny because that dude was totally tore up by it. I always love funny shows myself, only I hadn’t seen any in the previous 60 seconds. The result of my first full ride (I count this as a full ride because it lasted about 8 seconds) my bicycle-riding jacket was torn to shreds by the whole episode and my jeans were now ‘forward’ fashionable (that fashion wasn’t for another twenty years). I got back in my car (a 1966 Impala, which is why I was looking for a car in the first place) and sat there for about twenty minutes running everything I had done good and bad through my head. I was endeavoring to come up with something plausible as to why I resembled a ‘Don’t Drive Drunk’ ad campaign poster child for my folks. (I lived at home while getting my degree). I came up with a brilliant and completely reasonable and credible story, but it relied too much on run-away forestry clearing equipment to be plausible, so I was left with telling the mundane version, the truth.

In retrospect I was most upset about tearing up my bicycle jacket. My father owned and operated a bicycle shop in Junction City, and he had given that jacket to me as remuneration for labor (rather than paying me a wage that I or any human could live on). That jacket represented several months’ worth of work and now the sleeve piping was ripped off as well as one sleeve. The right-side hand pocket was somewhere blowing around Ogden and only God knows where my ink pens ended up. My jeans weren’t that big a deal. Most of my denim wardrobe had holes in them from various activities, some including a chain saw in pastures (where the forestry angle was handy but unusable). The fact that I also was carrying a pretty good load of cinders in my epidermis made the whole logging angle seem far-fetched. Otherwise, I could easily say I walked through a chipper-shredder and they would have believed it. But they would be suspicious about the rocks and beer bottle bits encrusting my flesh.

The next day I had my dad drive me over to Ogden to pick up my bike before I had to be in class. That way I wouldn’t have to worry about picking my car up and he could see why I was still picking Budweiser bottle bits out of my hide. We got to the dealership about 10 AM and the wind was kicking up pretty good. The dealer was happy (if not hysterical this time) to see me. The bike was as he promised, repaired. My new (to me) XS 650 now sported mismatched mirrors, a new bent brake lever in place of the broken one, a fresh rusty rear turn signal indicator, and electricians taped up grip. Sweet. I turned the ignition switch and gave the bike a little kick. The bike responded by kicking me back with a loud ‘CHUFF’ from the exhaust. I then gave it a resounding kick, and it almost pitched me over the bars when the kicker hit bottom and kicked back.

The dealer said, “you may want to pull the compression release lever before you do that.”

Compression release? Really? “OK, where’s that?” I asked. He pointed to the tertiary level on the right-side handlebar that was the starter lever for the bike. Hmmnn, go figure. With the lever pulled the bike started on the first kick. Well, isn’t that hoot. My dad had seen enough (or was disgusted, either way he left). Now that the only way home was by two-wheel transport, repeating the previous day’s antics really wasn’t an option I was willing to go for. With the bike idling like a steel drum half full of scrap iron careening down a mountainside I was left to ponder how to proceed in the face of certainty. I was fairly certain I was going to be creamed by traffic, or at the least pounded to a pulp. Either way it wasn’t a real pleasant thought.

This time as I waited for traffic to clear adequately to merge onto the highway I shunned sitting perpendicular to traffic (my approach from the previous day) and instead aimed the bike into the flow of traffic I would be traveling, that is eastward. Since I was on the south side of the highway, aiming the bike east into the flow of traffic only required my head to be mounted to an owl’s spine to see traffic. Then I remembered I had mirrors for that, and that proved much easier than trying to emulate Linda Blair in the ‘Exorcist.’ When traffic had sufficiently cleared (the road had no cars coming for about a mile) I deemed it time for a slower, safer departure. So, I eased the clutch out like molasses running over dry ice and the bike began to gain momentum. After what seemed a few minutes I was clear of the car lot entrance by a few yards, but traffic behind me was gaining ominously. But I was upright and moving in the desired direction, so I gave it more gas. The bike responded by gaining more speed. Not wanting to overextend my competency I waited until I was on K-18 highway before I gave it serious gas. The speed limit was 55 mph and I was under that by a just bit. I finally had the motor up in rpm that indicated I needed to either back off or shift to second. The previous days episode with making that shift had not turned out to my liking, but then racing headfirst into a Chevy wasn’t to my liking either and this time the Chevy’s were threatening to be an all-steel enema. So second gear it was.

Momentum climbed rapidly and before I could say daaaang, I was heading into unknown territory, third gear. I had never been in third gear personally, oh sure I had been there vicariously as a passenger on my brother’s 305 Dream but I had never actually been there in person, so this was going to be a fresh experience. I tentatively clicked it into third and held the throttle just a little open. The bike surged forward and the speedometer was getting ever closer to 20 mph. I began to wonder at that moment if the scientists back in the eighteenth century might have been on target with their prediction of 35 mph causing the human brain to be pushed to the back of the skull and obliterated as a functioning unit. I only had fifteen more mph and maybe thirty seconds to find out. I maneuvered the bike to the far-right side of my lane onto the shoulder to allow cars by in case their rate of travel was faster so I wouldn’t be picking Chevy badges out of my rectum the next day as I got up to speed in a safe, efficient, orderly, military manner. Cars went whizzing by my left side at an alarming clip and that’s when I realized this four-lane highway I was on necked down to a four-lane highway without any shoulders. I would have to get off the shoulder and into flowing (creaming, pulping, and multilating) traffic sooner rather than later. This was a scary thought. Playing tag-your-it with a ton of steel has all the makings of tag-your-road pizza. So, I was going to be forced to get to highway speed. I actually got there only ten miles outside Ogden. Bravery has never been my strongest suit (as opposed to stupidity or laziness).

So, I have to say that second trip on the bike was a refreshing change, I didn’t end up scuffed up again, and I made it all the way home after school to boot. Amazing. I wish I could say that was my only dongo off that Yamaha, but alas I had a few more.

TO BE CONTINUED