I Wanna be Free to Not Ride

The guy down the street had a cougar. My friend Joe knew this much like he knew all other kinds of useful crap about our neighborhood. I was relatively new to the place, and left to my own devices I would know practically nothing, and would have happily gone about my day playing Atari and watching kung fu movies. Joe introduced me to things like skateboarding, surfing, reggae, punk rock, using your vocabulary without being embarrassed and, of course, 'Ripides. 


The guy who owned Rip should have seemed a creep, but he had two kids around our age and Joe insisted he was on the level. Still, hanging out at Richard's place was a bit of a challenge when it came to selling it to your mom. It's not easy convincing your mother that the forty-something guy down the road has a badass cougar in his backyard that he often lets run free in the house, and that he also has a game-room in his loft with full size pinball machines. Any mom worth her salt is smelling child rapist from miles away. Somehow I managed to convince my mother that the guy was not into my ass, no doubt in large part thanks to his actually meeting my mother and her meeting his children.


Never mind that his kids were much worse a threat to our livelihood than the fucking cougar. Those kids were pretty damn feral all on their own when it came down to it. For one, they raced motorcycles with an absolutely reckless abandon. Their lack of consideration for the survival of their family line glared through the moment they reluctantly strapped on a helmet. This led to the great motorcycle incident of '82. 


I never was the kind of kid who fearlessly leapt in harm's way with little care for personal safety. No, I was the kind of kid who hated eating ice cream from a cone because I was too concerned with avoiding the sticky sensation of having any dry on my fingers. I regarded motorcycles as rumbling icons of danger, never to be trusted. And I regarded guys like RIchard's kids as minions of the devil, sent to earth to corrupt innocents such as myself into the bidding of their dark lord (dad in this case). 


So here it was, the day that Richard thought would be the best of all days to let Joe and me give the dirt bikes a whirl on the old suburban pavement. For me, this meant certain death. 


I knew damn well that nobody was ever going to master the art of not dying on a motorcycle when their all-consuming thought whenever getting near a running one was not to shit their pants. Call that innate knowledge. I was on it. But those fucking little demon spawn and their pushiness. I was too young to tell them no. It wasn't even an option to me. It was time to die. 


I would like to add, as an aside, that my brother hopped right on the thing and blazed about the place as if the bike was an extension of his confident ego. All this from a boy no older than seven. Joe was up next, which I already knew was a no-brainer since Joe already had experience on bikes. And then it was my turn. 


I managed to get on the bike and still keep relaying the message to my asshole to keep it in check. I sat for a moment in abject mortal terror. The eyes of Richard, Joe, my brother and the spawn fixed on me in glassy anticipation. I even thought I heard a slight growl of delight creep from the backyard. Predatory mammals always sense the presence of imminent death as if it really were cloaked in hooded garb, ready to throw down on the chess board. I couldn't back out. Backing out would have been worse than the glory of a violent, fuel-soaked death. It was time. 


I let out the clutch, gave it gas, more gas, the gear engaged, more gas, TOO MUCH GAS! And the fucking thing took off from under me. I was performing an impromptu wheelie, but unlike the acrobatic maneuvers of stunt men, the only part of my body still touching the bike was my hands. I was now literally running behind the bike. Best of all, I was headed directly into the path of a busy street with plenty of traffic in both directions. 


If you've ever been waterskiing then you are familiar with the suicidal urge that grips those inexperienced riders who fall but for whatever reason never think to let go of the rope, and thus are dragged through the water like a broken doll, flopping around, waterlogged and ridiculous. It's hilarious to watch but really painful to do. I know, I've done it. Twice. Once on water, and, joy, once on a motorcycle!


I pulled the wheelie all the way across the busy street, clutching the handlebars with a death grip so tight, you would have had to break my fingers to remove them from the bike. All this time I was still running as fast as I could. I could hear those bastards behind me yelling to "Let go!" repeatedly, which no doubt seemed sensible to them, but was well behind my sphere of influence. 


And so I ran my way directly between two lanes of oncoming traffic, narrowly avoiding being crushed in what would have been the most pathetic auto-motorcycle accident in the history of the universe. Upon reaching the far curb, the bike slammed into it and the two of us, the agent of the devil and the little terror-ridden child crashed to the ground in a bruised heap of metal and shame. 


How I wished I had indeed died that day. It would have been superior in every way to the nightmare of having to face the leering mob rushing towards me in an obvious mix of concern and hilarity. 


I've been in two more motorcycle accidents since then. One actually within about a hundred yards of the one mentioned above. I was on the back of a bike that flew through an unpaved edge of a bayou. We hit a giant hole in the ground, grown over with tall grass and virtually invisible to the naked eye. I learned the joys of roadburn that day. The other wreck a side-effect of being behind a friend that managed to forget the bike behind him at the traffic light. He suddenly realized he needed gas, slammed on the brakes in front of us and we, having no time to react, slammed into his rear bumper, going forty. I re-familiarized myself with the pleasures of roadburn that day, and also discovered how to flip in mid-air, be as bruised as possible without actually breaking anything, and best of all, I learned how roll several times across the road into - wait for it - yes, oncoming traffic and bust out an ad-hoc stunt man roll into a standing position that must have looked planned to the stunned onlookers at the gas station. 


To this day, while I love the idea of motorcycles, I also know that tempting fate is something with which I have a rather spotty history. Best to leave the motorcycles to the pathetic, desperate yuppie assholes who think bikes make their dicks longer, people without children, crotch-rocket jockeys who pull miles-long wheelies down freeways at night on their way home to sexually abusing themselves in the mirror and those rare few who actually respect the power of bikes enough to make a lifetime of enjoying what they have to offer. I mean, you've gotta know your limitations.