My old stories - Riding Gear

Put fingers to keyboard and make your fantasies come to life!
User avatar
Chimerix
Posts: 913
Joined: Wed Apr 15, 2009 9:44 am
Contact:

My old stories - Riding Gear

Postby Chimerix » Sat May 06, 2023 10:46 pm

Safety Gear

I've always been a big believer in wearing the appropriate gear. Especially when you live life on an overmuscled 2-wheeled stallion, surrounded by megatons of 4-wheeled death driven by coffee drinking, makeup applying, cell phone using, senile twits without the sense God gave turnip greens. I ask no pardon for my bitterness. If you are offended, it means I'm talking to you, and you should know that I'm damned tired of your constant attempts to kill me.

So I protect myself as best I can. Heavy, lace-up boots with thick soles, steel toes, and full ankle coverage. Riding boots are not good for walking, but your feet are your first and last line of defense before inertia sends you grinding down the asphalt, so never skimp on the boots! Full length heavy denim pants are a minimum. Leather chaps, or the nylon chaps with Kevlar reinforcement are preferable. A heavy padded leather jacket. Again, the nylon-and-Kevlar will do, but while those will save you from road rash, they lack the padding to prevent broken bones in a tumble. A full-face helmet, and riding gloves. The gloves should have reinforced knuckles and strap securely above your wrists.

Bundled thusly, you stand a pretty decent chance of not only surviving a tumble, but of being able to get up and kick the living shit out of the cocksucker who was too occupied with his morning Starbucks to notice you were in the lane he decided to share. I love the look of shock on their faces when they lean over you, saying some brilliantly insightful one-liner along either the “ohmyGodareyouallright” or the “ImsosorryIneversawyou” lines. That shock changes to sheer terror when my gloved mitt is suddenly wrapped around their neck. Well, in my dreams, it does. I haven't had the opportunity to try it yet; being run over really does take a lot out of you.

Funny, though, how the closest I ever came to dying was because I was so protectively clad.

I was in the boonies, cruising down country lanes, just letting my big engine leisurely devour the miles. It was a brisk fall day; no, make that a COLD fall day, with the threat of snow hanging heavy. On days like that, I'm grateful for my obsession with heavy gear. The trees were wearing their most glamorous finery, and there was just a hint of cold beer and hot chestnuts on the breeze. Ok, maybe that last was just wishful thinking on my part, but it sure fit. I was at peace with creation, and all was right with the world.

Which should have been my warning.

One of the few true limitations of a motorcycle is that you don't have enough space to prepare for eventualities. Like, oh, let's pick a random one out of thin air; flat tires. Motorcycle tires do go flat, just like those on a car. Difference is, you don't carry a spare tire or a jack. You can carry plugs, and a 12 volt compressor, or a can of Fix-A-Flat, but that won't help when you manage to not see the 5 garbage bags of broken glass that fell off the back of some environmentally-conscious redneck's pickup truck. Mostly Budweiser bottles, from the brief glance I got when that 6th sense warned me to ignore the trees and pay attention to the road.

I didn't wipe out, which is saying something when you suddenly find yourself doing 45 on dual flats down a curvy country blacktop. I held on, kept her upright, and pulled off on the shoulder. Well, pulled into a filthy, weed-filled runoff ditch, which is what passes for a shoulder in such places.

I surveyed the damage, and saw I was fucked. Pulled out the cell phone, and discovered that I was thoroughly fucked. Thought back about how long it had been since I had passed any sort of building, or another car, and realized that I was well and truly fucked. My lovely fall afternoon was about to become a long, cold fall night of trudging.

I find that most of life's problems look better after a good piss. I tried. It didn't work for this one.

I do travel with a GPS. I'm pretty sure God gave us GPS just for bikers. You ever tried to open a map in a 70 mph headwind? These things mount on the handlebars, fit in a pocket, are waterproof, and run about 37 years on a pair of AA batteries. Plus, they know more about the highways and byways of the world than any 3 taxicab drivers or long-haul truckers put together.

After gnawing on some beef jerky and playing with the buttons on the GPS, I realized I had 3 choices. First, I could wait by the bike and hope a charitable stranger chanced by. Second, I could head further up the road a mere 12 miles to a service station. Third, I could head cross country south-by-southwest a mere 7 miles to that same service station. Since I hadn't seen a car in hours, and I've already mentioned that good riding boots make bad walking boots, then you know the choice was pretty obvious. I left the helmet behind, climbed over the rusty barbed-wire fence that served mostly to keep some pine trees up, and started trudging.

When you're in a really foul mood, there's NOTHING like a walk through unfamiliar woods to just plain piss you off. You're always having to climb over or duck under something, or get yourself unhooked from stickers, or peel spider webs off your face. There are bugs that bite, bugs that itch, bugs that make buzzing noises in your ears and fly so close to your eyes that you can feel their wingtips brush your eyelashes. I'm not a fan.

And then it got muddy.

I tell you, it amazes me that the pure intensity of my furious hatred for all things natural didn't cause the surrounding woods to erupt into a cataclysmic conflagration, a purging pyre, a blinding blaze, a… sorry. I'll forgo the alliteration and get back to the story.

When my mind turns to rage, I don't think. I tend to not remember events very clearly, if at all. So I can't tell you how I ended up in trouble, but my next memory (and this one, believe you me, is crystal) is realizing that my feet weren't moving anymore.

I looked down, and there, just below my knees, where I expected to see shin and boot, was the surface of the Earth. A little jiggly, and decorated with a blanket of festive leaves, but still the ground, intersecting with me at an unfamiliar point.

I tried to pull my feet out, and made 2 discoveries. First was that when your feet are tightly laced into heavy, oversized boots, you can't lift them when they are buried in the mud. Second was that I was still on my way down.

I watched in some stupefied state, not unlike a deer in headlights I suppose, as my thighs decided it would be fun to follow my knees down into the muck. Then I realized I might actually be in trouble. Looking around, I discovered that I had found the one spot in all of creation that the woods weren't presenting me with a root over which to trip, a branch under which to duck, or a log over which to scramble. Nothing to grab.

I had to resort to plan B.

So I started to scream. I commenced to holler. I proceeded to bellow. I stirred up a ruckus. I whooped, whistled, wailed, cried, harkened, yahooed, called, squalled, bawled and roared. If it made noise, I did it.

And I sank.

As the moisture penetrated my pants, I realized that it was cold. When I had sunk down to my favorite bits, my noisemaking reached a whole new level. And that is how I passed the time; sinking noisily.

Did I mention it was a Fall afternoon? Being in the boonies? Woods? Rednecks? Pretty sure I did. And it was a combination of these things that saved me. Because on fall afternoons in the woods, rednecks with guns are getting settled down in trees, waiting to get a shot at any deer foolish enough to graze and frolic in the evening. Except deer are skittish creatures, and if something is raising a commotion, even miles away, they'll stay hidden.

So I owe my life to a pair of pissed-off rednecks who came trotting up to see just who the hell was ruining their chances at a 12-pointer. I'm still a little surprised that they didn't just shoot me to shut me up, rather than spending the 2 hours it took to wrestle me out of there. They seemed pretty pissed about the whole thing. To their credit, not only did they not shoot me, they offered to help me get my bike to the service station.

As we were loading the bike into their pickup, one of them asked “Now howinth' Hail didju ruin them tars lahk that?” When I mentioned the sacks of broken glass just down the road, they both paused and shared what I would call a significant look. They were a lot more civil after that.

When we got to the service station, I showed my appreciation by springing for a case of Budweiser.

Cans.
The difference between theory and reality is that, in theory, there is no difference between theory and reality.

Return to “Stories”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest