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Sun 27 Aug, 2006 01:20 am
I have a friend who is in the process of riding his bicycle from Michigan to Oregon, where he will stay for a week, and then on to San Francisco. I talk to him every couple of days to check on his progress. He's been on the road for about two and a half weeks and is about one third of the way through Montana.
I was talking to him earlier today and he was telling me about an incident he had in a small town. Actually most of them are small towns, and few and far between. He had been biking all day and was trying to reach the next town so he could look for a place to camp.
He rolls into this one-horse town and heads to an old ma and pa grocery store. There he buys a sandwich and a can of pop and as he heads outside to look the town over he hears the door's lock click behind him and as he turns his head he sees a hand placing the closed sign against the glass.
It is approximately 5:00 in the evening and the town, for all intents and purposes, is dead. He looks around and not a soul is moving. A few decaying houses, an old boarded-up hardware store, and a few other non-descript buildings appear to be the heart of the the town.
My friend walks over to the side of the building where he has his bike parked, sits down, leans against the building and eats his sandwich. He then starts writing in his journal and an old black dog materializes from around the corner. The dog has this huge tumor-like growth on his face and approaches my friend with a bit of caution. My friend starts petting the dog and the dog reacts with such joy, nuzzling my friend as if he was the first human being who had ever had the kindness to pet him. A couple of minutes of this and the dog curls up and falls fast asleep.
Not more than two minutes pass by and a large black pickup rolls into the parking lot and heads straight at my buddy. The truck stops about a foot from him and he is now staring at the grill.
"Get the fock over here!" , a voice says from the truck.
My buddy stands up, a little concerned about this latest development and looks into the truck's cab. There are three people. The driver is about fifty years old with a very weathered face and long greasy black hair tied in a pony tail. The other occupants are a couple of fat, generic-looking kids.
The guy in the pony tail says, "Are you the son of a bitch that's been squatting in our park?"
My friend tells the guy that he has just rolled into town and that he is from Michigan, heading to Oregon.
Some of the hostility leaves the guy's face and they begin to talk a little about other things when the guy all of a sudden notices my friend's bike leaning against the building.
"You're on a bike!?" he says with a certain degree of incredulity.
"Yep.", says my friend.
Now the guy looks at my friend, back at the bike, back at my friend, and says, "Where do you put the fockin' dog?"
True story. I thought it was kind of funny. My apologies for taking so long to tell it.
It would be better if, rather than saying you had a friend, you said that you know of a guy, then your story would have a more believable basis.
Joe(happy to help)Nation
Meaning that I am friendless?
That hurts, Joe.
or that you were just watching this outside of your window
or across your fence..
If you tell me the guy continues to get hassled and is a Vietnam vet, the tale could pick up a little from here on.
Hey! How about if the story wasn't about one guy but two and they are on, not bikes, but motorcycles and the motorcycles are hot, man, all tricked out with big highrisers and flame paint and the two guys ride all over the place, meeting folks and women and weirdos, all on their way across the country to Florida where they intend to live out the rest of their lives paid for by the big score they made back in LA.
Anyway, some a-hole shoots them. Right. They get whacked and the credits roll.
This all came to me in dream.
Joe(Show of hands: who here is a friend of Gus?)Nation
You don't have to be in Montana to encounter small town
atmospheres like these. When we drove cross country from NYC to
San Diego, we came through quite a few of little towns that seemed
desolate and unoccupied. Sometimes, the only place we got anything
to eat was at the gas station deli. Having a foreign accent didn't
really help in the process either.....
Great tale! Good luck to your friend. I 'know a guy' who tried to bike from Portland to SF to Boston last summer. Somewhere around 1/3 of the way here he developed a pinched nerve which caused sever numbness in his arms and hands. He had to quit and fly home. He revived his pride by biking down the coast of Cali this summer.
Good story.
Some of you might enjoy Ron McLarty's The Memory of Running. Chubby guy bikes from Massachusetts to California (much more to the story).
Yes. There are places in America which are remote in more ways than one, but by and large we are a friendly bunch. I was caught in a blizzard in Montana once, once is enough, and received the kindness of strangers in the form of having my wheel wells steamed out. (They had filled up with ice to point where it was impossible to make a turn.)
In a little place called Genoa, Colorado, this young man just out of the Air Force, told the cafe owner he had no place to sleep. He had driven that day all the way from Tulsa and he could not go a mile or a step further. There is no motel or boarding house in Genoa, so he was allowed to sleep through the middle of March night inside, on the cafe's floor. They closed at eight pm and opened at five am so the wheat workers could have a breakfast. The young man slept like a stone and in the morning made everyone smile when he showed them what the Air Force's chow hall training had a'learned him. He could crack two eggs at a time in either hand.
Joe(Still can.)Nation
PS (I've got 50,000 miles of cycling through Oklahoma, through places like Avant and Tonkawa, Tahlequah and Okay, so don't get me started.)
I used to hitch and also ride freight trains interstate, and by and large the folks one meets are all right. I would have been afraid to try by bike in those days.
Just talked to my buddy, (sorry, Joe, but I am convinced this guy is my friend) and he told me he is in the process of fixing the second flat tire he's had today. Says he didn't have a flat for the first thousand plus miles and now he gets two in the same day.
He's on the interstate, approximately 50 miles east of Billings. I could hear cars whizzing by as we talked and I thought I heard the distant sound of cows mooing.
I told my friend to make sure to carefully check the inside of his tire and examine his rim in case there was some foreign object causing these flats.
He assured me he would and will give me a call later.
I have reached a point where, vicariously, I ride the open roads, on my bicycle, toward the NorthWest.
These are exciting times.
As ususal, Gus, you left out some of the best details....What kind of sandwich was he eating?
Yes, exciting times indeed.
Jane, a beaut of a picture. Definitely belongs in H.I.!
Stray Cat wrote:As ususal, Gus, you left out some of the best details....What kind of sandwich was he eating?
I forgot to ask him what kind of sandwich it was. That's a damn good observation, Stray Cat.
I'll ask him the next time we talk.
I hope it's not limburger. That would spoil my image of the story for me.
Quote:I forgot to ask him what kind of sandwich it was. That's a damn good observation, Stray Cat.
I hope so, Gus....I don't see how you could've forgotten about the sandwich.....
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