Two nights ago, my motel in Huntington, West Virginia overlooked a fast, busy, one-way, two lane thoroughfare. The speed limit was thirty-five, people were in a hurry, there was a lot of traffic, it was dusk.
I was sitting on the balcony watching flatbed semis hauling steel and diesel pickups rolling coal and gasser pickups with blue-lit wheel wells and growly hotrod Subarus and snarly Japanese motorcycles and burbly Harleys, the Harleys’ signature exhaust note muffled by their riders’ oversize butt cheeks, and a lot of people in sedans and minivans hurrying home for dinner.
A guy came riding by on a BMX bike. Tall guy, he was wearing a black hoodie, black baseball hat, black pants, work boots and carrying a black backpack. He was standing up and stomping the pedals like the cops were moments behind him.
When he was in front of me, he slammed on the brakes, skidded the bike sideways to a stop, lifted it chest high, slammed it down on the pavement and stalked away, back the way he’d come.
He was a hundred feet down the road and I was starting to think I’d better move his bike when he stopped, bent down and out of the gutter picked up a bright, shiny Bowie knife and held it above his head. The blade was twelve inches long or longer. He stalked back to the bike waving the knife over his head like a balloon on a stick, put the knife back in the sheath he’d dropped it from, and pedaled away, standing and stomping.
Monday, Jane fell and broke her right patella and right arm and I’m home in Minneapolis (for those who don’t know me personally, Jane’s my wonderful wife of 29 years). She’s doing fine, maybe surgery, maybe not. She’s using a walker, both breaks on the same side so no crutches. Her nurse is clumsy and inefficient but he means well.
For the motorcyclists, true love is riding eleven hundred miles in twenty hours, the last four through Wisconsin, dead of night, dense fog and temperatures in the fifties, you know what I’m talking about (shout out to Aerostich riding suits…).
I’ll be back to wandering when she’s back on her foot. In the meantime remember, literally and metaphorically, always pack your rain gear….
I’m in Clinton, Iowa headed for southern Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky and any place else the front tire decides it wants to take me.
Interesting time to be riding into the Bible Belt. The threats and vitriol across the media are things to behold.
Yesterday, southeastern Minnesota and northeastern Iowa were as charismatic as ever, tall corn lapping against pretty farm buildings, rolling hills and gently winding roads with little traffic, well-tended towns with kids in shorts celebrating their last days of freedom, the skies blue and the weather not too hot (Robert Preston’s America, I didn’t see even one pool hall, no doubt the school bands are great).
I chatted with Peggy, she works at the tourist center in aptly-named Preston Minnesota (trout capital of the state) where she hands out brochures and maps to fisherpeople and motorcyclists. Her parents got married, had three kids, got divorced, got remarried, had two more kids, then got divorced again. Her father was a logger, a carpenter and a farm hand. He remarried after the second divorce and she liked her stepmother. Now divorced herself, Peggy never beat her two kids although her father beat her brother badly when they were growing up and he grew up to be violent and a bully. Her politics are different than mine, you pick that up in the silences, and we didn’t talk about it. She declined when I asked to take her picture.
Bill was smoking a cigarette leaning on the hood of his pickup when I parked in front of my room at the Timbers Motel. He’s a pipe fitter from Houston and missing his lower front teeth. He works on industrial projects across the south. His truck was gone at 6:00 this morning when I walked across the parking lot to Burger King for a cup of coffee.
