1992, The Peace River Valley

In 1992 and in the middle of the Peace River Valley, British Columbia, we pulled our 81' Goldwing and sidecar off of the highway to refuel at a small gas station and convenience store. My six year old son, his motorcycling patience evidently exhausted, shot up and out of his sidecar like a being possessed. My wife Red got off, pulled off her helmet, stretched, and smiled at me.

“Oh, damn,” she said, and tore off after the boy, who was already making the lives of some ducks on a small pond miserable by flinging stones at them. I cracked open the gas cap and refueled, and then went to pay.

Inside stood the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. About nineteen or twenty, she wore her short blonde hair in a page boy crop; her skin was as smooth as cream; her eyes were a deep water blue. She stood with unconscious grace, her lean figure slouched against the counter she tended. I could smell the soap in her freshly laundered shirt and jeans, and some sort of perfume in her hair. I swallowed hard.

“Pump four,” I said.

She glanced at her machine. “Nine forty seven,” she said. “Canadian.”
I handed her a ten, and received the change from her cool, delicate fingers.

“Going far,” she asked, her voice controlled, and low and slightly husky.

“Alaska,” I replied.

“That far, hey?”

She leaned over the counter to look outside at the Goldwing, her hair like silk in the filtered sunlight streaming through the grimy windows.

“Take me with you?” She asked with only a slight smile. “I am hard-working and clean.... won’t be any trouble. Can I go, please?”

I swallowed again.

“Well, huh, I’ve got two people already.... not enough room, you see.”

She smiled into my eyes. “Bad timing, hey?”

“At least that,” I said.

I went outside and beckoned to my crew. Red and I got the boy settled back into the sidecar, his hands full of toy soldiers, and then we put on our helmets, started the bike, and pulled out onto the highway heading north. I squeezed Red’s knee and looked into my mirrors, where the girl from the station leaned against a gasoline pump watching us go. I watched her figure grow ever smaller, and squeezed Red’s knee again.

“She was pretty, wasn’t she,” said Red, over the bike’s intercom.

“Yeah, very much so. But not as pretty as you......”

I could feel her smile through the back of my helmet.