She was 5'9" and willowy – a graceful co-ed who wore the bell-bottom blue jeans of the sixties; her long, straight, dark, and lustrous hair parted in the middle and framing her deep, bottomless eyes, eyes that sparkled always with a rich and friendly humor. The bike was a little Japanese 160, a scrambler-style, a rev-screamer with high chrome pipes and imitation British Triumph knee protectors. It wasn’t much, that bike, but it was all I could afford, and both she and I loved it.
The plan was to ride the damn thing up the long and undulating pavement of Highway 9, a rural two laner that seemingly belonged in another century -- ride it north all the way from the suburbs of Seattle across the Canadian border to Mission City, British Columbia. We would carry one sleeping bag (all we had room for...) and a tightly-rolled scrap of construction plastic for shelter. We planned to attend the 1968 Mission City Rock Festival to listen to the bands, and to hang out with the hippies -- and that was just about it... just about as evolved as our plans could get in those days.. We had no rain gear other than our thin nylon wind breakers, and no other luggage except the new toothbrushes in our shirt pockets. Well...it seemed like a good idea at the time.
Her parents were aghast; but polite, gentle, and, while I never heard an unkind word from their lips, I could sense that their daughter, just graduated from the University of Washington and soon to be a paid intern in Washington D.C. with one of the state's most powerful senators, meant everything to them. Very probably the thought of her spending several days -- and especially several nights-- with me, an ex-army troop, a part time bartender and part time student who lived and traveled with everything I owned in a grimy duffle bag, and mostly on “one of those damn motorcycles", exceeded the boundaries of their middle class understanding. Her desperate father even tried to bribe me with the keys to the family car.
"C'mon, Son, take it! You'll both be more comfortable in the car... I know you will, and her mother and I will sleep better while she's gone! I'll stake you the money, too, for a decent motel room!" He visibly grimaced as he spoke the last sentence.
But I was an ex-soldier... wild and free and stubborn -- and I didn't want his car or his money. I was also openly suspicious of anyone outside the bounds of my own experience as an army radio operator on a desolate U.S. Marine firebase in I corps, Republic of Vietnam.
"Nope. Thanks, but riding this bike up there is what we wanna do... and we’re gonna do it... Don't worry, she'll be okay... I’ll take good care of her." I thought for a moment he would weep.
But Ellie could laugh and smile her way through the Gates of Hell itself, and she had soon disarmed her doting parents. Shortly after we were off with their reluctant blessing, speeding along at almost sixty miles an hour up the curvy road, the bike’s tiny engine screaming like something alive, our young laughter trailing in the wind.
Miles and miles of lush, rain-fed Northwest American forest and field lay before us, and we had nothing in the world hindering us, nothing at all.....it was one of the few times in my life that I was completely, totally free. I couldn’t articulate it, but I knew it, knew it from the huge swelling in my heart, the simple pure joy of sweet, fresh life; she hugging me, murmuring things I couldn’t really hear against the side of my open-faced Bell helmet, the singing of the tires, the frantic hum of the little engine. I instinctively knew this time was special..... I was home; I was alive; I was free; and I was in love. Yes, I knew this was a very special time, indeed.
As we rode, big mossy-roofed dairy barns and an occasional herd of sheep or cattle would flash by, a purely pastoral setting which, unknown to us, would soon disappear from our world forever. Little one traffic light towns with staring citizens and steamy, fragrant cafes with warm yellow windows came before us, and we would stop often – warming our hands around thick mugs of hot coffee, laughing at those around us – not with cruelty, or ridicule, just at the fact that they were not us and never could be. We were wrapped in the false exclusivity of youth.
At 100 miles the bike fouled a plug. I removed it and scraped at the carbon with a dull pen knife.
“Wrong jets,” I explained to her grinning face.
“Can you fix it,” she asked.
“Yup, with the right size jets, I could,” I replied, smiling back at her. “The right size jets which I ain’t got!”
“So what’a we do,” she asked again.
“Scrape, scrape....and then scrape some more!”
We rode over two hundred miles that first day, and into ugly clouds as dark as night. When we arrived at the site of the Rock Festival, the first drops had begun.
“Gonna rain, “ Ellie said.
“Yup, “ I replied. “Rain is coming, and that’s a fact.”
Some idiot-organizer of the festival had hired on Vancouver. B.C.’s Satan’s Angels, an outlaw motorcycle gang, as a security force – the members of which sat on their radical Pan-Head Harleys at the entrance to the site, leering openly at Eleanor and glowering at me as we bought our admission tickets. We got up very near the stage where the roady technicians were struggling with their huge amps and casting wary eyes at the sky.
When the rain increased, I turned to Ellie and said, “put your helmet back on.... your head’ll stay dry longer.....”
For awhile we sat on a log in the whispering rain, listening to a few barely competent, warm-up bands. And then suddenly something whirred by my head like a bird on the wing. Not comprehending, I watched a wine bottle bounce and spin on the sodden ground before us.. Another one flew by, and this one seemed closer, more purposeful. I turned and looked at four or five of Vancouver’s best, the sneering Satan’s Angels, standing not far away, doing their best to empty another wine bottle or two among them...for more ammunition, I knew.
“What’s wrong,” Ellie asked.
“The damn security squad is wingin’ wine bottles at us, “ I said. “I’m gonna start the bike and we’ll go to the other side of the campground. As soon as the bike starts, get on the back and quickly! And keep your helmet on!”
She did as told and soon we had ridden around behind the stage, which meant nothing musically because the current band was as bad back there as out in front. But we were safer there, I thought, because the outlaws seemingly took no notice of our leaving – and stayed where they were. But the rain was increasing, drumming down now with real force, and the electrified musicians on the wet stage soon called a weather halt.
“This ain’t gonna work, Ellie.,” I said. “We’re gonna drown. Let’s go back a little in these woods and find us a place to build a shelter.”
We moved into a fringe of willows where I found some young trees spaced right and bent them down towards each other and tied the tops with some rope into a rough, dome shape. Eleanor and I, still wearing our helmets, then piled loose brush against the framework. We finished the shelter by spreading our plastic over the whole contraption, tied it down and weighted it down, and then crawled inside through a small opening.
“Hell, yeah, “ I said. The interior was relatively dry, fragrant, and rainproof.
“This is just so cool,” Ellie said. “This is going to work!”
“Wish we had another blanket to lie on.......” We had scraped together a soft mattress of brush and grass, but had only our sleeping bag unzipped flat, and our choice was to be on it or under it.
“Hold a minute,” Ellie said and crawled out. She went over to a group of campers standing around a weak, sputtering fire, and stood there talking. She was back in a moment, cuddling her prize --a rough but warm Mexican blanket, and it smelled clean.
“No problem at all, “ Ellie laughed. “They’re all so stoned! They just want it back when we leave!”
Later that night, we smoked a joint and made love under the Mexican blanket while the fire shone warmly through our brush and plastic shelter. The rain weakened and stopped, the bands came out to play, and I lay warm, and contented, and high, smelling my own separate peace in Eleanor’s soft hair. It had been the best day of my life up to then, the day we rode my Honda up highway 9, a perfect day, a day never to be matched .... And I knew I could love this girl and be happy forever.
But a week later Eleanor left for her internship in Washington, D.C., and I never saw her again. She climbed, almost against her will, the corridors of responsibility and high power, while I climbed and skied, almost against my will, the snow fields and glaciers of high mountains. Our paths separated... forever. A year later, the little bike was stolen off my front porch in Seattle, and I never it saw it again, either. I didn’t replace the bike for twenty years, but I soon replaced Ellie and she, me..... But for several rainy days, on a impossibly small bike, in the incomparable beauty of British Columbia, we had each other, and we lived and loved and were happy.
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