To ride a fast motorcycle over free and open roads is to become as near to a soaring hawk as mortal man can get... to fly over the nap of the earth without leaving it...the air is sweeter, colors finer, and the very sunlight dances like falling mountain water... and if I die in some bloody ditch somewhere, it will be okay... a debt owed for a promise freely made and freely given....the promise of freedom fulfilled at the cost of danger and death...

The Death Ride......

One of the best, most soul- stirring motorcycle rides in America is to the Windy Ridge observation deck at Mt. St. Helens National Monument in Washington State. If you ever find yourself in the northwestern U.S., do yourself a favor and ride this road.

You get there by riding U.S. Hwy 12 west from Yakima, Wa, through the Cascade Mountain range (in itself, a superb ride), to the town of Randall and then turning off south on Highway 131 which quickly forks into forest rds 23 and 25. Take 25 and then go right on forest rd 26 and right again on forest rd 99 and let it out a little..... Imagine please the most curvy road you have ever ridden, and then triple the pleasure and challenge it gave you. For nearly forty miles this road turns on itself as it winds and dips through one of the last remaining, beautiful, old growth forests in the world... but that in itself does not make it so special......

What does makes it special is when suddenly you enter the death zone. Without warning,in an eye blink, you leave a land of sweet green and clear water and enter a land of death. One corner, and then you're there. Like when you die. The landscape instantly turns into something out of Tolkien or Dante.... the forest has been burned, toppled, smashed flat..... gray ash, dust, and dead trees cover everything...... vast acres of forest giants look like they have simply been blasted free of leaves, bark, limbs, and laid out flat in orderly rows like dead soldiers on some horrific Napoleonic battlefield......the destruction is unbelievable and frightening. There is a beauty to it, but it is a savage beauty.....the kind of beauty that makes one want to paint his face and beat a drum. It hurts to be there; it's like watching a beautiful woman rip out her lover's throat with her teeth.

The road winds on through this dream, this nightmare if you will, until the Windy Ridge Observatory where you gaze into the maw of the monster itself. Still smoking, this "Mountain of Doom" dominates all.... you can't keep from staring at it....it draws you to it like some great precipice, some great awful sea. The feeling is like how I felt the day -- years and years and years ago -- when I first understood, totally, that someday I would die, would not exist. This is what this mountain offers you: inarguable proof that what we know is illusionary, temporary, and totally outside our control. What this mountain tells you is that we mean nothing.

And that you mean nothing is hard to remember when riding a bike. The illusion of super human control, of super human speed, and superhuman power happens the moment you twist the key and fire the bike to life. Instantly, you command more force at your fingertips than untold generations of pre-industrial man. For a few dollars, you are capable of things that even ancient Gods only dreamed about. This is what draws me, over and over again, to the savage, wounded maw of Mt. St. Helens – the brutal message that I am not a God, and will never be......

There are some who can point to the new life that is developing there as a promising message. But to me, it is unimportant and unpromising. To me the message is: poor little man... quit your posing ... you are not great...you are not special.

Williston

Out on the prairie Red and I often eat at McDonalds. And why not? Abundant, cheap, and relatively biker friendly -- Micky Dee’s is a fair bargain. Recently one summer, being broke and hungry, we wheeled into the parking lot of one such example just outside Williston, North Dakota.

As we were pulling off our helmets, a beautiful Native American child about three years old and his equally beautiful young mother, both with jet black eyes and raven hair, were passing by on the sidewalk.

"Momma, momma, momma," yelled the little boy. "Look, momma -- bike! Bike, momma, bike!"

The laughing mother struggled to hold the child with both hands as he scrambled to get to our Wing. I offered to let him sit on the bike, but the mother, embarrassed for some reason, politely demurred.

After we'd had our pancakes, bacon, and coffee, we returned to the bike and began to gear up. An older gentleman, as neat as a pin, stood watching us as we prepared to leave.

"D'ya mind if I watch you go, " he asked. "I saw you come in, and I'm interested in motorcycles and motorcyclists......."

I was bemused. "Not at all," I replied. "Feel free... not much to it, really....and did you own one, sir?"

A unmistakable sadness came into his eyes.

"No, " he said. "I've always liked them, and I've always admired those that rode them.... but I've never owned one. To tell you the truth, I've never even ridden one. Farmed all my life, never enough time..."

I stared at him.

"And I've recently been diagnosed with colon cancer...... too late, now... for sure."

Red was getting that look in her eye that means she’s about to cry, so I held the bike upright while she got on, and then I pushed the starter. The Wing, as always, fired to life immediately. "Well, " I said while searching for something to say. "Never too late, sir. Never too late......." But both of us knew I was lying. It was too late for him by any measure.

We pulled out, Red waving to the neatly dressed old man, and then we headed South on Highway 85 towards Theodore Roosevelt National Park, the Little Missouri National Grasslands, and Devil's Tower National Monument. As the Wing picked up speed on the straight, clean, free highway, I thought of the little Indian boy and the old man, and I wondered about dreams realized and dreams stillborn, and the difference between them.

The Girl And The Honda

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.

Lester's Harley.....

(dedicated to old friends: Dale Boomgaarden and Ronnie Vocht)


When I was still in high school – and still being forced by my mother to wear corduroy pants – there was a boy in our small town on the Snake River named Lester Curtis. Lester was small, almost dwarfish, and had long ago dropped out of school. He worked as a laborer in a big grain elevator that loomed over that bleak, wind-swept town like a huge metal watchtower. He had no parents that we knew of, no siblings, very few friends... and he moved among us wearing greasy jeans and a padded welder’s cap that he jammed down backwards on his oversized head. He lived alone in a battered house trailer with weeds and packed earth surrounding it, and every son's mother's lips grew tight when Lester was near....

There was little reported crime in that miserable village, but when one was, within moments old Deputy Gray would park his war surplus jeep with the red spotlight at Lester’s trailer, and remain inside for hours, doing what and saying what we could only imagine. Of course, we were all banned by our parents from associating with Lester.


One summer afternoon, in 1959, little Ritchie Campbell came running into my back yard.

“Holy Shit,” yelled Ritchie. “Lester’s went and done got him a Harley! Come see!”


We both then ran to the only service station in town... and there sat Lester on a glaring red and chrome Harley-Davidson Sportster... the first any of us had ever seen. Lester was actually smiling, grinning, his strong teeth yellow, as a crowd of hot and excited teenagers milled around begging him for rides. I stood thunderstruck, unable to speak. I can remember to this day how the hot metal of the bike smelled, and how it ticked and popped like something alive when it cooled.. I couldn’t imagine how he’d gotten enough money. He must have starved and saved for years.

Suddenly, I was overcome with the most bitter sense of envy I've ever experienced...ever.


For a time, Lester’s life was cream. Suddenly popular, he wore his motorcycle jacket like a Roman Legionaire's tunic. It was not uncommon to see Lester roaring through town, a gasping teenage girl clinging to his back like a spider monkey, her pony tail flying, her voluminous skirts hiked above her knees. But the responsible adults were less than charmed, and storm clouds gathered ... and peaked in the fall when Lester and his date were refused entry into the high school’s Homecoming Dance. “Undesirable Element” was the only explanation offered to us. In a fantastic scene, Lester in his leather jacket and our Principal in his usual three piece suit – with the polished elk tooth on the gold watch chain dangling -- actually locked arms and scuffled in the doorway of the gym, knocking over floral and crepe paper displays. African elephants wandering free and unattended in the streets of our town would have generated less excitement, less delicious drama. Our teenage hearts were on fire.


The Monday following the dance scene, sitting in Algebra class, I heard a gathering roar outside and ran to a classroom window, as did everyone else in school. There, on the gravel street fronting the school building, Lester Curtis roared back and forth on his straight pipe Harley. Occasionally he would brake to a sliding stop, ferociously gunning his well-tuned engine and saluting us all with an outstretched left hand, middle finger held high and proud. Once, twice, maybe five times Lester made his run. On his final trip, he flawlessly executed the first motorcycle wheelie I’d ever seen! I was mad with excitement and joy. The roar of that engine... my fellow students screaming like demons... the Principal shouting through his phone to Officer Gray... it was the most memorable moment of my life up to then.


Lester Curtis left us that day, never to return. I know he’s not...but I like to think he’s out there yet, his engine roaring, his exhausts spitting fire, his middle finger up and proud! There’s a place in the human story for leather-faced Harley riders... the real ones. They remind us how invincible we are and how free we could be, and how we can always have some effect on the things around us--even against crushing odds – if only we can summon the courage.

Social Work......

When I was a much, much younger man, and trying to break into social work, the county prosecutor came to my work-release office at the county jail one morning.

“Come with me. I have a challenge for you, “ he said.

We walked together to a large common holding cell called the “Drunk Tank,” where sat a thin, solitary old man with untied shoes. He glared at us with blood-red eyes, his thin straight hair springing up from his flaking pink scalp like prairie grass.

“Let me out! Lemme outa here, you two. No cause for keeping me.....”

The Prosecutor grinned at him. “They found him late last night sleeping in Pioneer Park, wrapped in an old piece of canvas. Got him a rusty old bicycle, a can of pumpkin pie filling, and 38 cents.....no identification and he won’t tell us his name.”

I looked at the old man, who plucked at the sleeve of an old wool coat slick with dirt and grime, his skeletal fingers never still. I tried my social work smile: “Can you tell us your name, sir? The quicker you do, the quicker we can maybe get you out of here.”

The old man glared. “Tom. Dick. Harry,” he snarled. “You pick one. I ain’t drunk...I ain’t no drunk. Turn me loose!”

I turned and looked at the prosecutor. “Can’t we just do that? Just cut him loose?”

He grimaced, and replied, “no... they’ll just pick him up sleeping in the park again. If he gets jailed again for vagrancy, he might do thirty days in the county.... and would that do anyone any good? Hear that?”

I nodded, hearing the mute hubbub of the awakening county cell block on the other side of the wall. Inmates shouted and screamed, steel doors clanged.

The prosecutor leaned against the bars. “Judge Rabideau thinks this would be a good challenge for you and your new department. Find the man a job, any old job, find him a place to stay, any old place, and we’ll cut him loose.... since he won’t give us a name, a family, a place of residence, I think I can hold him in here for some while.”

“Don’t need a job, “ the old man muttered. “Had one of them. I ain’t done nuthin,’ I ain’t no drug fiend... take me n’ my bicycle to Highway 14. Cut me loose.”

“Highway 14,” muttered the prosecutor. “He keeps goin’ on about Highway 14. What’s with Highway 14?”

“Highway 14,” I said, looking again at the wild hair on the old man’s scalp. “Scenic drive... Washington side of the Columbia River gorge... .ride it all the time on my motorcycle. Helluva road... he’s got good taste in roads!”

I leaned forward, social work smile pasted on. “Do you live along the river, sir? Lyle, Bingen, White Salmon, Hood River....any of those towns? Have you got family on the river?”

“I ain’t done nuthin’ to nobody....no call to hold me.... Highway 14.... turn me loose!”

We turned to go.

“Was he drunk when he was arrested,” I asked the prosecutor.

“No... he wasn’t.”

“Well,” I muttered. “Guess I'll see what I can do......”

On the way back to my office I stopped to talk to Old Tuffy, our booking deputy.

“Anything turn up on the old man in the tank, “ I asked.

“Nope. Nothing. We damned near had to break his fingers last night when we printed him..... wouldn’t straighten them out... Took three of us! He went to bite me, the goddamn old nut case, and I told him if he bit me I’d break his head open...... didn’t bite me none, then, nossir.”

I stifled a grin, entertained by a picture of the skeletal old man sinking his few fangs into the fat deputy, and Tuffy moving fast enough to break open anyone’s head.

“Well, no criminal record, then, at least?”

“No,” Tuffy sighed regretfully. “Nothing yet... prints might not be any good, though.... had to mash his fingers down on the print card.”

Three days later we still had no information on our strange old man, but I thought I had the problem solved. I had finally begged him a job from an old friend who ran a potato storage shed, a job sweeping the cutting floor for minimum wage, and a shared room at a recovering alcoholic facility. When I explained my solution to the prosecutor, he readily assented. “Yeah, get the old bastard out of there... he’s even driving the drunks nuts!”

I had Tuffy unlock the drunk tank door and waved the old fellow to his feet. “Let’s go, sir! I got you a job and a place to stay and we are outa here!”

“Don’t need a job, “ muttered the hard old man. “Give me my bike back.....”

“Well, you have to have the job.... where’s his bike, Tuffy?”

“Maintenance shed..... dissolving into rust.......”

We booked him out, and tried to have him sign for his possessions -- a piece of dirty canvas, a can of pumpkin pie filling, and 38 cents -- but he wouldn’t sign. I shrugged and gave him the stuff anyway. I opened the maintenance shed and wheeled out his machine, an old Raleigh three speed crusted with rust....... “Nice wheels, “ I said in my social work voice.

“You never had no cause to hold me.... none a’tall,” the old man said, spitting on the county floor. “No cause a’tall.”

I signed out a county van, put the old man and his bike in it and drove him to the alcohol center. I introduced him as best I could to the staff, who rolled their eyes at each other. I gave the old man written instructions to the potato shed, and held out my hand. He didn’t take it, of course, much to the great delight of the alcohol people.

“Well,” I said to him. “I got one favor to ask of you.... will you tell me your name, now?”

“Tom. Dick. Harry,” snarled the old man. “Pick one!” The staff of the alcohol center dissolved in laughter.

The next morning my phone rang; it was my friend at the potato shed.

“It’s probably a big surprise, but your ol’ No Name didn’t show up for work.”

“Yeah, that is a surprise.”

He laughed over the wire. “Just for fun, I called the alcohol center..... he missed bedcheck and breakfast this morning, too.”

After thanking him and hanging up, I sat there for a moment, a wide grin splitting my face. I got up and went to my supervisor, the undersheriff. “Gotta have some time, okay?” He looked up, uninterested, “ yeah... just sign out, make it up when you can.”

Picking up my helmet from the coat rack, I borrowed a pair of binoculars from a line deputy and then went out and started up my Honda 305 Scrambler. I left the town and crossed the Columbia River over the old Kennewick bridge, the waters swift and cold far below. Across the river, the road over the Horse Heaven Hills curved away to the Oregon border forty miles south. I ran the old familiar curves easily and smoothly, the bike purring beneath me like the well-tuned, smooth twin it was. As the sun broke through high, thin clouds, my joy steadily rose and I soundlessly sang a Credence Clearwater Song behind my helmet shield. “Proud Mary keep on turning.....!”

At the crest of the Horse Heavens, the Columbia River Gorge opened up below me, the river now a silver thread far below, Highway 14 another thinner silver thread running alongside....and the purple and gold fields of eastern Oregon spread like a huge blanket beyond the far bank of the river, and to the west, the soaring volcanoes – Mt Adams, Mt. St. Helens, and Mt. Hood, the great peaks that had mesmerized Lewis and Clark and so many of the early pioneers – sat in timeless and regal splendor in the morning sunshine.

I swung the bike into a turnout, and pulled from my coat the field glasses I had borrowed. It took a few minutes of slow sweeping, but then ... there he was, an almost unrecognizable dot, an old man on a bicycle, slowly pedaling west, slowly making his way along one of the most beautiful highways in the world. I was suffused with joy. “I’ll be damned,” I said softly. “You old bastard! You must have ridden all night to get down there!” I slapped the tank of the Honda lightly with both hands. “He’s loose,” I laughed softly. “The man is loose and gone! Damn .. I wonder what his name was! I’m gonna wonder that forever!”

I laughed some more, and sat savoring the lovely scene before me. And then I put away the glasses, started the bike, and turned around. It was time to go back and do some more social work.

The Everlasting Debt.....

I am thankful for all the students with whom I once worked.... Over the years their laughter and smiles and tears and everlasting, unquenchable spirit and courage seeped through my skin, percolated through my soul, and burnished and finished me into something better than I once was, something better than I had ever hoped to be.... They think I gave them a lot; what they don't realize, not even yet, is that they always gave me more than what they got from me. What they did, in fact, was to give me a life and a purpose.... they have validated every breath I've ever taken, and I will never be able to repay that debt... never.