A Bad Day?

"Watch your head," said the officer as I was being shoved into the back of the cruiser. Contemplating how I ended up in this mess was just making my headache even worse, and watching the hamfisted kid loading my bike on his truck wasn't helping.

How did I end up here? Well, that's gonna take some explaining. There really is something called the Harley Davidson Mystique; sometimes you just don't see it coming.

It started simple enough, taking a cross country trip to relax and get away from it all. Just me and my girl, a Harley named Stephanie. Cruising the back roads of Iowa, passing the cornfields and country lanes. When I spotted a little cafe just up the road, I pulled in for a good ol' hearty breakfast. A dozen bikes were parked in front, and a club prospect was motioning for me to park next to a nice custom FLH.

Dismounting and heading in to the cafe, the bike club's sergeant-at-arms opened the door and welcomed me in. "You in town for the poker championship?" he asked. "Didn't even know you had one, just passing through." I replied.

Seeing what he thought was an easy mark, the road captain of the club responded, "There's a grand prize of $500 with only a $10 buy-in. Simple five card stud with jokers wild". Musing that I was a fairly good player with a decent shot of winning some much needed green prompted me to abandon my good sense and agree to sit for a few hands.

I managed to win a quite a few hands and was up $200 when common sense returned and I elected to get out while I was ahead. As you would expect, this didn't sit well with the other players.

You would have thought the patch-holders looked like a horde of marines storming the beach on D-Day when they started after me. The waitress who was simply curious about all the ruckus came out of the kitchen; lucky for me the closest of my pursuers tripped over her and then his followers fell on him like dominoes, which gave me time to haul ass out the door.

The club's prospect was heading in as I was going out. I bowled him over with a right hook and jumped on "Stephanie". Spinning dirt and gravel, I hit the road doing about eighty.

Winding that V-twin for all she was worth put me well over a hundred and a few miles from the cafe in no time flat. In the rapidly approaching distance, I saw what appeared to be a dust storm blowing accross the road.

What felt like a million hot BB's stung me as I rode into it. Katydids swarming over the fields had soaked the bike and myself; a nasty, green, gooey mess covered everything.

The heat of the engine baked the slop hard and tight, clogging the air-cooling fins of the cylinders and oil filter. Overheating almost instantly, "Steph" siezed up and busted A-rod, scattering hot oil and fragments all over my jeans.

The rear tire screeched in protest of the sudden lockup of the grenading motor. Road grit filled my torn Levi's, branding my ass with the hot oil and metal as we slid along the dirt for nearly a thousand feet. When the entire mangled mess finally came to a stop in a cloud of smoke and dust, the bike and I looked like refugees from a tornadoed trailer park.

Just when I thought things couldn't possibly get any worse. An old biddy on a golf cart rode by smirking, and yelled over at me, "Nice job there, Mr Motorcycle!" cackling to herself and continued on down the road. The distant siren drawing closer told me this day wasn't gonna get better anytime soon.

A random thought occurred to me that if I would've just gone to Hollister or Salinas, I'd have been sitting on a stool drinking a cold beer right about now.

The brief pause inside my head was interuppted by the officer's voice. "How did you find yourself gliding along the gravel on this fine sunny day?" Before I could reply the officer held up a hand and contiued, "Connie called me from the cafe and told me all about what went down." pulling me upright the cuffs were applied instantly. "Let's go, hotshot".

The cruiser hit the highway and started to head away from town. "I thought the county cell was in town?" I grunbled. "Who said anything about jail? You do something I don't already know about?" Figuring discretion being the better part of valor, I kept my tongue in check and sat silently, wondering what the hell else today had in store for me.

It turns out, Officer Wendy is a biker chick who owns her own hog named LadyR, and rides a lot of miles with her sister Connie the waitress. So, here I am stuck in this hot tub with the two sisters drinking a cold one and getting "special" treatment of my road rash. Also, it turns out the hamfisted baby brother owns a bike shop and "Steph" is being rebuilt for free in time for the three of us to ride up to Farmington, MN for the Bottoms Up Rally.

On top of all that, I'm still ahead $200.

Idle thoughts flew through my brain...can I really call this a bad day?!