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SHTAY A WHILE AND LISHUN.
Gather round, children, and listen to my stories of amusing situations, dangerous antics and generally "oh my god why would you do that" adventures. Uncle Dimm's gonna tell you some good stories.
Chapter 1: The Hell Ride
Well now, in all of my time here I don't think it should be any surprise to anyone that I love my motorcycle. Now, Torizo hates it and she's still bitter about me getting it (Rather, I have two now, but tomato, tomato... actually that doesn't come out so well in text. Tomato, Tomahto. Yeah, there.) She still gives me dirty looks when I come over riding it and she refuses to go near it cause she says it'll kill me and her both by even standing next to it.
So what this means for me is I typically just don't press the issue and try to avoid the subject at all costs. Now this is difficult, because I have a big mouth and I can't stop myself from talking about it, or how well it handled on the drive over, or the little problems I'm having with it. You see, the bike is 32 years old now but it still runs like a champion. And seeing as such I decided that when I had to drive 250 miles across the state of Virginia to go to a concert, that I would drive the bike the whole way because it was a nice night and I really wanted to go cruising. Plus, gas is a hell of a lot cheaper when you get about 50 miles per gallon.
It was a pretty straight shot down two different interstates, but I arrived about four and a half hours after I left in Williamsburg, VA. Now the ride up was great. I left right as the sun was starting to drop down, and I spent the first hour of the ride in daylight before it got dusky, and finally completely dark. Now I didn't mind, because it was Friday and hardly anyone was out traveling on these interstate highways. I stayed with a friend of mine that night and we went to the amusement park he worked at the next day to pass time until the concert. Great fun that day, rode roller coasters and the like, and because we got bored, hot and sunburned we rode a few miles down the road to the water park that he worked at as a security guard as well. We pretty much just floated around in the lazy river for about an hour before we had to head back to get in to the concert ( Which was being held at the first amusement park.) To compound matters, neither of us wore shoes into the water park and the asphalt was hot, so we hopped the whole way back to the car. Neither of us had swimming gear, either, so we just stripped off our shirts and hopped in the water. As a consequence, by the time we got back to the concert we were still pretty soaking wet. But no worries, it was a summer night, very warm, and things were going great.
So the concert comes and passes (Foreigner, Fuck yeah) and we head to a nearby Wendys to grab some food before going back to his place and passing out. See, he had work the next morning and had to go in early, so I was planning on riding back when he left for work. If he left around 7:30, i'd probably make it back around 12 or 1 PM, just in time for lunch.
But by god, there were other plans in store for me.
Now see I had stashed my wet clothes in my backpack along with the laptop I brought along for the trip. I had my ipod Touch on me as well as my cell phone. I checked the weather forecast before I left on Friday to make sure there was no nasty weather in the pipes for that weekend. But weathermen, they are tricky, wear cheap suits and smell of lies. Of course, I didn't know this at the time, but whatever doesn't kill you only makes you stronger, or makes you hate weathermen, I don't remember which.
We end up waking up a little later than planned but we're on the road by 8 AM. He leads me out of Williamsburg on his way to work and I head off on the 240 or so miles ahead of me. It's early in the morning, so temperature is around 60 degrees Farenheit at the time. I'm comfortable, and everything is going smoothly. I stop for gas around 40 miles down the road, grab a drink for the road and head on out.
A quick note on what I was wearing: I have a synthetic bike jacket, textile, with a zip out weather liner. Now I had the liner with me, but I didn't have it in because it kept the jacket from breathing, and when it's hot, you notice. It was in my backpack with the rest of my stuff. I had my full face helmet and a pair of leather biking gloves, my summer pair, so they breathe a bit more than a huge cold weather pair.
Well I notice as I'm going down the road it's not getting any sunnier. At this point, there's not a whole lot I can do because I'm about halfway between Williamsburg and Home, and it's not like I could have stopped or went back anyway because I had work the next day and had to make it back. I'm still a little tired from how late I was up the night before, but I am determined to press on and get home so I can take a nap.
At the end of my first highway, with 99 miles to go, I pull off at a rest stop to use the bathroom. As I come out, it begins to drizzle. I call home and let them know, and they tell me it's been pouring down rain all day.
FUCK
So the rain doesn't look like it's going to get any better. In lack of foresight, I had no rain gear at the time, because I never thought I'd need it (Suffice to say I went and bought some first thing when I got home.) I decide to just press on and head on down the road. I hop over to the interstate that'll take me home and continue forward.
The drizzle isn't bad, the water isn't pooling and it's light enough that I can see. After about 10 minutes, I begin to get very wet. Water leaks through my jacket and soaks my clothes. The last thing to go was my underwear. That is when you know you are fucked.
I've made it about 20 miles before it gets really heavy. The speed limit on this highway is the standard 65mph but I get to the point where I have to slow to 50mph for the fear of asphalty death awaiting me should my tires slip. I can't see more than about 50 feet in front of me and cars are just flying around to my left on this little 2 lane highway.
If you asked me what terrified felt like, I'd tell you that.
I talked to myself to keep me calm, and I was getting wetter by the minute. My head was tilted to the side at a 45 degree angle to make the water slip off the side of the helmet so I could actually see in front of me.
I start to get low on gas about 65 miles from home, and so I pull into a truckstop, defeated, soaked, and not wanting to continue. I walk inside this gas station and get hysterical looks from everyone in the facility. I walk towards the bathroom, soaked to the bone, leaving a trail of water akin to the trail of slime behind a slug. With every walk, water pulses out of my boots. And I'm not talking "Oh water was just leaking out." We're talking arterial bleeding here. Like slit jugular bad.
Don't ask Uncle Dimm how he knows about that, he's seen some shit you know.
Well anyways I carry myself towards the bathroom to try and see if any of my things in my backpack are dry. To my surprise, my clothes are dry and so is my laptop. I suppose being on my back, I shielded it from the worst of the weather. No matter. It takes me about 15 minutes to get changed because I'm so wet my clothes are sticking to me. I wring the clothes I had on out over the toilet as well as I could and stuff them back into my bag. I grab a plastic bag I had and put all of my electronics in it and stuff it down in the backpack. Little did I know, my poor iPod had succumbed to the water. That makes that the FIRST iPod I lost to my motorcycle (The second losing a fight with gravity and pavement at 70 miles an hour. More on that later.)
Well I walk out of this bathroom, and this place is pretty big. I mean, it's a truck stop so they have showers and lots of big stalls and urinals and whatnot. And I'm walking out of the bathroom and I see a guy at a urinal that looks familiar. So here I am looking at him trying to see if he's my friend when the realization dawns on me that i'm staring at a guy at a urinal oh god what and then he turns around and we make eye contact, a silent moment. Turns out it was my friend, so it wasn't as big of a deal, although I still feel a little awkward and dirty thinking about the situation.
See, Seth, the guy that I urinal watched, was the guy that got me into Motorcycles in the first place. So he knew my motorcycle outside (Pretty unique) but he didn't think it could have been me, because why would I go riding this far outside of town in this weather (oh god fuck the weathermen.) Well he was coming back from visiting his grandparents with his family, and they all got a good laugh out of my situation (in the best possible way, laughter was the only way to deal with the pain.)
He didn't have any rain gear to lend me, nor could he tow me and my bike back to the city, but he did have... a cheap poncho. Like a 99 cent poncho. IT WAS BETTER THAN NOTHING I SUPPOSE. Well they head on out back towards town and I sit down in the attatched Wendys restaraunt (I swear this is the third Wendys I've been at this weekend.) to try and wait out the storm a bit.
Well I sit there for about 45 minutes, eating my chicken nuggets and watching the rain pour outside. It didn't get any better, so I decided I better go now before it got... shudder, worse. I zipped up the weather liner (A bit more prepared this time), strapped on my helmet, soaking wet gloves, and headed back into the raining pits of hell. Determined to make my way home without a nasty side effect of death, I gas my bike up and hop back on the interstate. Rain pelts me as hard as before, maybe harder. The events are a blur. All I remember is pulsing terror and my own will to live.
Now see, this taught me a valuable lesson, this stretch of road did. I put on the poncho before I left the gas station. Normally something like that would help, but I learned that an unsecured rain poncho turns into a cape at 60 miles per hour. So here I am balling booty down the road, I can't even turn my head to see around me because the poncho is there, and it's not protecting me at all from the weather. Now I talked to Seth later and he said the poncho was for UNDER my jacket, but how the hell was I supposed to know some magic trick like that. Anyway, I looked like an idiot. People would fly past me, stop accelerating, slow down, and drive beside me, getting a good look at this idiot with a cape and a motorcycle in the middle of fuck all storm weather. I had some frat guys pull up beside me and take pics. I smiled and gave em a thumbs up. Sometimes I wonder if there's a picture of me somewhere on the interbutts soaking wet with a poncho cape on my motorcycle in the middle of a rainstorm giving passer-bys a thumbs up, but I've never found it.
Anyways, about 30 miles of sheer unrelenting terror later, the sun pokes from behind the clouds, and the farther I ride the sunnier it gets. Turns out the storms over my hometown had moved towards me, which was why I was getting utterly fucked on the way back by rain. I pull off with 30 miles to go, still soaked but with shining sun and blue sky. I call my folks and let them know I'm not dead, and I rip the poncho cape off (because reasoning with it was invalidated as an idea about 10 miles ago) and toss it to the ground. Unfortunately it hits my chrome tailpipe and instantly melts to it. By the time I ripped it off I had some gnarly looking burnt plastic on my purdy chrome. No matter how much I scrub it won't come off, a grim reminder of that horrible, horrible time D:
Now I ride back home the rest of the way feeling better than ever, thankful to be alive, and wondering where in the hell I was going to get some good rain gear. By the time I had drove the 30 some odd miles home, I was almost dry as a bone. I pulled in my front yard, put the stand down, got off my motorcycle, and just laid on the ground. My ground, that was not wet and moving and trying to shred my face off if I made a wrong move
tl;dr Rode my bike through a rainstorm and didn't die. Fuck yeah.
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