The sun had passed overhead and the afternoon had turned pleasant.
The road was fairly straight almost placid. The motorcycles were running fine with engine RPMs lowering after each upshift. The feel of the road started to take hold of the bikes and then their riders. The sound of the tires on the pavement was marked by gentle zen-inducing thrums. Trees hung over the road, blocking the summer sun and turning the road blacker than black.
Augustus and Rex had the lead with Rex in the number two slot. They went ahead a piece, leaving Marlow and Steve behind to experiment with their bikes on the increasingly curvy and bumpy road. Their pace visibly increased and so did their bikes’ back and forth rhythm around the tightening S curves and multiple up-and-downs that Marlow called whoop dee doo’s.
A broader expanse of road then opened up in front of them. The two lead bikes were visibly further ahead. Then a patch of pavement came upon them that was demonstrably more difficult to navigate. Whereupon Marlow turned to Steve and said “Let’s go catch em!”
They maneuvered quickly and urgently. It was vigorous enough for their shocks to bottom out when landing after whoop dee doo’s launched the bikes airborne and their foot boards to scrape and spark the pavement when they attacked uphill decreasing radius turns. With each challenge met, they were getting more than a rudimentary sense of how to ride rough roads. They were no longer awkward urban bikers riding their two wheeled driveway jewelry on a weekend putt to a local roadhouse. They were riding.
The pavement then became rougher, windswept and covered in shadowed hill corners with gravel and assorted debris. These new conditions required minute adjustments to the corner entry angle and lean as well as corner apex acerbation strategy. Rear wheel slippage and drift was felt but dealt with.
Another clear vista ahead revealed they were rapidly reeling in the lead pair.
Marlow while leaning down over his tank, turned back to Steve as much as he could.
“Hey! How about this!”
“This is some kind of allright! Yeah!” Steve exclaimed.
They sped onward toward the unsuspecting Augustus and Rex.
They announced their sudden arrival with a double gear down shift engine breaking that cracked their pipe roars. The lead pair both turned back in unison to see them and hear Steve shout, “Well, for Christ’s sake! Why so slow, Grandmas?”
Further on, they whizzed through another ghost town with nary a thing in sight to suggest active inhabitation. There was a rusted sign that announced its name but it was too far gone to speak its piece to these riders. On the distant side of the town they looked down a ravine on their right that had signs of the town’s former citizens. They had used this ravine as a junk heap where they threw away anything they didn’t want or that had been used up.
It was littered with old tires, engines, and motors, appliances both big and small from times long ago and so forth. They were also large and small pieces of bright plastic – picture frames, glass and dish ware and beach chairs. As he surveyed this rolling tableau, it made Marlow uneasy without knowing why or what is was.
They went around a corner and found that the road had changed completely once again. There looked to be long series of tight uphill, hairpin curves that would be quite lively and interesting. Halfway up the hill, the road disappeared under a thick tree cover.
They were delighted and apprehensive at the same time. Augustus had the lead and headed up the hill like they had briefed earlier in the day – head for the initial curve from the middle of the road and dive into it to get a sense of what the rhythm would be for this uphill attack. Augustus would try to channel them through the apexes and around wash outs and assorted road debris.
Hand pointing and boot wags pointed to obstacles, while his exhaust notes told them of his accelerations and decelerations and signaled what they had to do.
They dug in enthusiastically, with their bikes picking up and dropping speed in unison as they ran these rapidly breaking curves.
They were sucked into a kind of battle with the road, trying to keep their bikes in the right groove while avoiding obstacles and maintaining tight separation distances.
They were all silent during this run. This was hard work. This road was a perfect mix of exhilaration and danger. There were sideway rear tire skiddings and foot board sparkings. As they approached the hill’s crest, it looked like that they were equal to this stretch of road by a bare but safe margin.
At that last moment, they went over an unseen double road undulation that launched each one of them over the hill. They came down with successive close interval whumps.
The road now gave way to calmer descent. At the hill’s bottom, there was pull off area, They needed to gather themsleves and rearrange and adjust their gear which had been shaken loose a bit during the climb.
As they pulled off, Rex with his best North Texas drawl let out a loud exulatant whoop.
Further cries abounded. Marlow’s was simpler and softer “Better than Coney Island’s roller coasters.”
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