May 2001
All Of Sudden In St Louis
During my two wheeled road trips, I never felt nerves or sensed or heard premonitions. Steve and I had slept well and deeply for many of the preceding nights. Twenty-two years later I still marvel at the insanity of having our entire future or better said any further future determined in an instant.
-Marlow February 2023
We awoke to dry pavement but faced thick fog which put us on edge at the beginning of a very long day of superslab riding. Fog proved less daunting as our 70+ MPH advance outran it less than an hour south of Kansas City.
I-70 in Kansas City: the worst road surfaces this side of the old Soviet Union — uneven, potholed, rutted; plainly hazardous to unwarned motorcycle riders and harmful to commuter cars. Six-inch-wide ribbons of failing patch asphalt along concrete slab joints 2-3” tall across the entire width of the road. On the two-laner US routes in the mountains, they’d post warning signs, but not here. Disgraceful. “Paging Senator Bond, white courtesy phone.”
We ran hard all day, not eating until we were well east of St. Louis in Illinois. We were racing an eastward bound high-speed major three front stitching point that chased us all day long — a cold front to our north, oriented East-West was moving southward as another low-pressure center was moving eastward along this frontal boundary from the west. A third occluded front tail waged softly to our south southwest. We watched the northern front silently march towards us on I-70 and I-64, while ominous black clouds always filled our rear-view mirrors despite our 80+ MPH velocities. We just made it to our day’s Lexington Kentucky destination when the storm systems finally collapsed along the entire length of I-64 corridor from St Louis Missouri to Charleston West Virginia, bringing tropical storm force winds and heavy rain. Chalk one up for accurate computerized forecasts.
I quickly shoved the disposable camera into my left leather jacket pocket, after taking some photos of the St Louis arch from my fast-moving Harley. During the past three weeks, I’d become proficient doing this while riding. I’d only dropped these cheap cameras a few times with no physical damage or poor photo quality resulting. As you can see, our eastbound traffic was light on a partly sunny St Louis getaway midafternoon.
From out of nowhere but probably from our far right swerved into the front of our fast lane a red pickup with a white sign with black letters “______Dirty Piles.” I thought to myself, well, what’s gonna happen now? Time sped up as my perception of its passage caused me to prepare and then roll a bit off the throttle.
Traffic instantly became tightly packed around us as the pickup driver tapped his brakes. “Oh, shit.” I grumbled — the guy swoops our fast-passing lane and then slams his brakes. WTFO?
The truck driver then begins fighting hard to keep the truck in his our lane as it jerked side to side as Steve and I clamped down on our machines’ disc brakes. My visual focus narrowed down to a small cone in front and beside me as I shifted hard down to bleed off more velocity. A J.B. Hunt tractor trailer now loomed in damn close on my right. The big rig’s driver was already hard on his brakes and downshifting with his engine’s pop off valves sounding like a 4th of July fireworks display.
Then I heard chattering noises which meant his rig’s brake lock was imminent. I wished for once for the protection of blissful ignorance but nooooo . . . . in such tight quarters we’d be at the hinge point of the resulting jack knife maneuver. The driver was a pro as he shifted his efforts to more engine breaking and red line over whining ostensibly to protect him and us. Our rider pucker factors were well into the red zone.
All of a sudden, the view to my front and right briefly cleared. I now saw a 120-pound red-brown chow, frozen in fear and disorientation astride the semi’s lane, looking squarely at me (I began to rise on my pegs). I hit my klaxon and it froze for a moment. A brown car’s front quarter panel and passenger side front wheel now appeared by my left leg an inch or two under my left handlebar. My right handlebar was several inches away from the big rig’s trailer frame. I pulled up my front floorboards and thanked the gods I had stowed my pax pegs upright every day. My fingers and arms were otherwise now occupied death-gripping, braking, down-shifting, clutching and horn honking.
The lane sharing car to my left slowly eased on by as we were still doing ~45 MPH. He had no room to maneuver as a Jersey barrier limited his berm space to 2-3 feet. I concentrated on me and my bike becoming skinnier in our lane’s right wheel rut.
WHACK! The collision sounded like a baseball bat hitting an aluminum garage door. Relief. Instant relief. Sadness. Still breathing and upright and rolling. Northing broken. Hot Damn!
After traffic unexpectedly became looser a split second later, I drew even with the brown car again I offered its pax a hand sign to thank his driver for his skillful avoidance driving. Holy Shit he took it and bumped it. He was as shocked as I was at what was transpiring while shouting, “Yeah! Oh Yeah!!”
Observation #14: Could’ve, would’ve, should’ve died several times during those brief 5-6 seconds. I doo-loop processed these events, their meanings, their suddenness, their enduring ever present immediacy, our joint artful ballet like survival actions and their relationship to the road-trip for years and years.
Steve later reported observing the semi driver light up a cigarette, probably to calm his nerves. Steve gave him a thumbs up.
Daily Windshield Bug Smash Bingo Game winners: rained out
Query count as of the end of Day 22:
Where’re you going? – 24
What’s that? (Steve’s Valkyrie) – 9
Damsels in distress? – 9 (11 if you count Steve and Marlow)
Select Photos From Day 22
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