Tuesday, October 28, 2008

A rekindling


The most aggressive in traffic I've ever been...

Hopefully my plates were only a mere glimmer...

4 comments:

DOMS 287 said...

This bike has filled a void I've neglected for too long. Don't tell Brooke, but the racer in me was recently awoken. Not that I haven't been pushing it anyway, but never like this...

When you know what you're doing - and I do - traffic is only an up-close-and-personal passerby. Mere inches on either side separate you from converging vehicles. Thrilling? No doubt. I don't know how fast I was going. Just out of focus was the screaming alarm of the high-rpm light flashing brightly, but looking down was not an option. Blinking was not an option. I will say that at one time I did look down... Things had just opened up and I was grabbing the brakes for a tight curve... The number I saw would be staggering to most... Who knows what it was before I had squeezed the front lever and pushed my shoe onto the rear brake... One thing’s for sure though, a lot of people were scared that day... A lot of people hated me that day... A lot of people wished I'd die that day... A lot of people were jealous that day.

DOMS 287 said...

So that's story number one. Story number two goes a little something like this:

So I'm reinvigorated by my recent crossing over on the highways of CT. I'm climbing on the bike to go to school just yesterday. I want to ride like the previous story described, but I think I'd better not keep chancing it (mainly the part of my having no license or insurance... and no health insurance either, but that doesn't matter since I don't plan on crashing, and even if I did, Osama will be elected soon to give me free health care with pay), but then I check the time and see that I have exactly 30 minutes to be in a meeting, and it's a 30-minute drive alone, not counting the heavy traffic on campus at that time! So it's pretty apparent that I have no choice... It's game on! I jump on the highway in full wheelie mode. I lower the front end at about 90 mph just before a curve and then I really open it up. Traffic (if there was such a thing) was again heavy on this three lane highway, so there was some serious darting across all lanes to squeeze between cars. At one point I'm approaching a merging on-ramp with major bumper-to-bumper action in every lane. At that point I see my best opening is actually between cars on the on-ramp. I'm in the far left lane and hauling. I cut hard to hit the hole on the on-ramp before it disappears to squeeze by the last car on the on-ramp on his outside. This goes smoothly and I'm then judging my next move on the cars that are only a few feet away and approaching fast. I quickly realize that I've entered the highway from this on-ramp alongside this car at about 120 mph and I'm now unwittingly calculating my next squeeze between a big truck and a cop! I abruptly straighten the bike and grab the brakes hard and lock myself right on his back bumper. I play it cool wondering what he might be thinking... wondering what he knows...

All in all, I stayed behind him for the next three long miles at about 70 mph. I think what saved me was the heavy traffic hiding my approach and my entering his field of vision from an on-ramp, like I had just sped up to get on safely or something. Whew.

JTuffy said...

sounds like you are a disaster waiting to happen. I hope i don't have to get a phone call from the misses finding out that you are gone and i am the real father of the baby! LOL. I still think that you should get into racing again. When you get your mind fixated on something you don't give up, you should channel that focus/energy. We'll be your sponsors.

Cameron said...

the cop probably didn't pull you over because he was so impressed with your abilities and dashingly good looks. otherwise you would have been toast. the po-po probably wished he was on a bike as bad-A as yours.

so, somebody needs to fill me in on the hijinx of spencer's b-day bash.