Chapter 2

The three-word text flashed before his eyes as he thought about it. “I NEED YOU!” all caps. He wasn’t sure what to think. It had been a few years since he had seen or spoken to the sender. He remembered her with fondness, then anger, and here came the regret. “Fuck!” he mumbled into his beard. What the hell does she need from me?

He stumbled into old memories as the mountain road he was flying down frequently demanded his attention. He found himself piling through the gears, from second to fifth, constantly as the tight turns came flying at him out of darkness and through the rain.

His bandanna was already soaked. He couldn’t help but suck water in through the material as he bobbed and weaved the scooter down the highway. The water entering his mouth tasted like shit. “I should have washed this bandanna last load,” another grumbling mumble escapes.

He recalled just yesterday wiping his oiled-up hands with his bandanna after changing his bike oil. That’s it; the bandanna gave an oil taste to the rainwater seeping through. He wanted to spit it out but just kept eating up the miles.

The rain stung his face, where the bandanna didn’t cover. “Fuck!” he screamed into the nothingness of wind and rain about him as he downshifted, piling into another thirty-mile-an-hour turn.

The fucking sign was in French, metric actually, kilometres per hour. He hated it. He was old school. He thought in feet, yards and miles. None of this communist shit for him! He chuckled as the dumb ass thoughts rolled through his head, as the miles went by and the rain kept coming.

It was true, though. He did think in miles, in feet. It wasn’t any sort of rebellion in him. He was simply raised in standard English measurements. They worked for him. He could buy tape measures in feet and speedometers in miles per hour. Why change?

When he saw a sign indicating fifty-kilometres he read it as thirty-miles-hour. It was how he processed the information.

A crosswind hit him and driving rain water partway down his collar. He shuddered.

He knew his next stop was an hour away. ‘Suck it up,’ he reminded himself.

He let “I NEED YOU!” creep into his mind again. He didn’t want to recall their last time together, so he forced himself to bring up when they had first met. “Ya,” he shared with the wind, “that was a good time,” as his smile grew under the bandana.

The turns kept coming. At the speed he was moving, the wind was always fierce, and the rain continued to sting where it hit the skin. He let his mind drift as he pushed on.

He first saw her in a wet titty contest at a biker rodeo in the Fernie valley. He and his riding brothers had arrived at the event late Friday night for the annual long weekend bike event. They rode over two hundred miles to be there.

There were five bars between where they came from and where they wanted to get to. It took them ten hours.

The eight independent riders called each other brothers. They had been hanging around together for the last there years. They were tight. They were all half drunk as they rode through the event property gate, over the cattle guard, faster than they should have.

Frank went down. The crazy one-legged bastard wouldn’t accept that he could no longer ride like he used to. He had been t-boned by a car while on his ride a year back and was still gaining one-legged riding experience. He just couldn’t give up riding.

Frank had big balls, but not much upstairs was the general opinion. Loved by all, though, the guys following him were already off their bikes, standing Frank’s bike up as Frank hopped around on one leg, then pushing Big Bill out of his way to clamber back onto the bike and get to his camping spot for the weekend.

Frank was always pissed when he fell over. A couple of shots of whiskey would calm him down. His old lady would take care of him. One thing was certain, he wouldn’t quit.

Thinking of Frank, Jake dropped throttle another ten miles an hour. If he were going to allow his mind to wander, he’d better ease up a touch. A crosswind gust pushed him to the side once more. He fired his weight back to the right, straightened up, and throttled up again, not as hard as he had been.

Everyone rode down to the bottom of the property, set to pitching their tents, rolling out sleeping bags and getting ready for the three-day binge drinking, toking, and snorting party that was already underway.

Dave, a brother of the wind, grabbed Jake by the shoulder and pushed him towards the party zone, fifty yards away. Others followed behind. As they walked up, they saw a small stage had been set up, and four girls were up on the stage while some guy with a microphone was chirping at the crowd.

Mic man looked a little stressed as the two riding brothers moved into the crowd, stacked up in front of the stage. The three men recognized each other immediately, “Jake! Dave!” Hollered mic man, with a fist-in-the-air salute.

Dave, in a falsetto voice, replied, “Teddy!” That got the crowd laughing.

Another newcomer, just walking up as well, from the other side of the stage, shouted, “What sup?” Ten people answered at once. Teddy fought for volume control and achieved it shortly.

On quieting the crowd, Teddy returned to the earlier conversation he’d been in, looking and without the mic, speaking to a particular person in the front row of the 30-40 person crowd, “I fucking know it’s Friday night! I know we always have the wet tee contest on Saturday, but tonight,”

Teddy, now looked into and across the crowd, brought the mic up to his lips, “We have a sponsor willing to shell out $300 bucks for the winner of a Friday Night wet tee contest and another one hundred for second place!”